Backstreets, Bruce Springsteen, and the Crisis of Masculinity

100% Ridiculous

My good buddy (and the Obi Won Kenobe of my own rock snobbery) has suggested that I do an entry about the Bruce Springsteen song "Backstreets," in his words "probably the most moving rock'n'roll song ever written/performed. It is the pinnacle of what rock can be and express while staying squarely within the boundaries of good old rock."

Although it had never occured to me to apply so many superlatives to "Backstreets," it has always been my favorite Bruce Springsteen song and I could hardly agree more. What is "Backstreets"? For starters, it is one of the very best and certainly one of the most moving songs ever recorded. An absolute must-find if you do not already have every note memorized. He may not know this, but there is in fact an Italian Bruce Springsteen cover band entitled "The Backstreets: Band of Hope and Dreams" (see picture above) which is funny for at least 8 different reasons.

"Backstreets" will also be the center of the most ambitious (and probably therefore the most ridiculous) blog-entry to date: "Backstreets, Bruce Springsteen, and the Crisis of Masculinity"

One of the main reasons I call this friend my Obi-Won Kenobe of rock snobbery is that he convinced me to love Bruce Springsteen. As an overly cynical Bob Dylan enthusiast, I had previously written off the Boss as nothing more than the fist-pumping engine behind the "Born in the USA," a song I still consider the equivalent of "God Bless the USA" or some other such red, white, and blue = black and white patriotic garbage. What I discovered in Bruce was a rare level of sophistication and intelligence paired with the energy, enthusiasm and gusto of 'good rock and roll.' And yet 'good rock and roll' never seems a mere vehicle for Springsteen, it is never the square hole for the round peg of 'boss-ness' but always seems like its most natural and only possible expression-- as though Springsteen possessed some kind of deep wisdom that could only be expressed by rocking.

I remember my high school English teacher Mr. Gerencher-- himself a fairly accomplished basement-dwelling rock snob-- talking about how there were very rock stars that he actually would consider to be good people. An excellent observation. For all he has given the world musically and socially, Bob Dylan should be no one's role model, as he genius renders him an anti-social hermit. Elvis Costello is almost certainly a pretentious asshole, and I wouldn't want to meet Tom Waits in any kind of an alley. Mr. Gerencher was talking specifically about Paul Simon, but I think Bruce Springsteen is an even better example of a consumate rocker who is probably also a good person. Certainly not a perfect man, but ultimately good and relentlessly authentic.

Perhaps I am decieved, but this is my Bruce Springsteen: a man constantly at war with life's imperfection, but one who battles difficulty and decadenza with his "boss-ness"-- that ineffible cocktail of America, blue jeans, blue collars, and masculinity that is synonymous with 'good rock and roll.' Albert Camus wrote about rebellion as a way of finding meaning in existence, and Bruce's is a kind of rebellion but not exactly the same kind of rebellion against absurdity. It is a rebellion based on the re-affirmation of life's simple, uncorrupted beauties-- in his own particular aesthetic vision:

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain.

It is also perhaps fundamentally a celebration of the search for meaning as the ultimate meaning of life. If I had to characterize the most dominant motif in Springsteen, it would be the pursuit of the ideal that may not be fully known, but must exist, and must be pursued with diligence. Above all, the idea is to be in constant motion-- constantly full of energy, searching for something, anything:

Some guys they just give up living
And start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racin' in the street

This intense but imprecise quest is perhaps best mirrored by the spirit of 'good rock and roll' which may not always know exactly what it's talking about, but it's going to yell about it in driving 4/4 time.

If Bruce Springsteen were one of the poets I've been trained to write about, than "Backstreets" would probably be considered one of his major works, as it presents many of Springsteen's major thematics in their purest and most memorable forms. Hmmm.... I think I'll do commentary by verse.

First, there is the piano dominated intro, which lasts for over a minute. Then the drums kick in and this funky an organ starts playing. I love that part. It's like when you go to see a play or a musical and the orchestra plays through the overture one time with the curtain still drawn and before the play starts, and it will frequently seem like musical microcosm of everything that will occur. That is the way this intro feels to me, but I don't think I explained that very well.

One soft infested summer me and Terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in
Catching rides to the outskirts tying faith between our teeth
Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house getting wasted in the heat
And hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
With a love so hard and filled with defeat
Running for our lives at night on them backstreets

Fantastic first verse, in which everything supports and builds out of the line "Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in." The first verse is dominated by images of heat (soft infested summer, fire, wasted in the heat) which serves throughout as an image of intensity. Everything in Backstreets-- everything in Springsteen-- is intense: monumentally and soul-consumingly important-- "a love so hard." And filled with defeat. The struggle to survive in an adverse environment-- to breathe the fire-- is ultimately in vain. It is an extremely important, and perilous struggle but it is nothing if not intense: "running for our lives." And yet curiously 'hiding' on the backstreets.

Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at Stockton's Wing
Where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the Duke Street Kings
Huddled in our cars waiting for the bells that ring
In the deep heart of the night to set us loose from everything
to go running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets
We swore we'd live forever on the backstreets we take it together

In the second verse, the image of the 'desperate lovers' reinforces the notion of a 'love so hard and filled with defeat.' If the dominant theme of the first verse is heat, here it is darkness (slow dancing in the dark, the deep heart of the night). The peaceful, innocent image of 'slow dancing'-- an image of communion-- is made desperate. This verse, and the song as a whole, represents a kind of 'desperate community,' united perhaps in their very desperation: the difficulty of breathing in their native fire. Here the desperate lovers and Duke Street Kings huddle in the cars and awaiting the liberating cover of darkness that will set them 'loose from everything' and permit them to 'hide' on the backstreets. "Running" replaces "Hiding" in the penultimate verse, suggesting-- as the whole song suggests, that 'running' is merely another way to hide. Mortality returns as "We'd swore we'd live forever" occupies the position previously assigned to "Running for our lives." The implications now seem somewhat more clear, here is a group of young people searching for the kind of illusory immortality present in constant, reckless motion. If it hasn't already it hits us now that our protagonists are so young, for only the young sit in parked cars, and only the young believe they will live forever.

Endless juke joints and Valentino drag where dancers scraped the tears
Up off the street dressed down in rags running into the darkness
Some hurt bad some really dying at night sometimes it seemed
You could hear the whole damn city crying blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me Terry
It don't matter to me now when the breakdown hit at midnight
There was nothing left to say but I hated him and I hated you when you went away

Unless I am mistaken, the song continues to crescendo here by changing keys, moving up a step or so for this verse. This is an amazing effect, because the song has already been so intense when Bruce gets to "Running on the Backstreets." You thought he had noplace left to go and he goes up even higher. It's literally like what Nigel Tuffnel talks about in Spinal tap: this one goes to eleven. So musically at this point we are up a notch at 11, and the stretch from "blame it on the lies that killed us /Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me Terry /It don't matter to me now" is one of the most exhilirating in all of music. After this verse the song explodes into a break which sounds precisely like the intensification of the songs minute long intro.

Lyrically, the transition is equally intense. The Boss begins by evoking a setting not unlike Dylan's 'Desolation Row'-- "Endless juke joints and Valentino drag." Here truth catches up to the night. Night-- that was previously a place to hide and a support for reckless behavior and fantasies of immortality peels back to reveal its reality: "some hurt bad some really dying." "at night sometimes it seemed You could hear the whole damn city crying" perhaps the voice of sirens blaring, but certainly the voice of the real. In a very evocative image, the singer proposes blaming 'the truth that ran us down'-- which squares very nicely with the image of running as hiding from the truth.

Laying here in the dark you're like an angel on my chest
Just another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness
Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see
Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time to find we're just like all the rest
Stranded in the park and forced to confess
To hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
We swore forever friends on the backstreets until the end
Hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets

Although I am fuzzy on the plot details, in this song. (I'm never much concerned with plot). It seems that either Terry or the singer or both are really dying, killed by either the lies or the truth or at any rate killed by the discrepancy between reality and posture. The most important part of this lyric is the line:

Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see
Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be

Yes, the line that christened the world's greatest Julliard-bound Springsteen frontman (The Heroes), but also astonishingly poignant-- and I believe crucially relevant. This was always a line that struck me as particularly excellent, but it took sitting down and really picking this song apart for me to fully appreciate it.
Again, we are struck with the youth of our protagonists. I picture them as teenagers with buckets of popcorn watching Western movies with John Wayne. At any rate, we see that the song has perhaps been fundamentally about "posturing"-- Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be. Terry and friend's recklessness has been perhaps primarily based in the imitation of these heroes. They seem once again innocent and childlike, they wanted to walk like the heroes they saw in the movies. Their recklessness now seems merely a mask for insecurity-- hiding on the backstreets from the same 'everything' they cut loose from in the night.

Which brings me to the point that I actually want to discuss, which is more material for a traditional blog, but since I have launched my discussion with snobbery I think it will be okay. Masculinity is in crisis. I'm stating this as a problem. I don't have any solutions. I will say that upfront. I also realize this isn't really news to anyone.

I watched a documentary this summer on PBS that addressed the issue of a crisis in masculinity. It was called Boys, and was very good. It traced groups of teenage boys from various backgrounds. I remember as I watched it that the overwhelming pattern seemed to be that all of the boys seemed to share a need to perform their masculinity in some way. In order to do so, they looked for models of masculinity: Trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be. This frequently leads to extreme posturing-- of exactly the kind engaged in by Springsteen's Terry and friends. t was the same basic pattern for both the priveledged football captains and the inner-city gangbangers. In order to mask their sadness and insecurity-- which they viewed as both a sign of weakness and as unmasculine-- they put on a mask of toughness, recklessness, or extreme normality-- conforming to the most traditional possible model of masculinity. Of course, the nature of this model of ultra-masculinity differed tremendously in the two settings.

There was also the story of a young boy who did not perform his masculinity in traditional ways and as a result failed to bond with his contemporaries. He was made an outcast and obviously branded a homosexual.

