‘‘Living in your American skin’’: Bruce Springsteen and the Possibility of Politics Roxanne Harde
Abstract: Springsteen’s songs have a stake in our shared world. They also have the depth and the density of the best lyric poetry, and the narrative force and immediacy of the most enduring ballads. This essay reads Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics as literature and as political narratives. Drawing on Rancie`re, Isin, and other political theorists, I examine Springsteen’s politics and the ways of being political he has exemplified for more than thirty years.
Keywords: Bruce Springsteen, politics, social justice, activism, recession, Vietnam War, war on terror, George W. Bush, 9/11
Re´sume´ : Le pre´sent essai reconnaıˆta` la fois l’inte´reˆt de Springsteen dans le monde que nous partageons et que ses chansons posse`dent la profondeur et la densite´ de la meilleure poe´sie lyrique, que ses re´cits ont la force et l’instantane´ite´ des ballades les plus durables, et de´finit aussi les paroles de ses chansons comme de la litte´rature et de la politique. Puisant dans Rancie`re, Isin, et d’autres the´oriciens politiques, j’examine la politique de Springsteen et les fac¸ons d’eˆtre politique qu’il a propose´es en exemple durant plus de trente ans.
Mots cle´s : Bruce Springsteen, politique, justice sociale, activisme, re´cession, guerre du Vietnam, guerre au terrorisme, George W. Bush, 9/11
In his 1844 essay ‘‘Politics,’’ Ralph Waldo Emerson laments, ‘‘We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force’’ (252). Politics should address this ‘‘low state,’’ Emerson argues, because politics rests ‘‘on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity . . . [T]he wise know . . . that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; . . . and they only who build on Ideas, build for eter- nity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expres- sion of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.
6 Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’e´tudes ame´ricaines 43, no. 1, 2013 doi: 10.3138/cras.2013.006 The law is only a memorandum’’ (242). From his first record, likely from the first song he wrote, Bruce Springsteen has been one who builds on ideas and quite consciously so. In a 2004 interview with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, Springsteen says, ‘‘I always felt that the musician’s job . . . was to provide an alternative source of information, a spiritual and social rallying place, somewhere you went to have a communal experience’’ (73). Politics begins, writes Jacques Rancie`re in The Politics of Literature, ‘‘when those men and women who don’t have the time to do anything other than their work take the time they don’t have to prove that they are indeed speaking beings, participating in a shared world’’ (4). Recognizing Springsteen’s stake in our shared world, the poetic depth and the density of his lyrics, and the enduring force and immediacy of his narratives, I read his lyrics as literature and as politics, as connected and collective practice.
Rancie`re makes clear that the politics of literature is ‘‘not the same thing as the politics of writers,’’ but, he argues, the purity of a writer’s art ‘‘has something to do with politics’’ (Politics 3). Responding to
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) Wenner’s notice that he has scrupulously avoided commercial use of his music and consequently built a reputation for integrity and 126 conscience, for the purity of his art, Springsteen described his work this way: ‘‘I tried to build a reputation for thoughtfulness—that was the main thing I was aiming for. I took the songs, the issues, and the people I was writing about seriously’’ (73). Springsteen avoided partisan politics for the most part while he took seriously the subjects of his songs and therefore did not seem overtly political, at least until President George W. Bush began his ‘‘war on terror.’’ But if personal politics, if becoming political, to paraphrase Engin Isin, is that moment when an established rank—the superior over the inferior, the rich over the poor, the Christian over the Muslim, the white over the black—is challenged or subverted, then the ways of doing politics can be rethought (276). If politics is that thing we do as citizens, as we make collective decisions, including activism on behalf of specific issues or causes, then Springsteen has never really avoided politics, as made evident in part by his early affiliations with and work for No Nukes, Amnesty International, the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, and Musicians United for Safe Energy. If politics is that thing we do as individuals when we conclude what is just and unjust, and then take responsibility for and action in accordance with our conclusions, then Springsteen has long offered his fans, in his lyrics and his life, the possibilities of politics. Drawing on Rancie`re, Isin, and other political theorists, this essay examines—in a roughly chronological fashion and drawing from many of his albums—Springsteen’s politics and the ways of being political he has exemplified for more than thirty years.
