Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska from a variety of theoretical perspectives

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 Springsteen’s 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 Springsteen’s 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, America’s 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 about…American isolation: what happens to people when they’re alienated from their friends and their community and their government, and their job” (77).

Springsteen’s 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, [Springsteen’s] 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.”

The dialect combined with the message of the lyrics and Springsteen’s 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:

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 Springsteen’s guitar strums echo the sound of the man’s troubled heart. The man narrates:

“New Jersey Turnpike, ridin’ on a wet night ‘neath the refin’ry’s glow,

Springsteen’s character refers to the authority figure as “Mister,” while speaking in a factory worker’s 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:

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 “there’s 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 ideas…on 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.

The idea of “Nebraska” as a political album is a topic of controversy. The Marxist reading of the text identifies divergence between the superstructure and the base created by the bourgeoisie’s ideology over the proletariat’s. It is hard to imagine a more political reading, but some critics of the album argue that Springsteen is not playing politics. Shortly after “Nebraska’s” 1982 release, L.A. Weekly reporter, Robert Lloyd, stated, “…as a political tract, Nebraska is awfully ambiguous.”[4] He continues with, “If there is a message here, it is not, it seems to me, that we ought to get Reagan out of the White House and 11 million people into jobs (not that that’s a bad idea) but that the harder the world comes down, the greater is the need for faith.”

A deconstructionist reading of the text is not concerned with whether the text is interpreted as political because “deconstruction declares that a text has almost an infinite number of possible interpretations” (Bressler 95).[5] However Springsteen intended the text to be read or interpreted is irrelevant because, according to deconstructionist theory, “…even the author does not control a text’s interpretation” (Bressler 112). Meaning, deconstructionists argue, derives from the reader’s cultural and social context. According to Bressler, the deconstructionist approach to reading “frees the reader from ideological allegiances that restrict the comprehension of meaning in a text” (112). If subscribing to this view, then a different meaning altogether derives from “Nebraska” than that derived from the Marxist interpretation.

If looking through a deconstructionist lens, it is not hard to see how the album can be viewed as a narrative in which the working, isolated man is favored over the representation of the superstructure. Consider the narrative of “Highway Patrolman.” The story is about brothers Joe and Frank. Joe is a straight-shooting state sergeant and Frankie is a town troublemaker. One night Joe gets a call that Frank has brutally and possibly fatally, assaulted a man. The story continues with Joe letting Frank get away.

The binary opposition is one in which Joe, a representative of the state, is in a powerful position over his troubled brother, Frankie. In a reversal of the binary, Frankie escapes and thus is favored over Joe.

In reading the album holistically, one might see it as a response to the political and socioeconomic culture of the 1980s. If the bourgeoisie controls the ideology of the proletariat through maintaining a system of oppression that denies workers class-consciousness, then a deconstructionist can view the album “Nebraska” as a tool for supplying class-consciousness to the worker. A deconstructionist reading of “Nebraska” might be how L.A. Weekly reviewer Robert Lloyd was able to state that the tract is not necessarily political but one of perseverance in times of uncertainty and overwhelming odds.[6] The final song, “Reason to Believe” alludes to the hope that people hang on to in hard times. Consider the last line of every verse: “At the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.”

“Reason to Believe” is an enigma when compared with the rest of the CD. The most noticeable difference is the music. Instead of harsh dissonance created by a discordant harmonica, the song opens with the strumming of the guitar and the smooth voice of Springsteen, perhaps singing his own message. In this song, Springsteen performs in his own tone rather than performing in the voice and tone of the characters, Johnny 99, Frankie, or the Highway Patrolman. In this sense, the song becomes Springsteen’s first commentary on the state of society. In his independent music review, Georg Gartlgruber writes, “Bruce Springsteen gives us an answer only indirectly, because through the darkness of the songs on “Nebraska,” we can feel a glitter, a small glimmering of a better life somewhere up ahead...” (Cracked).[7] Regardless of whether there is reason to believe, Springsteen’s album gives people a reason to think.

If nothing else, in “Nebraska,” Springsteen took a dramatic step away from the synthesizer-heavy, pop/rock of the early 1980s. He followed the in the footsteps of those who had a large influence on him: Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Perhaps the album is a tribute to the two folk artists. Regardless of why the album was created, it stands out among other albums released in 1982, including Aerosmith’s “Rock in a Hard Place,” Lionel Ritchie’s “Lionel Ritchie,” and UB40’s “UB44.”

A Marxist might say that in creating the album, Springsteen was damning “The Man” and “The System.” The deconstructionist might say it does not matter why the album was created because there are various ways to interpret the album and it is all dependent on the experiences the listener brings with him or her. Still, the structuralist might contend that the literary work is yet simply part of a system of codes that give meaning to our social and cultural system. The answer is dependent on with which theory the album is approached. There is no clear answer other than to say the album remains for sale in music stores and is reviewed, celebrated and criticized in several forums, including books, scholarly journals, and the Internet, and all with different theoretical approaches.

[1] Gorman, Bryan. “The Ghost of History: Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie, and the Hurt Song,” Popular Music and Society 20(2)1996: 69-117.

[2] Bressler, Charles E. “Marxism,” from Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice 2003: 172.

[3] Gartlgruber, George. “Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska.” Cracked. http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/start01.htm. Last accessed March 8, 2004.

[4] Lloyd, Robert. “Hard Times in the Heartland: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.” L.A. Weekly. October 15, 1982.

[5] Bressler, Charles E. “Deconstruction,” from Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice 2003: 95.

[6] Lloyd, Robert. “Hard Times in the Heartland: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.” L.A. Weekly. October 15, 1982.

[7] Gartlgruber, George. “Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska.” Cracked. http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/start01.htm. Last accessed March 8, 2004.