Last week, when Nebraska Lincoln Journal Star reported that Bruce Springsteen was seen in town with a film crew, my heart jumped at best: Maybe he was working on a documentary for a 1982 reissue Nebraska, which is due to the treatment of the set of archiving boxes. That beloved solo album had Springsteen mixing images from his 1950s childhood with clear descriptions of Ronald Reagan’s American economic division, coming up with an haunting series of eggplants that seems increasingly relevant today. Nebraska came at a fertile time in Springsteen’s career as he prepared for the possible 1984 commercial breakthrough. Born in the USA The outings are legendary – including an electric version rumored to be his loyal E Street Band – and there are also mountains of unique songs from this era, such as one called “The Klansman”, which clarifies its conflicted and famously misunderstood position. American patriotism. So I imagined it optimistically visiting the eponymous state of the album to shed light on all these things, offering a new perspective on an artistic peak.
Instead, he was filming a Jeep commercial, called “The Middle,” for the Super Bowl. It is the first commercial appearance of the 71-year-old, his first product approval and, apparently, a project in which he took a significant, creative hand. In the two-minute commercial, Springsteen visits a humble church located in the geographical center of the country. Alone, he meditates on what Americans do to us as we drive a Jeep and deliver a message of hope to a country that, in his view, has strayed far from its original promise. “We can reach the top of the mountain, through the desert,” he says in a low voice, shaking his hand at the gravitas. “And we will get past this division.” At the end, a message on the screen is addressed to the “United States of America”.
Now, if you’ve never been receptive to Springsteen’s patented mark of rock’n’roll transcendence, or if you’re skeptical of the working-class fixations that helped turn him into one of the most famous musicians on Earth, then this ad will not convince you otherwise. In fact, it could be always He saw it: here he preaches a vague message of unity while staying away from any real human being. He is talking to a promised country that may never have existed. It seems impossible to be well maintained, even if you want to believe that it is durable and worn by years of manual labor. He’s selling you a car.
And even for someone like me, who sees his work as a complex and empathetic portrait of American life, the message here feels vague – and even worse, not entirely his. First, Springsteen himself never sought a middle ground, and the political perspectives in his lyrics never faltered. From the bitter class struggles described in 1978 Darkness on the outskirts of town by the 2007 Iraq war Magic, has shown us, countless times, exactly where he stands.
Not to mention, he has struggled for decades to be co-opted by corporations and politicians trying to align with his hard-earned integrity. When powerful people once tried to look at the “Born in the USA” red-white-and-blue sticker of a chorus as he glossed over his miserable lyrics, Springsteen was determined to refuse. In the mid-1980s, he allegedly turned down a $ 15 million offer from Chrysler to license the coup and rejected President Reagan, who shouted at him during a New Jersey campaign shutdown. “The president mentioned my name the other day and I ended up wondering what his favorite album should be,” Springsteen told a concert audience at the time. “I do not think it was Nebraska Although he tried to laugh at such progress at the time, Springsteen was shaken: for the first time in his career, his work got out of hand.