Can you hear that Duquesne Whistle Blowing?

Why do I like this Dylan video so much?

The video for Bob Dylan’s Duquesne Whistle has little if anything to do with the song it features. The song’s lyrics are an ironic musing on a man’s relationship with a woman on his mind, built around the sound of the Duquesne train whistle blowing, which blows “like my woman’s on board” and “like she’s at my chamber door” but also like “it’s on its final run” “like it’s gonna kill me dead” “like she ain’t gonna blow no more” and “like it’s right on time.”

The brilliant, cinematic video tells the story of how a young man, smitten with a woman he sees on the street, desperately tries to get her attention despite her rejection. What initally seems like it might be a cute 80s style romcom pick-up of some kind, or like a Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin-esque caper about an underdog scoring big with the woman of his dreams, turns dark quickly. He is so carried away by romance that he boldly throws himself before her with a stolen rose between his teeth—only to be pepper-sprayed. He then tries again the next day, following her down the street until he attempts to steal another flower and the florist calls the cops on him. Meanwhile the video cuts to shots of Dylan walking down the street at night, suggesting that the two will eventually meet.

In return for his troubles, the young man is chased by the police, who jail him breifly then release him. The day he gets out he is kidnapped and brutally beaten by the mafioso connections of a painter whose ladder he deliberately knocked over while running away from the cops, sending the painter falling to the sidewalk. The woman, who has no interest in his aggressive, self-centered shenanigans, never stirs from her total disinterest in him.

At the end of the video the bloody and broken young man is unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk late at night. It is only then that we see Dylan approaching, walking down the street with a coterie of tough roadies, dressed in a casual but stylish outfit. He arrives at the place on the downtown sidewalk where the young man has been dumped and steps over his prostrate body without a glance, continuing on unphased. The perspective shifts to focus on Dylan’s back as he cooly walks away into the distance.

I am not a fan of violence or slapstick comedy (which one might, perhaps, very charitably, call the unfortunate adventures of this young man). Yet I love this video and have watched it many times over the years.

Why?

I think the answer lies in the final scene, where Dylan, likely around 70 years old when the video was made, steps so callously and unrepentingly over the humiliated ruins of arrogant, young, egotistical male romantic desire.

Young men are prone to clothe their sexual desire in grand, self-justifying romantic visions which conveniently fail to take stock of the true nature of the woman they are aimed at, or what her concrete needs might actually be. The young hero of this short film is smitten by the woman he pursues based solely on her appearance. He knows nothing about her and is completely dis-attuned to the fact that she views him as an unwanted stalker and nuisance.

The effectiveness of the message here is enhanced by the fact that the young man is attractive and seems like he might be capable of charm. This makes her revulsion seem more total, and his blindness seem more glaring, then in a situation where he was not typically attractive, and perhaps there was some room for him to win her over by showing her what is beyond his initial presentation.

I think what I like about Duquesne Whistle is the way that the older Dylan is presented as so mercilessly dismissive of the arrogant, lust-blinded young man. Good riddance, his non-reaction seems to say. Next. The video seems to depict Dylan stepping over the body of the young fool he used to be.

Our culture tends to lionize the foolishness of youth as if life’s pinnacle is reached somewhere between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. Duquesne Whistle offers a refreshing alternative, treating the delusional romance it at first dangles before our eyes with curt dismissal as old age saunters right by, and onwards down the road, and with a swagger.