‘‘Growin’ Up,’’ from his first album, 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., details a young Turk wending his way through teenage angst. It seems crucial that, using the long lines and youthful ver- bosity so prevalent on his first two albums, Springsteen has this figure come out of tortured young manhood unscathed, with his soul intact. That untouched soul ultimately gives this speaker the courage to move from hiding amidst the crowd to asserting his dif- ference, his rights, and his own voice, and the song concludes with the speaker refusing to sit down; instead he stands up and finishes growing up. This standing up and claiming the right to speak is the part of growing up that anchors Springsteen’s poetry and politics. He is not the poet of ‘‘Jungleland’’ who just stands back until he winds up disgracefully wounded, without the dignity of death, or more accurately, of the death of the Rat, killed by his own dream:
Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz Between flesh and what’s fantasy and the poets down here 127 Don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be eu aained’e canadienne Revue And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, not even dead.1
In The Flesh of Words, Rancie`re asks, ‘‘isn’t a new form of political ´ experience necessary to emancipate the lyrical subject from the old ame tudes poetic-political framework?’’ (10). I would counter with, ‘‘isn’t a new poetic-political framework necessary to emancipate the subject ´ and open him or her to political experience?’’ In ‘‘Jungleland,’’ poets (2013) 43 ricaines are rendered passive, but the enterprising Rat, another boy from Jersey, at least chases and faces down his dream. Rather than the political leanings of a given poet, rather than the political interpre- tation of a given text, Rancie`re looks for ‘‘what essential necessity links the modern stance of poetic utterance with that of political subjectivity’’ (Flesh 9). From ‘‘Growin’ Up’’ to ‘‘Jungleland,’’ Springs- teen’s quest for freedom, for justice, for autonomy, for the right to speak is the necessary link between lyric and subject. The poets and the Rat of ‘‘Jungleland’’ end Springsteen’s 1975 breakout album Born to Run, and the song seems in many ways to conclude and to define his first works as a trilogy (the middle being The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle) about youthful questing for largely undefined names, claims, and freedoms.
All that changed with 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town when Springsteen’s political subjects began to yearn after social as well as personal justice. Embroiled in a legal battle with his former manager, Mike Appel, Springsteen was unable to release new music, so he spent years writing and recording a host of songs, some of which went onto that record, the rest now out in The Promise,a remarkable boxed set released in late 2010. As video footage in- cluded in the deluxe edition shows, it was a dark time for Springs- teen professionally even as he came into his own in his art and his politics. And it was, to my mind, when he rethought the ways of being political. Becoming political, Isin suggests, is that ‘‘moment when freedom becomes responsibility and obligation becomes a right, and involves arduous work upon oneself and others’’ (276). Darkness was written and recorded as Springsteen examined the idea of his own freedom as an artist and citizen, and as the United States suffered through the recession of the mid to late 1970s. If
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) Springsteen had defined himself as a voice of and from the working class in his first three albums, then he explicitly became a voice for 128 the working class on his fourth. He later noted in ‘‘Chords for Change,’’ an op-ed piece in the New York Times, that ‘‘a nation’s artists and musicians have a particular place in its social and political life. Over the years I’ve tried to think long and hard about what it means to be American: about the distinctive identity and position we have in the world, and how that position is best carried. I’ve tried to write songs that speak to our pride and criticize our failures.’’ From its opening song, ‘‘Badlands,’’ the album focuses on the working poor and hegemonic social structures as Springsteen croons about working men striving for a better life while rich men strive for ever more power. He follows ‘‘Badlands’’ with ‘‘Adam Raised a Cain’’ in part as a way to critique the Bible’s ability to keep the poor among us, continually paying for the sins of the past. The song also considers the ‘‘dark heart’’ of the American dream that has separated the haves from the have-nots and refers to the reces- sion widening that separation.
Taken as a whole, Darkness on the Edge of Town looks like the fall into politics that Isin describes as the moment ‘‘when one consti- tutes oneself as being capable of judgment about just and unjust’’ (276). The title track is the final song on Darkness, and it functions as a summary of the album’s concerns with economic disasters and social justice, as Springsteen’s speaker considers his place among the ‘‘have-nots,’’ and how his inability to realize, or the impossibility of realizing, given the economic climate, the American dream has cost him everything he loves. This speaker, however, looks for a dark redemption, one that gestures toward criminal activity, possi- bly violence, and agrees that he will pay whatever it costs as he sets out for ‘‘The Darkness on the Edge of Town.’’ Economic justice is the politics driving Darkness and 1980s The River. The latter’s title track offers a bleak narrative that deconstructs the myth of the American dream that equates hard work with prosperity. The speaker had a job, ‘‘But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy.’’ The speaker laments, ‘‘Now all them things that seemed so important / Well mister they vanished right into the air.’’ All that’s left for this narrator and his Mary, it seems, are youthful memories and a darkly bitter present, both of which haunt the narrator, who, in his turn, asks the most haunting of Springsteen’s questions: ‘‘Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true / Or is it something worse?’’
In terms of politics, Darkness and The River form a thematic trilogy with Nebraska, Springsteen’s solo and largely acoustic 1982 album. All three focus on poverty and debt, on the failures of American 129
dreams and systems, and all reflect the politics that caused Springs- d’e canadienne Revue teen to begin working for and contributing to food banks; he has, to date, raised and donated multiple millions of dollars to these organizations, particularly in areas hardest hit by recession. He notes in ‘‘Chords for Change’’:
Through my work, I’ve always tried to ask hard questions. Why is ´ it that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep ame tudes its promise and faith with its weakest citizens? Why do we con- tinue to find it so difficult to see beyond the veil of race? How do ´
we conduct ourselves during difficult times without killing the (2013) 43 ricaines things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of reach?
