Speaking in rhyme and riddle: hybridity in Billy Corgan's machina

The present study examines MACHINA, a hybrid multimedia narrative composed and performed by Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins. Through a disjunctive use of media to tell the story of a fractured, hybrid hero named GLASS, Corgan reveals himself to be an inheritor of William Blakes attitudes toward creative media as evidenced in his experiments in illuminated engraving. GLASS, the focus of the chards of narrative and performance, represents one variant of Joseph Campbells hero as suited to the needs of Corgans disaffected audience. In the act of co-creating the narrative with Corgan, his audience helps to enter themselves into a liminal state and a sense of communitas as developed by anthropologist Victor Turner, again with variations made to suit the fractured, conflicted nature of Billy Corgans audience. More than a concept album, MACHINA reworks a number of existing notions about religious responses to narrative and performance.