Marshall McLuhan uses the song "Ballad of the Thin Man" in
The Medium is the Massage. McLuhan uses this song because it comments on the inherently
biased nature of media and mediums: told via song, literally
titled a ‘Ballad’ as in a narrative set to verse, often times passed down – looking
critically at journalism and reporting – and referencing the theater of circus ‘freakshow’
acts. So, song, journalism, and theater. In the same way, the song lends itself
to three major interpretations as to the identity of Mr. Jones and the events
occurring: Mr. Jones could be a reporter (media), Mr. Jones could represent the
ordinary Joe (society), Mr. Jones is representative of a ‘straight’ man in a
queer space (queer/sexual). The openness to interpretation is key: Mr. Jones could
represent media, Mr. Jones could represent society, or the whole song could be about sex, or be utterly nonsensical. Dylan delights in the duality of both meaningful
and meaningless music, where every song has the potential to be loaded with
meaning from the artist – or meaning could come entirely from the listener,
with the artist having created nonsense.
I like your comment about Dylan's interest in mutable significances, it points to the idea that the words' meanings may not matter as much more than the song or the energy put into it, like the significance does not necessarily belong to the definitions. Cool! It's all nature, everything has mutability.
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