The other day I was at the public library perusing the DVDs, and came across the movie Tommy. This unexpected encounter produced a visceral reaction in me. I hadn’t thought about this film in decades, and yet it still made me sick to my stomach. “This is madness,” I thought. “How can you still be affected by this stupid movie? You have got to get past this.”
I picked up the DVD and just stared at it. I was transported back to the spring of 1975. I was 10 years old and school was out. I was home alone and bored silly. I called my mom at work. I disguised my voice so that she wouldn’t get in trouble by getting a personal call. I actually thought that would work.
Anyway, when she got on the line I asked if I could go to the movies. She said there was no money in the house. I told her I had counted out 99 pennies from my piggy bank and this would be the matinee. I just wouldn’t get popcorn. She reluctantly said okay. I had already checked the newspaper, and the next show was going to be in 20 minutes, so I poured my pennies into a handkerchief and ran down the street. Half way there I dropped the handkerchief and the coins rolled in all directions. I began to panic that I’d miss the beginning of the movie, but I managed to gather all the pennies and make it there on time.
I sat in the back row just as the lights went down. I knew nothing about the movie Tommy. I just knew it was what was playing. I wish that I could take back what I experienced that afternoon. All these years I assumed that the reason I was allowed in to this movie was that it was before the rating system was implemented, but in fact I discovered when doing the research for this blog entry that ratings began in 1968, and Tommy was rated PG. I shouldn’t have been there. They shouldn’t have let me in. But somehow there I was. Maybe it was because I got there at the very last second, all out of breath, with my sweaty wad of pennies, and the teenage ticket person just didn’t have the heart to say no. Who knows.
Mostly I remember being confused by the movie, but the next concrete image in my mind is of Tommy being put into a suit of armor that was embedded with syringes full of drugs, and when the suit of armor opened back up, he was a skeleton with snakes crawling through him. I began to cry, and was basically paralyzed through the rest of the movie as my senses experienced assault after assault. Tommy being tortured by his cousin. Drowned in a bathtub. Burned with an iron. When the movie let out, I remember running all the way home, hysterical. It had never occurred to me up to this point that people could actually enjoy abusing others. It was a life lesson I was not yet prepared to learn. Oddly enough, I can’t remember if I told my mother, and if I did, I can’t remember her reaction.
Back to the present day, I realized I had been standing in the library and staring at this DVD for an unnatural amount of time, feeling sick. “Could it really have been that bad?” I thought. Well, only one way to find out. So, in the interest of healing old wounds, I checked the movie out.
Watching this movie as an adult, I felt myself getting increasingly angry for the 10 year old me. I should never have seen those images at that stage in my life. I’m surprised I didn’t remember more. The sexually abusing uncle, the creepy child wedding, the biker gang battle, the mother getting her head bashed in. Good God, why was this rated PG, and even at PG, why wasn’t it enforced?
This time, what brought tears to my eyes was the little boy singing, “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.” That could have been the 10 year old me, singing in the back of my head, for decades. I wish I could give little me a big hug.
I know a lot of people consider Tommy to be a classic. There were certainly a lot of really big names in the cast. But frankly, once I got past all the layers of emotion from 1975, in 2013 at age 48, other than finding Roger Daltrey to be a hottie, I generally found this flick to be rather boring and self-indulgent.
Most of all, I realized that this movie has been like a little syringe of acid in my life. I needed to metabolize it, take the bad trip and get it out of my system. Whew. I’m glad that’s over with. Never again.
Leave a Reply