>> ALEX: Hey guys, I’m here, let’s get technical.
John Green, vlogbrother and author of many bestselling books, has often says that books’
meanings belong to their readers.
>> JOHN GREEN: The reading experience would be equally rich with or without authorial
intent.
But sometimes, readers, or, in today’s case, listeners, completely miss the point entirely.
And there is no better example of that then Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.
>> BRUCE: (singing) Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground You end up like a dog that's been beat to
much Till you spend half your life just covering
up
Born in the U.S.A. is one of musician Bruce Springsteen’s most successful songs.
It called the Billboard Hot 100 home for 17 weeks, ranked number 9 at it’s best, and
the song is on the Rolling Stone’s esteemed “500 Greatest Songs of all Time.”
The eponymous album it’s on has sold over 30 million copies to date.
And, not to mention, it was one of the many songs my dad and I danced to when I was a
wee little toddler, along with “Waiting on a Sunny Day”, “Into the Fire,” and,
probably the most common for us, “Pony Boy.”
But Born in the U.S.A. is Bruce’s most misused and misinterpreted song, and, arguably, one
of the most misinterpreted songs of all time.
Today, we’ll examine this misinterpretation by looking at Born in the U.S.A. and its impacts
on politics, popular culture, and the world.
>> BRUCE: (singing) Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., Born in the USA in the U.S.A.
>> ALEX: The year is 1981, and writer director Paul Schrader approaches Bruce to write a song
for his upcoming movie, Light of Day.
Flipping through his notebook, Bruce found some lyrics about the Vietnam war.
These lyrics were inspired by Ron Kovic, someone Bruce met and admired after reading Ron’s
book, Born on the 4th of July, a book about a Vietnam war vet.
He then combined those lyrics with the words “Born in the U.S.A,” something he found
on the cover of the Light of Day script, to get his first draft of the song.
But, soon, Bruce realized the song is too good to give away.
Sidenote here, Bruce thanks Paul Schrader in the album notes of Born in the USA.
Anywho, people think the song is all about the greatness of America and the nationalism
that comes along with that because of the song’s title lyric, Born in the USA, repeated
quietly loudly 14 times throughout the entire song.
This is no mistake, by the way, it’s meant to aesthetically and metaphorically drown
out everything else.
A closer look at the lyrics shows the song, however, reveal that isn’t actually about
hyper patriotism, but about a Vietnam war vet and blue-collar, working class America.
In the first verse, the song is set up, telling the protagonist’s experience in America.
In the second verse, the protagonist describes getting in “a little hometown jam,” something
that indicates the state of the draft during the Vietnam war.
See, the Vietnam draft is particularly notable there became more and more exemptions and
special rules, like if you were doing well in school you didn’t have to go to the military.
The special rule we care about, though, is military admittance because of violence.
People who got into fights or committed crimes were fast tracked to be admitted in the military.
Thus, when Born in the USA’s protagonist got into a fight, or hometown jam, he was
hastily sent off to fight on Vietnam.
Verses three to five describe the protagonist's experience coming back to America.
Vietnam vets were famously hated once they returned from the war.
Around the time of the war, hatred of the military began drastically increasing, with
the uprise of the hippie culture and various other liberal movements.
Thus, it made sense that people who disliked the war would dislike vets.
Keep in mind, the major war the United States was involved in before the Vietnam war was
World War II, and the people who fought in that war came back as heroes.
They were the ones who defeated the Nazis, after all.
But the Vietnam vets didn’t experience the same love.
And even despite all of this, people just didn’t pick up on the song.
Some of those people include journalists.
There are many examples of the media drastically misinterpreting Born in the USA, but today,
let’s look at George Will’s article, “Nothing Like Being Born in the U.S.A.”
On screen: (check out the description if you want to see some more of them which I had
to cut today for time)
George, author and conservative commentator, was invited to a Bruce Springsteen and the
E Street Band concert by Max Weinberg, longtime drummer for the E Street Band.
After the show, on Thursday, September 13th, 1984, George published his thoughts on Born
in the U.S.A. and Bruce, writing lines like “There is not a smidgen of androgyny in
Bruce Springsteen who, rockin around the stage in a T-shirt and headband, resembles Robert
De Niro in the combat scenes of The Deer Hunter,” “ I have not got a clue about Springsteen's
politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times.
He is no whiner, and the recitation of the closed factories and other problems always seemed
punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A,’” and the final line
of the article “There's still nothing quite like being born in the U.S.A.’”
George Will even left half way through the concert.
