Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen

Political Songs and Government
Born in the USA was written by Bruce Springsteen in 1981 after being inspired by a movie script sent to him called “Born in the USA” (Konow & Mercurio, 2015). Springsteen’s song was written with the Vietnam war in mind and the plight of the Vietnam Veteran and average working class kid being sent off to war. The song starts off talking about being “born in a dead man’s town”—a line that could symbolize two things, a town named after a long-dead person or a town that is literally a dead end for hopes and dreams. The song proceeds to describe how hard life is for someone growing up in a dead town—everyone goes around like a beat dog, just trying to survive. Yet the country is so cruel that when one gets into a little trouble the punishment does not fit the crime: the singer describes getting into a “hometown jam” and being sent off to war to fight in Vietnam as a result. The reason for the war is never given—only that the American is tasked with killing the “yellow man”—nothing else is told. The song proceeds to talk about the loss and pain suffered as a result of fighting in and being a veteran of the Vietnam War. The song was written half a decade after the Vietnam War ended, so Springsteen had had time to see how the veterans were treated in America. His song is not so much a celebration of America, as the refrain might make some think it is—some kind of anthem for American greatness—but rather it is sad eulogy for the American Dream: the American reality is that people are suffering and the working class men and women, those in every town, those who fought, those who lived and those who died—they are all human beings, and their humanity is being stripped out of them by an America that has become ruthless in its approach to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The song indicates that those things are not possible for the little man—for what awaits the little man is the jail, the refinery, the aimless road, the lost family.
Springsteen is effective at addressing issues that were apparent in the U.S. at the time. The VA was not helpful, vets were suffering from trauma. A generation had been scarred. The same kinds of issues are here again today, with so many vets returning from the Middle East, suffering from PTSD and on the brink of suicide (Ames et al., 2018). The government can act to solve some of the problems presented in the song by first of all stopping pretending that the American Dream is alive and well. Second, it needs to stop getting entangled in foreign wars: the country had been at one point non-interventionist. People would like to see that policy adopted again. That is one reason Trump was elected, after all: he ran on the idea of getting the U.S. out of the Middle East and not trying to topple any more dictatorships. Government should listen to the people: they do not want endless war. They want jobs, they want opportunities, they want to be able to have families: these are the simple things that haunt Springsteen’s song because he sings about them all being lost.
This song and the issues it touches on enhance my understanding of politics by showing how there can often be a disconnect between government and the people. This is unfortunate since the government is supposed to be by and for the people. The people are not supposed to exist for whatever purposes the government wants to adopt—but that seems to be the way it goes, as Springsteen shows.
My reaction to the song is that the lyrics are meaningful but slightly opaque. The refrain “Born in the USA” does not really connect to the rest of the lyrics and the overall melody is way too upbeat and repetitive for the song to really be effective at selling the underlying ideas that Springsteen is communicating in the lyrics. The repetitiveness of the melody, over and over, also wears thin very quickly—which is probably the reason the only take away from the song that one has is the refrain, with the words “Born in the USA,” which are connected with the melody. The other words to the song, which accompany the same melody, are not remembered because they are only sung once, while the refrain is repeated endlessly. The melody does not seem to convey any of the dark undertones and Springsteen’s shouting of the lyrics makes it seem like he is just having a good old American shout out to his countrymen, celebrating their country and their birth as Americans. Neither the music nor the refrain seem to connect with what the song is really about—and that is part of what makes me not like the song very much. The melody is too simple and there is virtually no other melody or alteration of any kind in the song. It is the same five or six notes over and over again. The song is exhausting to listen to.
References
Ames, D., Erickson, Z., Youssef, N. A., Arnold, I., Adamson, C. S., Sones, A. C., ... & Oliver, J. P. (2018). Moral injury, religiosity, and suicide risk in US veterans and active duty military with PTSD symptoms. Military medicine, 184(3-4), e271-e278.
Konow, D. & Mercurio, J. (2015). Transformation in Art: The Films of Paul Schrader. Retrieved from https://creativescreenwriting.com/transformation-in-art-the-films-of-paul-schrader/
Lyrics to Born in the USA:
Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just covering up
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
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
Born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said "son if it was up to me"
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said "son, don't you understand"
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
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
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