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Freddie Mercury: The tragic life of a musical genius

Text/The Grace of the Gods

At the beginning of 2019, the 91st Oscar for Best Actor was won by the little-known actor Rami Malek . Why did Malek win the statuette? In fact, in addition to his superb acting skills, he won the award this time, but also benefited from the role he played.

In the biographical film "Bohemian Rhapsody", Malek plays the lead singer of the British band Queen and rock star Freddie Mercury. This role has its own celebrity effect, which adds a lot to Malek. And this movie also brought the former rock star Freddie into the public eye again after half a century.

01 Rock Star: As long as I live a wonderful life, I don’t care how long I live

Queen is one of the world’s famous rock bands. It was a hit in the 1970s and 1980s, and its lead singer Freddie Mercury is known as "Britain's first Asian rock star".

Freddie was not only an outstanding singer, but also an amazing musician. Queen's famous songs "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "We Are the Champions" were all composed by him. It was precisely because of his joining that the band moved towards glory step by step.

The "Live Aid" concert in 1985 was the highlight of Freddie's life. On the stage, he had a slicked back hair, wore a white vest, held a microphone, and sang the classic song "We Are the Champions" in front of 72,000 spectators. Under his leadership, the fans in the audience sang together, and the singing echoed through the sky, which was extremely shocking.

Freddy once said: "As long as I live a wonderful life, I don't care how long I live." Unexpectedly, the words came true. During the most glorious period of Freddy's career, he was infected with AIDS. In 1991, Freddy died of AIDS at the age of 45, and his legendary life came to an end.

After Freddie's death, the authoritative British media "The Daily Telegraph" said, "Freddie Mercury lived a grand, avant-garde and colorful life."

Freddy shines brightly on the stage, but Freddy off the stage is completely different. There are two scenes in the movie that are impressive.

Excerpt 1: One night, the lonely Freddy called Mary who lived in the villa opposite. The two looked at each other through the window while turning on and off the lights, just like communicating secret codes through the air. .

Soon after Mary moved away, Freddy came to that room again, looking at the dark window opposite, feeling sad.

In clip two, Mary rushed to Freddy’s house in the rain. When she was about to leave, Freddy chased her out. In the rainy night, the two spoke their innermost thoughts. After Mary drove away in a taxi, Freddy stood in the rain with tears streaming down his face.

At this time, Freddy was no longer the rock star that attracted everyone's attention, but a sensitive, fragile, and helpless child. Freddy was a completely different person on and off the stage.

02 Double contrast comes from the disidentification of self-identity

In Freddy, there is a double contrast. The first contrast is that he is domineering and coquettish on stage, but shy and introverted in life. The second contrast is that although he looks strong and strong, his male hormones are off the charts, but he doesn’t like beautiful women and prefers handsome men.

This double contrast stems from his disapproval of his own identity. And this disapproval is related to his early experiences.

Freddie lived a homeless life for the first half of his life. He was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, grew up in India, and later settled in the UK with his parents. This wandering and turbulent life made him very insecure since he was a child;

The name is a combination of a person and his It is a symbol of family connection and a person's identification with his family of origin. As an adult, Freddy changed his name from Farouk to Freddy. Behind the move of changing his name is his disapproval of his family;

Freddy’s whole family believes in Taoism, a religion popular in ancient Persia and Central Asia. Freddy, on the other hand, dismissed the Xinyao Cult. In this family, he is like an alien.

Freddy could not find a sense of belonging, whether in society or in his family, which also made him disidentified of his own identity.

From a psychological point of view, identity recognition is essentially self-recognition. What you identify with is what you are.

Identity is an important mechanism in the formation of personality. To measure whether a person identifies with himself, it is enough to ask him to answer three questions: "Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I want to go?"