Max Weinberg, unsurprisingly, was embarrassed from the release of the article, which Peter
Ames Carlin writes about in his Bruce Springsteen biography: “He hadn't known that Will intended
to write about the concert, let alone transform Bruce into a character in Ayn Rand's libertarian
“Atlas Shrugged.”
And while Bruce never mentioned it to him one way or another, the drummer felt a distinct
chill backstage when he got to the next show.”
Just a week later, someone else misinterpreted Born in the USA, and it wasn’t a journalist
this time; it was one of the most famous politicians in American history.
To tell us more, here’s Matt from Conjecture.
Hi Matt!
>> MATT: Hi Alex!
>> ALEX: Matt and I both huge, huge Bruce fan, so he's here to tell us more!
Take it away!
>> MATT: Thanks Alex!
We’re also both really good at writing transitions...
*Both Matt and Alex awkwardly stare into the camera for a sec and it's really funny and amazing and yea*
>> MATT: …Anyway!
Born in the USA has been misinterpreted by people and critics alike, but probably the
most interesting and famous instance of misinterpretation was Ronald Reagan.
So that George Will article Alex talked about a second ago?
George Will was connected to Reagan and must have told him about it, because later on the
campaign trail in 1984, Reagan said this
>> RONAD REAGAN: America’s future rests in a thousand dreams
inside your hearts.
It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire.
New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.
>> MATT: As we’ve mentioned, that’s not what Born in the USA was about.
In fact during in an interview Bruce has even said that the song’s narrator longs to “strip
away ... Reagan’s image of America.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bruce has campaigned for Democratic party nominees Kerry, Obama,
and Hillary, though he does prefer to stay on the sidelines.
According to Bruce: “The artist is supposed to be the canary in the cage."
Later on in that same press conference, speaking about his politics, Bruce simply said that
“I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American
dream.”
And that is the real message, the heart behind Born in the USA and so many of his other songs.
Yes, Born in the USA does focus on the experiences of a returning Vietnam Vet, but it’s more.
It’s a saga, a protest song documenting the struggles of the American working class.
In Bruce’s words, the working class was experiencing a “spiritual crisis, in which
man is left lost.
It’s like he has nothing left to tie him into society anymore.
He’s isolated from the government.
Isolated from his job.
Isolated from his family.
… When you get to the point where nothing makes sense.”
We see this all throughout the lyrics of the song.
The protagonist is born into a town with no prospects, a town where growing up is tough
and grueling.
He is whisked away from his family to fight in a war he doesn’t want to.
He comes back home and can’t find any work, and can’t get help from his government which
is supposed to help veterans.
His brother then dies in the war.
At the end of it all, the only things he can see are the prison where he might wind up
and the refinery that won’t employ him.
After all this time, the working man has nowhere to run and nowhere to go.
The protagonist of Born in the USA is out of options as he looks at an America where
he simply doesn’t belong.
An this is what makes the song so powerful: the verses describe all this, and yet what do most of us think of when we hear this song?
Like countless reviewers and even Ronald Reagan, our instinctive reaction is pride.
Because that awesome, booming, nationalistic chorus drowns out the harsh realities experienced
by Vietnam Vets and working class Americans.
Of course it doesn’t matter if you’re totally isolated and nothing makes sense,
because you were Born in the USA.
>> ALEX: And that is the story of the most misinterpreted song of all time.
Thanks for watching, DFTBA, and explore on.
>> MALE SINGER: Why would Reagan be playing Born in the USA?
>> FEMALE SINGERS: It’s about Vietnam!
>>ALEX: Giveaway!
Time for a giveaway!
I'm going to give away this copy of Peter Ames Carlin's Bruce Springsteen biography,
signed by me.
It's super easy to enter, just like this video, subscribe to both Technicality, and leave
a comment down below.
I'll pick randomly, and I'll let you guys know the winner in the next episode.
I want to make that a regular segment, anyways, I want to give a huge thank you to Matt Mignogna,
which sounds like Filet Mignon-a, for working with me on the video, being over here on Technicality,
and being an overall awesome person.
We both love Bruce, a lot, obviously, so.
Matt guest starred on the epic rap battles video, and, now, along with him being here,
I’m over on his YouTube channel, Conjecture.
I was on a Things I Should Have Learned in School Video, it is amazing, so, check it
out, and subscribe to Conjecture while you’re at it!
Also, people who subscribe to Conjecture, like his video, and leave a comment get an
additional entry.
So, more incentive!
If you like what I do, or just having your mind be blown, Matt makes truly fascinating
videos.
So, sub to him, sub to me, Cool Byeeeee!