My favorite part is how the devil is judging the contest himself, and even with that huge advantage he’s still like “nah he’s just better rip”
There’s a subtext that you guys are missing. The devil wins whether he says Johnny won or lost.
- If the devil wins, he gets Johnny’s soul per the terms of the bet.
- If Johnny wins, the devil gets Johnny’s soul because he’s committing multiple deadly sins purely by boasting and challenging the devil for a golden fiddle: pride, greed, vanity.
If he deems Johnny the winner, Johnny is less likely to challenge the decision, and he’s also more likely to continue committing the sins of pride and vanity (by boasting of his victory over the Devil Himself).
Johnny’s only chance to avoid his fate (per most strains of the Christian faith) is to acknowledge and repent/confess/absolve his sins by seeking divine mercy. The devil knows this is unlikely.
Johnny lost as soon as he uttered his first line.
Except everyone is a sinner by default, so what’s the downside? That’s the problem with these “temptation” parables. Nothing Johnny could do himself would ever avoid that fate, so why act like it?
I’m just pointing out that within the constructs of the predominant Christian mythologies… Johnny’s fucked himself over unless he recognizes he’s being a shit and atones for it.
Whether you assign any validity to the underlying dogma is an individual choice. People have a tendency to overlook logical inconsistencies in their faith frameworks, in any case.
A solid gold fiddle would weigh hundreds of pounds and sound awful. Maybe he just wanted to get rid of it.
It is a cautious tale, it warns you that if you dont make deals with the devil you won’t live up to your full potential, and fuck consequences.
So there’s three schools of thought about the Devil v. Johnny match:
The First: America wins, as is also informed by The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936)
The Second: Rock and Roll wins, as is informed by The Devil and Daniel Mouse (1978) also Rock & Rule (1983) also Crossroads (1986)†
The Third: Johnny’s victory against the devil may be the start of Johnny’s story, in which he gets noted by the labels, performs for three albums, makes it to the top of the radio charts and goes on tour during which he has sex with an uncountable number of groupies, tries out all the drugs, does a Tonight Show interview on Heroin, and dies before thirty, either to an overdose, an assassination by a crazed fan, suicide without any clear cause or an equally mysterious mob hit. (Id est, is a 20th century music GOAT)
† The devil’s been tightly involved in music since time immemorial, not only being credited (blamed) for Rock & Roll but also its predecessor, blues. Also ragtime and romanticism. And then there’s Niccolò Paganini, who, according to the Church, sold his soul to the devil to gain his violin superpowers, and denied him a proper burial for fifty years after his death (and a lot of pressure from his family estate). Paganini developed modern violin techniques and his Caprices 1-24 are used in violin bravura competitions. (Yes, I digress. I know. I like to talk about it.)
All that said, the Devil in stories seems to be a sucker for musician virtuosos who perform their best for him, and he may secretly just love a good jam.
Robert Johnson likewise has the devil-soul-exchange legend
Going down to Georgia implies that Georgia is under hell.
Not to be that guy, but there’s at least one Grimm’s fairy tale where a peasant tricks the devil.
To be fair, the song isnt about tricking the devil and using one’s wits to overcome terrible odds or such like that, this random guy is just that good that he can just enter into a contest with a supernatural power and win it honestly. Id bet stories like that exist in other cultures, surely, but still probably arent as common as ones where the human must resort to tricks or suffers for hubris. Then again, the song also suggests the devil hasnt been too successful lately, so maybe this version of the character just isnt terribly powerful in the first place.
There’s a Buddhist story, about an old monk teaching a young one.
The young one, goes outside and the old one is chopping wood. The old monk tells how amazing he is at it The young one immediately asks why are you bragging? It’s against the teachings.
The old monk replied, I’m not and proceeds to perfectly split five pieces. Describing your skill actually is not bragging is the moral. Or something like that
Probably every single European bridge called “Devil’s Bridge” has a story about how he was tricked into making it in one single night and then denied his prize because
- they made a rooster sing before dawn because the contract specified that as the deadline
- they made an animal cross the bridge first because the first soul was to be taken per contract
- they bully him into giving it up with some divine intercession.