Whether a person can self-identify in the early stage mainly depends on whether his parents agree with him. When parents love their babies unconditionally, the baby will think that he is worthy of love. When he grows up, he will become confident and strong, able to withstand insults and ridicules from the outside world. Because his inner self is very stable and strong. But if a person does not receive enough love from his parents since he was a child, he will have very low self-confidence and no sense of self-worth when he grows up.

Back to the movie. To his family, Freddie was an anomaly. Music was a form of redemption for Freddy. Only when he is composing and singing can he be confident, because music can help him transcend reality and forget the pain. Through songwriting and singing, Freddie achieved self-identity.

03 Long-term self-alienation is almost equivalent to chronic suicide

In 1985, the "Live Aid" concert held at Wembley Stadium was Freddie's most glorious moment. About 1.5 billion people around the world watched his performance through television broadcasts.

However, worldly success did not bring real happiness to Freddie. His private life became more and more chaotic, with different sexual partners every night, and the degree of promiscuity was staggering.

"Study after study shows that people bulge, smoke, drink, and engage in other forms of escapism to mask feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, or inadequacy," says Louise Hay. Escape from responsibilities they can't handle."

Freddy chooses to use lewd ways to numb himself because he sees through the futility of life and is unwilling to face the cruelty of fate. He once said: "Love is the hardest thing to succeed, and the easiest thing to let people down."

Freddy's pain stems from his disapproval of his true self. Compared with his real self, he prefers the exaggerated, sexy and sweaty version of himself on stage. Freddie on stage is what he really wants to live like.

Freddy's behavior is actually a kind of self-alienation. What is self-alienation? Self-alienation, also called self-dissonance, refers to a psychological state in which a person does not accept himself from the bottom of his heart.

Self-psychology believes that the formation of personality will be affected by factors such as society, culture, and interpersonal relationships. In the process of self-formation, many conflicts will arise in the human heart. If these conflicts remain unresolved, people will become self-alienated.

After Freddy became famous, no matter how brilliant his career was, it could not fill the huge feeling of emptiness in his heart. The source of this sense of nothingness is self-alienation.

People who are self-alienated are unable or unwilling to see their true selves. Therefore, it is impossible to live your true self.

04 If you want to live your true self, you must learn to reconcile with yourself

In psychology, the self is divided into two types: "true self" and "false self". Among them, false self is a concept derived from the personality shadow theory.

Everyone has personality shadows, such as selfishness, jealousy, greed, etc. When a person deliberately avoids his or her shadow, his true self and his false self will conflict. When conflict reaches its extreme, the person will collapse.

Winnicott said that when a person is extremely insecure inside, a false self will split off. And when one strives to please others, one is hiding and denying one’s true self. At this time, the false self will pose a serious threat to the true self.

After Freddie became famous, he became the center of attention and made countless fans crazy. However, fans may not know that at this time, Freddy is only lonely and desperate. To escape his true self, he drank heavily, took drugs, became promiscuous, and broke up with the rest of the band. In the end, this kind of life pushed him into a situation of no return.

Freddy spent his whole life trying to reconcile with himself, but ultimately failed to do so. This is the tragedy of his life. As ordinary people, how can we reconcile with ourselves and become our true selves?

Psychology believes that if a person wants to reconcile with himself and finally accept himself, he must do the following three things:

First, see and accept his own dark side. People are often unwilling to accept themselves because they are unwilling to face their dark side.

Second, allow yourself to be imperfect. Everyone is imperfect, and only by seeing this clearly can we face ourselves calmly.

Third, bravely accept your true self and strive to become a better version of yourself.

Nine times out of ten things in life will be unsatisfactory. Master Shengyan said that when facing adversity, you must learn to "face it, accept it, deal with it, and let it go." It can be seen that facing the problem squarely is the first step to solving the problem.

Indeed, the problem itself is not the problem. How to look at the problem is the biggest problem. Knowing yourself is a lifelong matter. Only when people know themselves can they liberate themselves. One day, when the true self and the false self shake hands and make peace, we can become a real person.