janiedean:

Today, I will talk to y’all about what’s honestly one of the creepiest questions that has haunted me since I was twelve years old, specifically: how the fuck can people ever have thought that Born in the USA is a patriotic song in 1984 and how can’t they still understand it now?

Honestly, I have no idea, and in this essay I will walk you through it so it’s exceedingly and clearly explained how it’s in no way, shape or form a mindlessly patriotic song but, on the contrary, is a sharp, angry, vitriolic satire which criticizes the US government and its stance on the Vietnam war to Hell and back.

Born in the USA is the title song of the eponymous 1984 record which turned my good old pal Bruce into a world superstar, but it had originally been written for 1982′s acoustic masterpiece Nebraska. It was then reworked into an electrical version whose music is probably what makes people thing it’s patriotic since it sounds happy and singing-inducing, except that if you listen to the original:

You can notice that the famous one is just the upbeat version of the hauntingly, frankly anxiety-inducing acoustic that does certainly not work to sing out loud, but admittedly isn’t as good to sing in a stadium.

After having made this clear, we can finally move on into analyzing the lyrics.

The song opens with:

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 too much
‘Til you spend half your life just coverin’ up

Now, here we have the first iconic question of this evening, as in: how in the hell a song that opens with born down in a dead man’s town // the first kick I took was when I hit the ground can ever be taken for mindless praising/patriotism?

I have no fucking clue except for ‘people only listen to the refrain’. Anyhow, from this opening which is literally a kick in the teeth we learn that a) the narrator was born in a dead man’s town ie somewhere small without many options nor many people, b) his life has been shit since the early beginning since the first kick he took was when he hit the ground, which is fortified by the following two lines in which he compares himself to a ‘dog who’s been beat to much until he spends half his life just covering up’, a sentence that makes a hell of a lot more sense if you listen to the rest of what he has to say later.

For now, we have the immortal refrain:

Born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
Born in the U.S.A

In which the narrator informs us where he comes from, except that if we take the first stanza into account… the USA don’t sound really idyllic, now, don’t we?

Anyway, stanza two:

Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man

And here we can finally see what’s the problem: our guy is a Vietnam veteran. However, things aren’t so easy. What we surmise from these short, extremely packed with information lines, is that:

• the narrator wasn’t drafted;
• the narrator was coerced into going by a method that was pretty common back in the day – people who ended up in bar fights or such altercations were given the choice of going to jail or go to Vietnam and of course if they had to support a family/needed money they’d pick Vietnam, but it’s still coercion and he certainly didn’t want to go;
• which is why he says they put a rifle in my hand – it’s they running the action, not him;
• and they also sent me off to a foreign land ie they/the army sent him to a place he doesn’t know (foreign) to go and kill the yellow man (vietcong) even if he didn’t want to.

And then we’re again informed that he was born in the USA, and that means he a) was born in a crappy place, b) was sent to Vietnam for a menial fight (a little hometown jam), c) was sent to kill people when he didn’t want to by higher powers who give zero shits about him.

Doesn’t seem like a compliment to me.

However, there’s more!

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “Son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “Son, don’t you understand”

Our narrator comes back home to the refinery (compare with what I said before in the Youngstown analysis – that one also went to Vietnam and came back to a job at the steel mill he didn’t have anymore, so they both had highly stressful jobs that would take a toll on their health sooner rather than later) and the hiring man doesn’t hire him and shrugs like hey I wish I could but I can’t. So he goes to the VA who asks, don’t you understand, which in this case means that there’s no place for him in this context.

Which ties to the fact that Vietnam veterans were treated like shit and generally ignored because the war was lost and people didn’t want to think about it, except that at the same time they were the first to actually vocally come together and ask for help and actually they were the first who recognized the importance of treating PTSD and ran free clinics in which also WWII and Korea veterans could come for treatment, but hey, let’s send people to fight wars we know we’re losing and then let’s not help them, why not?

But no, son, don’t you understand.

And then he informs us again that he’s born in the USA, a country where after being sent to war without wanting to he’s not wanted anymore after he comes back.