While watching this documentary, it occured to me that performances of masculinity-- playing sports, drinking beer and cruising chicks,etc-- also represent one of the primary ways in which men bond. They also, of course promote very dangerous thought patterns. But I actually remember having the ridiculous thought that if I had been less secure about my own masculinity I might have actually had more friends. It made me think a lot about how I never managed to make friends during college-- which is basically the easiest place in the world to make friends, or would seem so-- but I could never do it. I always told myself that it was because I was simply uninterested in the kinds of things that people did. I have always thought there was something wrong with me, but at the end of the day I can't say that it is because I am not 'masculine'-- I am probably extremely masculine, but sometimes wish that I wasn't so I would at least have an excuse for being such a misfit.

The crisis in masculinity has been on my mind for a long time, but recent trends in television advertisement have pushed this issue back to the forefront of my concerns. Advertising fascinates me, and I believe that it offers a very interesting window into currents of thought. Masculinity (and obviously femininity as well) is a sticky, sticky situation and I'm not sure and I'm not sure that I have any clear opinions, but I felt like typing about it; which is what blogs are for-- a space for people without friends to spew their opinions about things.

There are currently at least four or five major companies who are running advertising campaigns based exclusively on some kind of an attempt to define masculinity. I am sure that you have noticed this. Burger King-- whose ads with 'The King' I appreciated so much-- is now running a campaign based on a repudiation of 'chick food'-- I am hungry, I am man! One of the cookie-cutter restaurants, I think it is TGIFridays is running a similar concept in which a man's "Vegetable Medley!" is rejected as insufficiently masculine, until he holds up a "Sausage!" that meets with approval (Quiet down, Dr. Freud). There are others as well, I think there is a deodorant campaign. OH! I forgot! This is another good one, when Howie Long pulls up in a giant truck and scolds a man for looking at an insufficiently masculine dog. At any rate, I don't think I even need to go in search of examples because the pattern is so abundantly clear.

The most poignant of these ad campaigns features a panel of beer-drinkers who will establish a set of "Man Rules." I have only seen a couple of these but, they involve things like whether you can take back unopened beer that you bring to a party or date your friend's ex-girlfriend. Think about that for one second in your critical hat. Budweiser or Miller (I have never been able to tell their ad campaigns apart, except that I remember the frogs said budweiser, largely because there are three of them and it has three syllables.) has assembled a panel of the 'heroes' of masculinity-- they've got Burt Reynolds, Jerome Bettis, a wrestler, and other people I should probably recognize-- I think the guy who got his arm trapped under a rock and had to chew it off in order to survive. But anyway, these guys are supposed to be sitting around giving form to the 'Man Rules'

The point is that advertising has begun to pray on insecurities about the nature of masculinity. All of this is presented as humor and-- while I admit that the idea of Burt Reynolds chairing such a panel is funny and I did find The Man Show very funny-- I also think that this is very dangerous. At the most basic level, we don't need anything else to fan the flames of anti-homosexual sentiment in this country. Other than conservative religious groups, this sentiment is highest among practitioners of a kind of 'frat-boy' masculinity-- which is exactly the target audience for all of these ad campaigns. (Speaking of 'frat-boy' masculinity, I read an article a couple weeks ago about the development of a new brand of literature oriented towards this target audience, based around things like beer and promiscuous sex, which is designed to correspond to the market for 'chick literature' with plots about so-called 'feminine' pursuits like lipstick and shopping).

I hate thinking about this. I have absolutely no desire to be masculine, or to understand what that means. I hate 'intellectually' knowing that a stable definition of masculinity is impossible and perhaps not even desirable while at the same time I see the amount of regressive behavior, violence, and intolerance that seems to stem precisely from the incessant posturing of masculinity-- trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be.

As Derrida would have it-- and probably correctly-- the definition of 'masculinity' is going to be dependant on the definition of every other term in the massive system of language. Perhaps fundamentally it depends on the definition of its opposite 'femininity'-- a term that I has obviously undergone such a dramatic change in the last 100 years. I can't help but see masculinity as somewhat 'behind.' It seems to have failed to re-invent itself in a positive way. I am not referring to realities here, but to the presumed stable referrant of the word-- the referrant that would be addressed by say, advertising. To be perfectly clear, you would get sued instantly-- and perhaps correctly-- for an advertising campaign that drew up the "Girl rules," or criticized female behaviors as too masculine. Paris, don't look at that German shepherd, don't you think this purse dog is more your speed? You just wouldn't see it.

"Masculinity" as an 'advertising concept'-- and everything that implies about its perception in a culture of consumers-- it seems, has failed to adjust. Or has adjusted in the wrong way, by agressively protecting its difference from the other term ("homosexuals are girlie-men") rather than trying to find a progressive stance in the middle. In my opinion-- in most people's opinion-- femininity is now a 'healthier' concept because females are allowed to exhibit traditionally masculine behaviors (or at least we are heading that way). Men, however, should resist the seduction of 'chick food' (which is presumably healthy) and engorge themselves on beer, cheeseburgers and chicken wings.

My conclusion is that I am going to go get some beer and chicken wings, not as a performance of masculinity, but because I honestly like beer and chicken wings. Damnit.