While Darkness and The River only lament the recession and economic injustice, only hint toward some sort of retribution, Springsteen builds into Nebraska a number of citizens dealing with their own bleak realities, often dealing in violence. ‘‘Johnny 99’’ features a young man facing the same kinds of circumstances many young people face today: an economic downslide that means diminishing income alongside rising debt and interest rates. Because of economic problems, Springsteen’s Johnny makes some bad choices and winds up on trial explaining what led him to crime and begging for his death rather than his life. Life in jail, or even out of it, presents a bleakness that forces Johnny to beg the judge for a trip to death row. Johnny’s argument seems shocking in his preference for death over 99 years in prison, but his request for the death house gestures to the society that threw him away long before he picked up the gun, a society that deserves a dark retribution, should he ever be free again.
It seems to me that in this song and others on Nebraska, Springsteen begins to develop his politics in a more specific fashion. Rather than simply lament economic injustice and hint toward dark retributions, he shows what can happen when the working person is pushed past the point of reason. And he adds something new to the mix of his politics: criticism of American foreign policy, which comes through inference at this early stage, specifically in the song ‘‘High- way Patrolman.’’ Narrated by a cop, the song examines what the war in Vietnam did to Americans at the micro level. The narrator
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) gets to miss the war because of a farm deferment, so he settles down and marries Maria while his brother Franky gets drafted, 130 serves in Vietnam and comes home deeply troubled. This speaker prioritizes family and catches Franky when he strays, going so far as to subvert the law and let his brother run away from what looks like murder. In short, he both catches/helps Franky and does not catch him. ‘‘Highway Patrolman’’ suggests that if America saw all of its citizens as brothers, they might not be suffering like Frank and we would not need to look the other way. The song speaks of the damage that war does to its veterans and their families, and it gestures to gaps in the underfunded systems meant to help those damaged people. It also speaks of the guilt carried by those who managed to avoid the draft. Since his 1981 benefit concert for Vietnam veterans, Springsteen has allied himself with this cause. When asked ‘‘what it means to be an American,’’ in the Wenner interview, Springs- teen reflected on the issues that had driven his politics early on:
Things that I cared about, . . . that naturally came to me when I wrote. . . . I think we can move toward greater economic justice for all of our citizens, or we cannot. I think we can move toward a sane, responsible foreign policy, or we cannot. For me, these are issues that go right to the heart of the spiritual life of the nation. That is something I have written about. It cannot be abandoned and is worth fighting and fighting and fighting for. (76) With 1984’s Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen became far more explicit about what he was fighting for. The album continues to place American experience and social injustice at the forefront, but with its title track, first in the set, Springsteen offers a finely turned cri- tique of American foreign policy, the war in Vietnam, lack of veteran support, and America’s general racist tendencies. Calling racism ‘‘the disease of consensus,’’ Rancie`re describes the foreign other as lost to ‘‘political otherness, doomed to an unnameable form of hatred’’: ‘‘Instead of the worker or proletarian who is the object of an acknowledged wrong and a subject who vents his grievance in struggle and disputation, the [foreign other] appears as at once the perpetrator of an inexpiable wrong and the cause of a problem’’ (Shores 105). After a trio of albums that insists his audience empa- thize with or even understand working-class, poor, and even crim- inal speakers, Springsteen turns to the Vietnam War and insists that his listeners consider the foreign other/the enemy as fully human, as a man, or as a woman, since the speaker’s brother falls in love with a Vietnamese woman in Saigon. The American speaker of ‘‘Born in the U.S.A.’’ describes how some youthful trouble with the law led him to becoming a soldier sent to kill someone with whom he has no quarrel. The speaker’s emphasis on being an American, born in the United States, is criticism alongside patriotism, and it 131
remains beyond me to understand why an aide to Ronald Reagan d’e canadienne Revue thought this was an appropriate song for the 1984 presidential cam- paign. The song ends with the speaker in the shadows of both penitentiary and refinery, and given only these two choices for his future, he bleakly considers himself going nowhere.
After Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen’s politics became ´ less of a priority for him as he toured extensively, solo, and with the ame tudes E Street Band, exited his first marriage and entered into a lasting union with Patti Scialfa, his Jersey girl. The period between 1985 ´ and 1995 saw the release of live and greatest hits albums, and the (2013) 43 ricaines three solo projects that comprise his most extended discourse on intimate relationships: Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). With The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995), Springs- teen left behind the slick productions of that trio of albums and returned to the spare and dark ruminations of Nebraska, and to the possibilities of politics, a politics he described this way to Jann Wenner: ‘‘I don’t want to watch the country devolve into an oligar- chy, watch the division of wealth increase and see another million people beneath the poverty line this year. These are all things that have been the subtext of so much of my music’’ (74). He was clear about that subtext in a 2002 Time article by Josh Tyrangiel when he reflected back on The Ghost of Tom Joad as going ‘‘to where I thought I could be most useful’’ (53). Tyrangiel suggests that the ‘‘old opti- mism’’ of Springsteen’s early work was gone and connects that absence into Springsteen’s relocation of his family to New Jersey. Of the move, Springsteen reflected that he wanted his children ‘‘to have that experience of knowing people who do lots of different jobs’’ (54). I suggest that both the absence of optimism and the move home were born of his politics.