The bridge, though, gives us even more interesting info:

I had a brother at Khe Sanh fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now

This stanza has an inane amount of info we can unpack in a handy checklist:

• the narrator wasn’t the only person in his family to go – he had a brother in Vietnam, too;
• the brother not only died but most likely died during the khe sahn battle which is admittedly one of the fucking dumbest decisions ever taken by the US military in their entire history and which was a defeat from the US even if they don’t like to admit it and prefer the ‘withdrawn’ excuse, which places him at the most recognizable and famous point of the Vietnam war for the casual listener/student;
• the viet cong he and his brother fought are still there, he died, so = the US lost the war;
• BUT the brother was in love with a Vietnamese woman (in love ie a serious thing) and the narrator has a picture of the two of them together, which suggests that neither he nor his brother hold the Vietnamese any ill-will and actually most probably dislike the US government more than the people they were supposed to fight.

We have no refrain after that, just the solo, but I don’t think he needs to say again how he was born in the USA for us to assume that when he says that, he’s being extremely sarcastic and not proud of it whatsoever.

Anyhow, we’re finally at the last stanza:

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go

Again showing how good he is at packing info in a short space while providing the listeners with info about how it sucks for his character, he paints a fairly bleak picture with two lines: the shadow of the penitentiary suggests how he comes close to being arrested and the out by the gas fires of the refinery suggests that he’s out there inhaling the toxic gas but not working there, so he’s basically left to himself without any help.

Also, he’s ten years burning down the road, which means that he’s been back for that long and no one’s helped him since then, and then he has nowhere to run and nowhere to go, so even if he wanted to leave, he literally can’t because he has no other option than his dead man’s town (most likely because he doesn’t have the means and the money and he most likely has untreated ptsd, so he’s stuck there), and that is how his country left him. And now the last refrain changes:

Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., I’m a long gone daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., I’m a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A.

Because now not only he’s born in the USA, but we also know that he has a kid (I’m a long gone daddy + cool rocking daddy) and both definitions contrast with each other – long gone is the exact contrary of cool rocking, which suggests that the latter is as sarcastic as the rest of the refrain (the long gone pairs exceedingly well with the ten years burning down the road) and if we take LONG GONE at his word, he hasn’t seen his kid in ages because he can’t work or has ptsd or both.

So hey, being born in the USA for the narrator meant:

• being left without options except the refinery in his town if he wanted to work;
• being sent against his will to vietnam;
• losing a brother in there, too;
• (also, out of the two of them, the brother ie the one who found love there died while he who has nothing in either ‘nam or the US survived);
• losing his job;
• being rejected by everyone including most likely his family/his child;
• being left on his own even by the VA as in the office supposed to help him;
• risking going to jail;
• being unable to change his situation or crawl out of it because all of those circumstances make sure he can’t literally do it;
• all this while he’s probably hearing rhetoric about how great his country is everywhere.

So, that is why the refrain is not mindless patriotism but pure vitriol – it’s like, ‘hey, if you listened to the thing, everything sucks but hey, I was told being born in the USA is great so hey, I WAS! AMAZING, RIGHT? /sarcasm’, not ‘OH MY GOD HOW GREAT THE US IS I LOVE IT UNCRITICALLY’.

Admittedly, the fact that Ronald Reagan thought it was a patriotic song that might resonate with his audience:

Shows exactly all the reasons why Reagan was a complete idiot without a shred of text comprehension, and too bad people remember Reagan’s opinion more than the mythical, amazing, unreachable slam Bruce gave that speech not long later:

TLDR: this is not a song about mindless patriotic US drivel and it’d be frankly obvious from basically listening to the lyrics, but then again listening to the lyrics is the same thing as reading something with a modicum of using your brain, and from what I see reading while using 0,05% of someone’s brain capacity on tumblr is basically asking for the impossible.

Anyhow, I think anon’s time would be better spent thinking about how creepy is it that I see people on youtube commenting on American Skin (41 Shots) with ‘omg Springsteen is a leftist now I’ll go burn my copy of BITUSA’ when it’d be obvious from that song that his politics haven’t changed from then than about how people shipping things is apparently creepy.

:’)

yeah