Stranger Than Paradise
19th April 2010, 20:27
Revolutionary look at the fantastic Springsteen album.
The narrative ballads woefully describe the desperate actions of disenfranchised blue-collar workers. One acoustic guitar and one screaming harmonica create the music. The sound is a masterful combination that blends harmony and dissonance. The result is the album, Nebraska (1982), created by Bruce Springsteen. The brilliance, at least according to music critic Bryan Gorman, is that Springsteen reclaims popular music as a cultural space in which class relations are both taken seriously and historicized.[1] This view echoes Marxist principles, which advocate moving from a society divided by class to a classless society; it can be read through a Marxist lens, which claims, the text cannot exist in isolation from the cultural situation in which the text evolved (Bressler 172).[2] For this reason, a brief history is warranted.
Nebraska is not one of Springsteens most popular albums. Not one song on the album was ever a top single, perhaps because it has less than inspiring lyrics and less than glamorous production notes. The entire album is rumored to have been recorded in either Springsteens own home, or in a roadside motel on a four-track without the assistance of production hands. In the year it was released and in the immediate preceding years, Americas president was Ronald Reagan, known for his trickledown economic principles and high unemployment rates. The economic culture of the time was an influence for Springsteen, himself, a product of a working class family. Gorman cites Springsteen as saying [Nebraska] was aboutAmerican isolation: what happens to people when theyre alienated from their friends and their community and their government, and their job (77).
Springsteens quote assumes that the opposite of alienated is acceptance and that acceptance is largely reliant on social dictates in which being a wealthy white-collar man is preferable to being a poor, blue-collar worker. What develop are binary oppositions that result in overwhelming feelings of depression. In turn, this leads to isolation to escape the depressive feelings. Springsteen conveys this message through the genre, the music, and the lyrics. These three elements work together to make the album a captivating and powerful work of art. The album is set up as a series of ten vignettes on top of a folksy, country, rock style of music. It adopts a consistent story-telling style, where speaking in working-class language, [Springsteens] characters narrate histories that link class experiences across generations, representing these experiences not in terms of success or failure, but as products of complex social and political forces (Gorman 71).
It is safe to assume the characters in Nebraska are of a working class ideology judging by their situations and lot in life. Three of the fictional portrayals are of frustrated blue-collar workers turned violent murderers. In an independent review of the album, critics at Cracked correctly state, The characters are convincing and the scenes depicted are believable, which puts them somewhere between tales of the trials of modern workingman and mere scenery that might remind [us] of photographic art of the industrial depression times.[3] Take for example the lyrics of Atlantic City.
Now, Ive been lookin for a job, but its hard to find
Down here its just winners and losers and dont
get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well Im tired of comin down on the losin end
So, honey, honey last night I met this guy and Im gonna
do a little favor for him
The dialect combined with the message of the lyrics and Springsteens hollow voice send a powerful message that there are two types of people in the world and this person is on the loser side of the fence. The structuralist interpretation of the message is dependent on the assumption that in a binary relationship, winners are on the right side of the line. The Marxist interpretation is concerned with idea that this person is on the wrong side of that line, and that oppression by the superstructures of the society have put him there. In this song, the superstructures are those supporting capitalism. Other lines of Atlantic City evidence this:
Well, I got a job and tried to put my money away
But I got debts that no honest man can pay.
The song, State Trooper is another example of how Springsteen portrays the worker as the base of the superstructure and as driven by a force that is out of his control. A man, driving along a highway, sees a trooper following him. The music is simple and driven, building a tense and almost spooky feel as Springsteens guitar strums echo the sound of the mans troubled heart. The man narrates:
New Jersey Turnpike, ridin on a wet night neath the refinrys glow,
Out where the great black rivers flow.
License, registration: I aint got none
But I got a clear conscious bout the things that I done.
Mister state trooper, please dont stop me.
Please dont stop me, please dont stop me.
Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife.
The only thing that I gots been bothering me my whole life.
Mister state trooper, please dont stop me.
Please dont stop me. Please dont stop me.