The Ghost of Tom Joad opens with the title track, a song that traces economic injustice coming out of a new recession. Springsteen later reflected on this period in ‘‘Chords for Change’’: ‘‘We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of ‘one nation indivisible.’ ’’ In the song, Springsteen historicizes contemporary circumstances
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) by placing them alongside those of the Great Depression. The open- ing lines look like the 1930s with ‘‘families sleepin’ in their cars in 132 the southwest.’’ But the ‘‘highway patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge’’ place the song in the here and now, and the chorus describes a country haunted by a past and present depression: ‘‘I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light / Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad.’’ After declaring the ‘‘community of equals’’ an attractive myth, Rancie`re looks to those moments of impertinence when people without rights ‘‘nevertheless assert such rights in the junction be- tween the violence of a new beginning and the invocation of some- thing already said,’’ such as the myth of community or equality (Shores 91). ‘‘There are moments,’’ he continues, when community and equality appear as the possible constitution of a society, ‘‘mo- ments when equals declare themselves as such, though aware that they have no fundamental right to do so save the appeal to what has been inscribed earlier, which their action raises behind it as a banner. They thus experience the artificial aspect of their power— in the sense that ‘artifice’ may mean . . . something that is to be created’’ (Shores 91). ‘‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’’ offers a highway alive with people declaring their equality, raising a banner in the shape of a ghost; they constitute a social critique, create a collective power. Overall, the song yearns for Steinbeck’s hero from The Grapes of Wrath, for a communal call to justice, for all that politics will allow. The Tracks collections of previously unreleased songs were the only albums to appear between 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad and Live in New York City, recorded at the end of Springsteen’s 2000 reunion tour with the E Street Band. After twenty years of furious creativity, steady touring, and fifteen records, Springsteen slowed down, stayed home with the children for a while. But this is also the point at which he solidified his politics. Darin Barney writes that ‘‘politics— responding to the exposure of power, joining questions about justice and the good to judgment and action—is exceptional, disruptive, antagonistic, risky and dangerous . . . politics arises to refuse or con- test the social, conventional and material inequalities that are in- stitutionalized over and against the incontestable equality that is otherwise basic to our humanity. It is for this reason that politics is always threatening’’ (383). By 1995, Springsteen seemed comfort- able with where he stood. He had the confidence and maturity to bring forth his politics regularly, his ‘‘public-service announce- ment’’ at every show, to use the platform his craft had given him and speak his part (‘‘We’ve Been Misled’’ 74). ‘‘Politics is not the realization of our innermost essence, and it is not necessarily joy- ful,’’ Barney contends, and I think Springsteen would agree: ‘‘it is work, onerous, dangerous work, work we would rather not have to do, but that we must do because we are moved by a wrong that 133
is intolerable’’ (383). Rancie`re argues that ‘‘politics is not a function d’e canadienne Revue of the fact that it is useful to assemble, nor of the fact that assem- blies are held for the sake of the good management of common business. It is a function of the fact that a wrong exists, an injustice that needs to be addressed’’ (Shores 97). Springsteen’s shows are notorious for the amount of singing done by the audience, and I
suspect he encourages this participation for a number of reasons, ´ particularly to foster a communal experience. Even as he more fre- ame tudes quently allowed himself to be moved by things he found intolerable, Springsteen more readily turned those who assembled to see him ´ into a community focused on a common cause or problem.2 (2013) 43 ricaines
Live in New York City (2001) is a seminal album, notable for more than the reuniting of the band. A joyous romp of the work Springs- teen recorded solo and with his band, it is also the venue where he debuted two important songs: one of which he has never recorded in a studio and the other which now appears on the new studio album. This song, ‘‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’’ offers the most hopeful of choruses. However, this train, the Boss sings, carries a motley crew of more ordinary folk, not just those bathed in sun- light; he lists saints and sinners, losers and winners, whores and gamblers, lost souls, the broken-hearted, thieves, and departed souls. The ideology is egalitarian and the mood is positive as the chorus declares that this train, open to absolutely everyone, will arrive in the ‘‘Land of Hope and Dreams.’’
