Dead Man's Town Analysis

The article “Dead Man’s Town: ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ Social History and Working-Class Identity” is co-auhored by Jefferson Cowie and Lauren Boehm. It is published in American Quarterly, 2006. The authors argue that underneath Bruce Springsteen’s biggest hit “Born in the U.S.A.” surface “musicking” lies a deeper meaning. The narrative of the song, the authors opine, reflects a transformation in the white working class identity from the early 1970s to the early 1980s. They also argue that the song works as a critical analysis of and a plausible explanation to the redefinition of working-class politics throughout the seventies. Their methodology depends on an intertextual approach. They read the song as a “social text” i.e. the song in and
The first section of the article titled “Identity in Transition” focuses on giving the historical context to changing terms of working-class identity from the 1930s to the 1980s. Boehn and Towie start by explaining that identity is a social and economic construct. However, the tensions that ensue from conflicts over material conditions remain very real and most present regardless of the resistance of working-class to any monolithic or fixed representation of themselves. In other words, the refusal of any class referents does not effectively efface class expression from the public discourse nor effectively erase those essential tensions. Furthermore, they have traced a genealogy of the ever changing terms of working-class back to the 1930s during which it meant a form of economic citizenship then it depended on skin privilege in the post war years excluding minorities. During the seventies the working class seemed to have collaborated with the social movements which lead to the participation of many unions in the “biggest strike wave in post war history” between 1968 and 1974 in the US. But this participation was in no way unified or unitary for there were many demonstrations undertaken by white workers in support of Richard Nixon coincided with anti-busing demonstrations. However, what unified all this protests is a sustained critique of the “liberal consensus” for many reasons either for their economic reasons or racism and
They explicit the relationship between foreign/homeland in tracing the rhyme scheme and the semantic chains in the narrative of the ambiguous place referred to at multiple times in the song as Vietnam and any small town in America. In addition to this, they claim that the narrator’s use of the non-referential collective “they” or “them”, of which both Vietnamese and American working class are victims, is subversive in the sense that it collides and confuses identities such as ally and enemy, self and other. After the return of American veterans to their homeland, they were faced with the same uncertainty and confusion they left behind in the jungles of Vietnam. They were confronted with unemployment and an inadequate support system after they were drafted based on their class status and fought a war abroad in total confusion. The authors also assert that Springsteen’s referral to the Khe Sanh battle was an implicit lament for its meaninglessness and similarity to the deindustrialized towns in the uncontainable spread of the rust belt