Springsteens character refers to the authority figure as Mister, while speaking in a factory workers vocal style. The character is clearly socially inferior to the state trooper and somewhat insane, which in a binary opposition, is inferior to sanity. Gorman interprets the entire album in a similar way. In his article, The Ghost of History, he writes, Springsteen narrates tales of desperation and defiance, clearly articulating class-conscious lyrics over sharp harmonica blasts and bare acoustic guitars (77). The song ends with Springsteen belting out an eerie, piercing scream, capturing the frustration and raw emotion of the moment.
What superstructures of society cause this desperation and defiance? An evaluation of the album suggests several answers. For Springsteen, it is at least the privileged class and their symbolic, gated residence in the song, Mansion on the Hill. Other examples include, The bank holdin my mortgage, in Johnny 99, and the false consciousness created by the dominant social class. In Johnny 99, an unemployed autoworker kills a night clerk, has debts no honest man can pay, and tells the judge he is better off dead. Springsteen is the voice for the industrial towns, the factory workers, and their economic plights, which, according to Gorman, have become so marginalized that it is impossible to forge a collective working-class identity which provides people a sense of self-worth (85). The lack of identity leads his characters to commit desperate acts. Take the lyrics to Nebraska for example:
I saw her standin on her front lawn just twirlin her baton.
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died
They declared me unfit to live-said into that great void my sould be hurled.
They wanted to know why I did what I did.
Well sir, I guess theres just a meanness in this world.
Without a clear class identity, people develop false consciousness. Bressler states, this ideology leads to fragmentation and alienation of individuals (164), such as the character in Nebraska, who feels theres just a meanness in this world.
The structuralist reading of ideology and working class-consciousness in the album, Nebraska, assumes that class-consciousness is favored over isolation. The bourgeoisie have the power to construct a social identity and prevent those outside their class from doing so. Bressler writes, Eventually, this upper class will articulate their beliefs, their values and even their art.they will then force their ideason the working class (164). It follows that everything associated with the bourgeoisie is on the positive side of a binary relationship. But what does this mean for reading the Nebraska album as a whole? For a Marxist who subscribes to the belief that the economic base group determines literature, Nebraska is right on. Indeed, it is an articulation of the stories associated with the people running America from the bottom up, rather than the top, down.
http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/TR%20Springsteen2.htm
The narrative ballads woefully describe the desperate actions of disenfranchised blue-collar workers. One acoustic guitar and one screaming harmonica create the music. The sound is a masterful combination that blends harmony and dissonance. The result is the album, Nebraska (1982), created by Bruce Springsteen. The brilliance, at least according to music critic Bryan Gorman, is that Springsteen reclaims popular music as a cultural space in which class relations are both taken seriously and historicized.[1] This view echoes Marxist principles, which advocate moving from a society divided by class to a classless society; it can be read through a Marxist lens, which claims, the text cannot exist in isolation from the cultural situation in which the text evolved (Bressler 172).[2] For this reason, a brief history is warranted.
Nebraska is not one of Springsteens most popular albums. Not one song on the album was ever a top single, perhaps because it has less than inspiring lyrics and less than glamorous production notes. The entire album is rumored to have been recorded in either Springsteens own home, or in a roadside motel on a four-track without the assistance of production hands. In the year it was released and in the immediate preceding years, Americas president was Ronald Reagan, known for his trickledown economic principles and high unemployment rates. The economic culture of the time was an influence for Springsteen, himself, a product of a working class family. Gorman cites Springsteen as saying [Nebraska] was aboutAmerican isolation: what happens to people when theyre alienated from their friends and their community and their government, and their job (77).
Springsteens quote assumes that the opposite of alienated is acceptance and that acceptance is largely reliant on social dictates in which being a wealthy white-collar man is preferable to being a poor, blue-collar worker. What develop are binary oppositions that result in overwhelming feelings of depression. In turn, this leads to isolation to escape the depressive feelings. Springsteen conveys this message through the genre, the music, and the lyrics. These three elements work together to make the album a captivating and powerful work of art. The album is set up as a series of ten vignettes on top of a folksy, country, rock style of music. It adopts a consistent story-telling style, where speaking in working-class language, [Springsteens] characters narrate histories that link class experiences across generations, representing these experiences not in terms of success or failure, but as products of complex social and political forces (Gorman 71).