The song following ‘‘Land of Hope and Dreams’’ palpably darkens the mood in Madison Square Garden. ‘‘American Skin (41 Shots)’’ was Springsteen’s response to the death of African American immi- grant Amadou Diallo. ‘‘Through my work, I’ve always tried to ask hard questions,’’ Springsteen writes, and this song questions the ‘‘veil of race’’ that continues to beguile us (‘‘Chords for Change’’). On the morning of 4 February 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. Four passing New York City Police plain-clothes officers thought Diallo matched the description of a serial rapist. Later, the officers claimed that they loudly identi- fied themselves as NYPD and that Diallo ran up the outside steps toward his apartment house doorway at their approach, ignoring their orders to stop and show his hands. The porch light bulb was out and Diallo was backlit by the inside vestibule light, showing
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) only a silhouette. When Diallo reached into his jacket and withdrew his wallet, one officer yelled ‘‘Gun!’’ and they opened fire, firing 134 forty-one shots and hitting Diallo nineteen times. While Springsteen was on tour, the results of the internal NYPD investigation were released, a ruling concluding that the officers had acted within policy. He wrote and rehearsed the song with the E Street Band and per- formed it at the Madison Square Garden show. The centerpiece of the Live in New York City DVD, ‘‘American Skin (41 Shots)’’ stands as one of the most dramatic moments of his career. With the stage darkened to a deep blue and the band in blue-black shadow, the music provides a low backdrop to each musician, in their turn, singing ‘‘41 shots,’’ starting with saxophone player Clarence Clemons and ending with the ensemble. After they sing the line four times, Springsteen holds up his hand and asks for quiet, likely the only time that has happened at one of his shows. It was and remains a moment of politics, a moment when the weight of the subject must be emphasized, when an injustice must be spoken and heard by an assembly. The song’s speaker offers a vignette: a mother prepares her son for school and the streets by reminding him about appro- priate behaviour when dealing with peace officers. Remembering the rules, and the importance of politeness are necessary, but even more so, this child must remember to ensure his hands are visible. If they are not, the question becomes, ‘‘Is it a gun, is it a knife / Is it a wallet, this is your life.’’ If your skin is black, the song makes clear, ‘‘It ain’t no secret / You can get killed just for living / In your American skin.’’ Springsteen may have changed the names and the narrative somewhat, but with the mantric repetition of ‘‘41 shots’’ he and the band make explicit the incident that motivated this song. And Springsteen had to have known that this expression of his politics would create controversy, particularly in New York City, where the police unions historically have held a good deal of power. And it did. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association called for a boycott of his shows and the destruction of his albums. Officers accused Springsteen of opening old wounds, and the president of the New York State Fraternal Order of Police called Springsteen a ‘‘fucking dirtbag’’ (Leavey). So, when Springsteen sang, ‘‘You can get killed just for living / In your American skin,’’ I expect he knew that his politics would be called into question. As Darin Barney notes, ‘‘the possibility of politics demands a particular type of courage’’ (386). Springsteen showed that kind of courage with ‘‘American Skin.’’3
And then came 11 September 2001. Springsteen immediately became involved with benefits for the victims of the terror attacks and their families, but the lasting fruit of his political engagement came in the album The Rising. Tyrangiel says that ‘‘what’s missing on The Rising 135
is politics.’’ I disagree. Several songs bring up and dismiss the d’e canadienne Revue thought of vengeance or discuss the costs inherent in taking revenge. ‘‘Lonesome Day,’’ the album’s first song, begins with reference to a missing loved one and the assertion that things will be all right. The second stanza, however, opens with dark images culminating in a house on fire and a viper in the grass; the idea of vengeance is
introduced and then quickly dismissed to be replaced with some- ´ thing far more life affirming, prayer. The final stanza warns about ame tudes the costs inherent in taking revenge, including a lingering bitterness. Other songs offer as an alternative a non-selective compassion, such ´ as ‘‘Worlds Apart,’’ a song that features Sufi Muslim musicians and (2013) 43 ricaines a narrative of loss and mourning experienced by an American and a Muslim. In short, in terms of his politics, Springsteen uses The Rising to explore and reject the suggestion that the violence of the 9/11 attacks be met with violence, that any response other than compassion is inappropriate (Harde 251–3).
Springsteen was not alone in fearing that the United States would match violence with violence. Critical and creative responses to 9/11, from Toni Morrison’s ‘‘The Dead of September 11’’ to Judith Greenberg’s ‘‘Wounded New York,’’ worry that America will respond to trauma and loss with vengeance. Greenberg muses, ‘‘It is not clear that we will remain a city, a nation, or a world of respectful mourners working through the trauma. We risk repeating behaviors, identifying with the aggressors’’ (31). The worries and fears were realized with the resulting series of conflicts in the Middle East, conflicts that caused Springsteen to align himself with the Democrats in an overt fashion for the first time. In a study that traces fan response to Springsteen’s increasing politicization, Susan Hamburger notes that he ‘‘placed himself in the observer/commentator position after Ronald Reagan’s election and re-election rather than as a pro-active campaigner for the opposition,’’ but all that changed when the United States, under the leadership of George W. Bush, invaded Iraq in 2003 (183). During the Bush years, Eric Alterman argues, Springsteen ‘‘functioned symbolically at home and abroad as presi- dent of an alternative America: one in which working men and women were imbued with dignity, even heroism, where gays were embraced as brothers and sisters, where blacks and whites worked and played together’’ (407). Even as he connected his destiny to the American Dream, as Alterman notes, he began to function in ‘‘the
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) realm of actual politics’’ (415).
