Bruce Springsteen, Rock Poetry, and Spatial Politics of the Promised Land

Humanities Pub Date : 2024-05-13 DOI:10.3390/h13030075
Shankhadeep Chattopadhyay
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Abstract

The humanistic-geographical associations of popular music foster the potential to articulate the production and reproduction of an activity-centered politicized ontology of space in the everyday social life of any creative communitarian framework where an alternative set of lifestyles, choices, and tastes engage in a constant play. A cursory glimpse at the (counter-)cultural artistic productions of the American 1970s shows that the lyrical construction of real and imaginary geographical locales has remained a distinguishing motif in the song-writing techniques of the celebrated rock poets. In the case of Bruce Springsteen, whether it is the ‘badlands’, constituting the rebellious and notorious young adults, or the ‘promised land’, which is the desired destination of all his characters, his lyrical oeuvre has numerously provided an alternative sense of place. Springsteen’s lyrical and musical characterization of fleeting urban images like alleys, hotels, engines, streets, neon, pavements, locomotives, cars, etc., have not only captured the American cities under the changing regime of capital accumulation but also contributed to the inseparability of everyday social lives and modern urban experiences. Against the backdrop of this argument, this article seeks to explore how the socio-political and cultural aesthetics of Springsteen’s song stories unfurl distinct spatial poetics through their musical language. Also, the article attempts to delineate how Springsteen’s unabashed celebration of the working-class geography of the American 1970s unveils a site of cultural struggle, wherein existing social values are reconstructed amidst imaginary landscapes and discursive strategies of resistance are weaved.
布鲁斯-斯普林斯汀、摇滚诗歌和应许之地的空间政治学
流行音乐中的人文地理关联,可以在任何创造性社群框架的日常社会生活中,促进以活动为中心的政治化空间本体论的生产和再生产,在这种框架中,另类的生活方式、选择和品味不断上演。对美国 20 世纪 70 年代(反)文化艺术作品的粗略回顾表明,对真实和想象中的地理位置进行抒情建构一直是著名摇滚诗人歌曲创作技巧中的一个突出主题。就布鲁斯-斯普林斯汀(Bruce Springsteen)而言,无论是构成叛逆和声名狼藉的年轻人的 "坏境",还是他笔下所有人物都向往的 "应许之地",他的抒情作品都大量提供了另一种地方感。斯普林斯汀通过抒情和音乐描绘了小巷、酒店、引擎、街道、霓虹灯、人行道、机车、汽车等稍纵即逝的城市形象,不仅捕捉到了资本积累制度变迁下的美国城市,也促进了日常社会生活与现代城市经验的密不可分。在这一论点的背景下,本文试图探讨斯普林斯汀歌曲故事中的社会政治和文化美学如何通过其音乐语言展开独特的空间诗学。此外,文章还试图描绘斯普林斯汀如何毫不掩饰地赞美美国 20 世纪 70 年代工人阶级的地理环境,揭示出一个文化斗争的场所,在那里,现有的社会价值观在想象的景观中得到重构,反抗的话语策略得到编织。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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