It is safe to assume the characters in Nebraska are of a working class ideology judging by their situations and lot in life. Three of the fictional portrayals are of frustrated blue-collar workers turned violent murderers. In an independent review of the album, critics at Cracked correctly state, The characters are convincing and the scenes depicted are believable, which puts them somewhere between tales of the trials of modern workingman and mere scenery that might remind [us] of photographic art of the industrial depression times.[3] Take for example the lyrics of Atlantic City.
Now, Ive been lookin for a job, but its hard to find
Down here its just winners and losers and dont
get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well Im tired of comin down on the losin end
So, honey, honey last night I met this guy and Im gonna
do a little favor for him
The dialect combined with the message of the lyrics and Springsteens hollow voice send a powerful message that there are two types of people in the world and this person is on the loser side of the fence. The structuralist interpretation of the message is dependent on the assumption that in a binary relationship, winners are on the right side of the line. The Marxist interpretation is concerned with idea that this person is on the wrong side of that line, and that oppression by the superstructures of the society have put him there. In this song, the superstructures are those supporting capitalism. Other lines of Atlantic City evidence this:
Well, I got a job and tried to put my money away
But I got debts that no honest man can pay.
The song, State Trooper is another example of how Springsteen portrays the worker as the base of the superstructure and as driven by a force that is out of his control. A man, driving along a highway, sees a trooper following him. The music is simple and driven, building a tense and almost spooky feel as Springsteens guitar strums echo the sound of the mans troubled heart. The man narrates:
New Jersey Turnpike, ridin on a wet night neath the refinrys glow,
Out where the great black rivers flow.
License, registration: I aint got none
But I got a clear conscious bout the things that I done.
Mister state trooper, please dont stop me.
Please dont stop me, please dont stop me.
Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife.
The only thing that I gots been bothering me my whole life.
Mister state trooper, please dont stop me.
Please dont stop me. Please dont stop me.
Springsteens character refers to the authority figure as Mister, while speaking in a factory workers vocal style. The character is clearly socially inferior to the state trooper and somewhat insane, which in a binary opposition, is inferior to sanity. Gorman interprets the entire album in a similar way. In his article, The Ghost of History, he writes, Springsteen narrates tales of desperation and defiance, clearly articulating class-conscious lyrics over sharp harmonica blasts and bare acoustic guitars (77). The song ends with Springsteen belting out an eerie, piercing scream, capturing the frustration and raw emotion of the moment.
What superstructures of society cause this desperation and defiance? An evaluation of the album suggests several answers. For Springsteen, it is at least the privileged class and their symbolic, gated residence in the song, Mansion on the Hill. Other examples include, The bank holdin my mortgage, in Johnny 99, and the false consciousness created by the dominant social class. In Johnny 99, an unemployed autoworker kills a night clerk, has debts no honest man can pay, and tells the judge he is better off dead. Springsteen is the voice for the industrial towns, the factory workers, and their economic plights, which, according to Gorman, have become so marginalized that it is impossible to forge a collective working-class identity which provides people a sense of self-worth (85). The lack of identity leads his characters to commit desperate acts. Take the lyrics to Nebraska for example:
I saw her standin on her front lawn just twirlin her baton.
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died
They declared me unfit to live-said into that great void my sould be hurled.
They wanted to know why I did what I did.
Well sir, I guess theres just a meanness in this world.
Without a clear class identity, people develop false consciousness. Bressler states, this ideology leads to fragmentation and alienation of individuals (164), such as the character in Nebraska, who feels theres just a meanness in this world.
The structuralist reading of ideology and working class-consciousness in the album, Nebraska, assumes that class-consciousness is favored over isolation. The bourgeoisie have the power to construct a social identity and prevent those outside their class from doing so. Bressler writes, Eventually, this upper class will articulate their beliefs, their values and even their art.they will then force their ideason the working class (164). It follows that everything associated with the bourgeoisie is on the positive side of a binary relationship. But what does this mean for reading the Nebraska album as a whole? For a Marxist who subscribes to the belief that the economic base group determines literature, Nebraska is right on. Indeed, it is an articulation of the stories associated with the people running America from the bottom up, rather than the top, down.
http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/TR%20Springsteen2.htm