136 During the 2004 presidential election, Springsteen began to publicly support John Kerry, as he noted in ‘‘Chords for Change’’: ‘‘These questions are at the heart of this election: who we are, what we stand for, why we fight. Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been a partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.’’ His politics here are a joining of judgment and action in political commitment, an act of resistance. When Wenner asked him why he had avoided partisan politics for so long, Springsteen, responded,
I wanted to remain an independent voice for the audience that came to my shows. We’ve tried to build up a lot of credibility over the years, so that if we took a stand on something, people would receive it with an open mind. . . . I always like being involved actively more at a grass-roots level, to act as a partisan for a set of ideals: civil rights, economic justice, a sane foreign policy, democracy. . . . So if I wrote, say, ‘‘American Skin,’’ which was controversial, it couldn’t easily be dismissed, because people had faith that I was a measured voice. That’s been worth something, and it’s something I don’t want to lose. (73) Springsteen acknowledges that by getting involved with the 2004 election, he was altering his relationship with his audience: ‘‘You’re asking for a broader, more complicated relationship with the mem- bers of your audience than possibly you’ve had in the past. . . . As an artist and a citizen, you’re gaining a chance to take part in moving the country in the direction of its deepest ideals. Artists are always speaking to people’s freedoms. The shout for freedom and its implications was implicit in rock & roll from its inception’’ (74). However, even if he knew that getting involved in the election might change fan perception of him, Springsteen’s politics com- pelled him to take his part. And fan perception was altered; at one Vote for Change rally, Jimmy Guterman, author of Runaway American Dream, heard one fan say, ‘‘I don’t give a shit about all that, I just wanna hear Rosalita’’ (6). Springsteen responded to Wenner’s ques- tions about his audience’s perception by comparing the fans who ‘‘do quite a bit of selective listening’’ to the fans who now have ‘‘an increased definition about the things I’ve written about and where I stand on certain issues. That’s been a good thing’’ (73).
As the ‘‘war on terror’’ continued and spread, Springsteen continued to examine where he stood, to delineate his politics. ‘‘I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness 137
of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in d’e canadienne Revue our leaders,’’ he wrote in ‘‘Chords for Change,’’ but ‘‘we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited.’’ ‘‘Depoliticizing conflicts in order to settle them, or stripping otherness of any yardstick the better to solve its problems,’’
Rancie`re argues, is a madness that we identify with democracy or ´ ‘‘harmonized state initiatives’’ (105–6). In song, essay, and speech, ame tudes Springsteen has made clear that the conflicts in the east were driven by economics. He does what Rancie`re contends we must: ‘‘repoliti- ´ cize conflicts so that they can be addressed, restore names to the (2013) 43 ricaines people and give politics back its former visibility in the handling of problems and resources’’ (Shores 106).
Springsteen’s first album after The Rising was Devils and Dust (2005), a collection that ruminates on an illegal immigrant, a prize fighter, a prostitute, a ghetto child, and the war in Iraq, a war in which both sides kill in God’s name: What if what you do to survive Kills the things you love Fear’s a powerful thing It can turn your heart black you can trust.
‘‘Devils and Dust’’ goes some distance in repoliticizing the war in Iraq, making it visible, and restoring names to the people involved. With Bush in power, leading his Christian war on terrorism, Springs- teen’s critique seems clearly aimed at the American side of the God- driven conflict as the speaker and Bobbie lose their souls, if not their lives, in the desert. ‘‘It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities—respect for others, honesty about our- selves, faith in our ideals—that we come to life in God’s eyes,’’ Springsteen writes. ‘‘It is how our soul, as a nation and as indi- viduals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values’’ (‘‘Chords’’). In ‘‘Devils and Dust,’’ Springs- teen gives priority to soldiers’ humanity and to their souls. The distance from the politics that caused them to fight to simply sur-
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) vive is both present in the God they see at their side, and absent in their removal, ‘‘a long, long way from home.’’ 138 Springsteen wrote the next step of a soldier’s journey in ‘‘Gypsy Biker,’’ from his next studio album, Magic (2007). It is a supremely bitter narrative of mourning a casualty from Iraq that pinpoints capitalism and the global thirst for oil as the impetus for the war. The speaker comments on the circumstances surrounding the war, the division of the town into sides and parades that claim victory as they march beside graves, and the immolation of the soldier’s bike as the only fitting commemoration. Parades and shouts of victory work to depoliticize the conflict, but Springsteen’s frequent mentions of the profits commensurate with war and the disposability of the soldiers who fight that war bring politics to the forefront. The speaker’s love for this soldier stands strong, restores the Gypsy biker to personhood, and negates his commodification by the American government as the biker comes home.
The idea of home has figured prominently in Springsteen’s work, home as the house in New Jersey, home in America. Home figured as well when he campaigned for Barack Obama at the ‘‘Vote for Change’’ rallies in 2008: ‘‘I continue to find everywhere I go that America remains a repository for people’s hopes and desires. That despite the terrible erosion of our standing around the world, for many we remain a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down.’’
‘‘Politics exposes power and joins questions about what is just and good to political judgment and action,’’ Barney argues. ‘‘For the most part, we live under conditions in which exposure of the sources and character of power and inequality fail to move us, in which fundamental questions about justice and the good go un- asked by most people’’ (382–3). Throughout his career, Springsteen moved steadily toward the risk of political action, to defining himself as a citizen and an artist by his politics. ‘‘I knew after we invaded Iraq that I was going to be involved in the election. It made me angry,’’ he says. ‘‘I felt we had been misled. I felt [the government] had been fundamentally dishonest and had frightened and manipulated the American people into war. . . . Sitting on the sidelines would be a betrayal of the ideas I’d written about for a long time’’ (‘‘We’ve Been Misled’’ 74). During the 2008 Working on a Dream tour, he summarized his politics for his audience as a series of goals: ‘‘Economic and social justice, America as a positive influ- ence around the world. Truth, transparency and integrity in govern- 139
ment. The right of every American to a job, a living wage, to be d’e canadienne Revue educated in a decent school, to a life filled with the dignity of work, promise, and the sanctity of home. These are the things that make a life, that build and define a society’’ (‘‘Vote).
It seems clear Springsteen will continue to examine and critique
American society in his songcraft, and to yearn for these goals, to ´ explicate his politics. He will continue, as the best of poets, to use ame tudes the power of the word, of logos, to make manifest the just and the unjust, as shown in his recent letter to the Asbury Park Press,in ´ which he criticized New Jersey Governor Christie’s tax cuts and (2013) 43 ricaines ‘‘cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions.’’ Whether or not he will again involve himself in partisan politics remains to be seen. Emerson eventually concluded that ‘‘all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable’’ (249). In the face of escalating conflicts in the Middle East and a president who has fulfilled very few of his promises, Springsteen may now agree with Emerson that ‘‘the less government we have, the better . . . there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of recti- tude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design, have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State’’ (252). It remains to be seen whether Springsteen will be a partial reformer or not.
I will conclude this discussion with a summation of politics provided by Springsteen, in this case, of Pete Seeger’s politics. In March 2009, he participated in Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden. He introduced Seeger in a way that aligned Seeger’s politics with his:4
I asked him how he wanted to approach ‘‘This Land Is Your Land.’’ It would be near the end of the show and all he said was, ‘‘I want to sing all the ones that Woody wrote, especially the two that get left out, about private property and the relief office.’’ I thought, of course, that’s what Pete’s done his whole life. He sings all the verses all the time, especially the ones that we’d like to leave out of our history as a people. At some point Pete Seeger decided he’d be a walking, singing reminder of all of America’s history. He’d be a living archive of America’s music and con-
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) science, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane 140 and justified ends.
Springsteen then paid tribute to Seeger with a song tied to Woody and to Pete, a song that quotes Steinbeck, but speaks to Springs- teen’s politics and the possibilities it holds for America. ‘‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’’ ends with the speech Tom whispers to his Mom near the end of The Grapes of Wrath, a speech that seems part of the con- versation Springsteen has been having with himself since his first album, a promise to be there where there is injustice, where people are suffering, ‘‘Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air.’’ From creating the rebel who refused to sit down in ‘‘Grown’ Up,’’ to calling for quiet in Madison Square Garden so everyone would understand ‘‘American Skin (41 Shots),’’ to calling his country to compassion and away from vengeance on The Rising, to crying for justice for his ‘‘Gypsy Biker,’’ the Boss has been a voice of an American politics of equality and justice. For America, for almost 40 years now, Bruce Springsteen and his politics have been there.
Addendum While I prepared this article to go to press, Springsteen, as The Guardian‘s Dorian Lynskey puts it, ‘‘decided to saddle up once more in support of President Barak Obama’s re-election bid. . . . [He] is well-equipped to inject some emotional heat into a some- what chilly and apologetic Obama campaign.’’ This turn of events seems hardly surprising in light of Springsteen’s new album. Wreck- ing Ball (2012) largely divides its songs into those that describe the conjoined hopefulness and grim reality of today’s working-class American—‘‘We Take Care of Our Own,’’ ‘‘Shackled and Drawn,’’ ‘‘Jack of All Trades,’’ ‘‘We Are Alive,’’ ‘‘Swallowed Up (In the Belly of the Whale),’’ ‘‘American Land’’—against a deeply thoughtful anger—‘‘Death To My Hometown,’’ ‘‘This Depression.’’ ‘‘The brutal calculus of elections allows for only winners and losers. It takes courage to risk being numbered among the latter,’’ notes Lynskey. And, he points out that many celebrities stepped up rather late in this election, noting that, ‘‘Perhaps the horrific prospect of a Romney-Ryan White House has only just sunk in.’’ For his part, Springsteen used his considerable means to support Obama’s cam- paign for re-election. ‘‘For me,’’ he concludes in a recent note on his website, ‘‘President Obama is our best choice because he has a vision of the United States as a place where we are all in this together. We’re still living through very hard times but justice, equality and real freedom are not always a tide rushing in. They are more often a slow march, inch by inch, day after long day. I 141
believe President Obama feels these days in his bones and has the d’e canadienne Revue strength to live them with us.’’ America agreed.
Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works: ´ ue ame tudes ‘‘Jungleland’’ by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright 6 1975 Bruce Springsteen, renewed 6 2003 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). ´
Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All (2013) 43 ricaines rights reserved. ‘‘The River’’ by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright 6 1980 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. ‘‘Ghost of Tom Joad’’ by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright 6 1995 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. Interna- tional copyright secured. All rights reserved. ‘‘American Skin (41 Shots)’’ by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright 6 2001 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. Interna- tional copyright secured. All rights reserved. ‘‘Devils & Dust’’ by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright 6 2005 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
Roxanne Harde is Associate Professor of English, Associate Dean— Research, and a McCalla University Professor at the University of Alberta, Augustana Faculty. She studies and teaches American literature and culture. She has published Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen, and has Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture forthcoming. Her essays have appeared in several journals, including The Lion and the Unicorn, Christianity and Literature, Legacy, Critique, and Mosaic, and several edited collections, including Enterprising Youth and The Jewish Graphic Novel.
Notes 1 I quote Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics from liner notes from the compact
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) discs and cross-reference them with his official web site, brucespring- steen.net. However, I quote from only five songs and no more than 142 five lines from each song as per Springsteen’s new permissions policy. I have been informed of this policy by one of Springsteen’s lawyers, Barrister Mona Okada, who has been most amiable to work with, but has also, according to her client’s instructions, made clear that scholarly inquiry into Springsteen’s work is akin to journalistic work, or lesser and more exploitive use of the Boss’s work. Further, because it is ‘‘not being licensed,’’ I cannot quote at all from his new album, Wrecking Ball. Should I choose to continue to study Bruce Springsteen’s con- tributions to American culture, I will need to follow Eric Alterman in relying on mainly song titles and interviews rather than my actual primary texts, Springsteen’s lyrics. 2 Springsteen shows his awareness of his ability as performer and writer to draw his audience into a community in his explication of ‘‘The Rising’’ on VH1’s Storytellers, when he describes the several repetitions of the line ‘‘Li, li, li, li, li, li, li, li, li,’’ as part of the ‘‘unspoken subtext of rock and roll,’’ in that ‘‘they say sing with me; they also say stand alongside me.’’ 3 Interestingly, the African American rock band Living Color, most famous for their song ‘‘Cult of Personality,’’ performed the song at Montreux in 2001, and prefaced their version of it by saying ‘‘we don’t wanna bring our politics to you so we’ll let you just deal with this for yourselves’’ (YouTube). 4 He also noted that Seeger’s ‘‘gonna look an awful lot like your grand- dad who wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He’s gonna look like your granddad if your granddad could kick your ass.’’
Works Cited Alterman, Eric, and Kevin Mattson. The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. New York: Viking, 2012. Barney, Darin. ‘‘Miserable Priests and Ordinary Cowards: On Being a Professor.’’ Topia 23–24 (2010): 381–7. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. ‘‘‘Politics.’ 1844.’’ Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. 241–52. Greenberg, Judith. ‘‘Wounded New York.’’ Trauma at Home: After 9/11. Ed. Judith Greenberg. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003. 21–35. Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2005. Hamburger, Susan. ‘‘‘When they said sit down, I stood up’: Springsteen’s Social Conscience, Activism, and Fan Response.’’ Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 9.1 (2005): 182–202. Harde, Roxanne. ‘‘‘May your hope give us hope’: The Rising as a Site of Mourning.’’ Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen. Ed. Roxanne Harde and Irwin Streight. Lanham, MD: Lexington 143
Books, 2010. 243–65. d’e canadienne Revue Isin, Engin F. Genealogies of Citizenship. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2002. Leavey, Pamela. ‘‘50 Shots.’’ The Democratic Daily 27 Nov. 2007. Web. 28 March 2011. Lynskey, Dorian. ‘‘Can Bruce Springsteen Do It Again for Obama?’’ The ´
Guardian 15 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2012. ame tudes Morrison, Toni. ‘‘The Dead of September 11.’’ Vanity Fair 495 (November 2001): 48–9. ´ Rancie`re, Jacques. The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing. Trans. Charlotte (2013) 43 ricaines Mandell. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2004. Print. ——. The Politics of Literature. Trans. Julie Rose. Cambridge: Polity, 2011. ——. On the Shores of Politics. Trans. Liz Heron. Radical Thinkers Series. London: Verso, 2007. Springsteen, Bruce. Born in the U.S.A. Columbia Records, 1984. CD. ——. Born to Run. Columbia Records, 1975. CD. ——. Bruce Springsteen: VH1 Storytellers. Sony, 2005. DVD. ——. ‘‘Bruce’s Introduction at Peter Seeger’s 90th Birthday Concert.’’ Bruce Springsteen.Net. Web. 28 March 2011. ——. ‘‘Chords for Change.’’ New York Times 5 Aug. 2004.
Canadian Review of American Studies 43 (2013) ——. The River. Columbia Records, 1980. CD. 144 ——. Tunnel of Love. Columbia Records, 1987. CD. ——. ‘‘Vote for Change.’’ 2 November 2008. Bruce Springsteen.Net. Web. 28 March 2011. ——. ‘‘We’ve Been Misled: Springsteen Talks about His Conscience, and the Nature of an Artist and His Audience.’’ Interview with Jann S. Wenner. Rolling Stone 959 (14 Oct. 2004): 73–6. ——. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Columbia Records, 1973. CD. ——. Working on a Dream. Columbia Records, 2009. CD. ——. Wrecking Ball. Columbia Records, 2012. CD. Tyrangiel, Josh. ‘‘Bruce Rising: An Intimate Look at How Springsteen Turned 9/11 into a Message of Hope.’’ Time 160.6 (5 August 2002): 52–9. Copyright of Canadian Review of American Studies is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Copyright of Canadian Review of American Studies is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.