Oedipal dreams from the heartland: Springsteen and Freud in dialogue

“Outside the street’s on fire, in a real death waltz, between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy” (“Jungleland,” Springsteen 1975).

I’m imagining one of those manuals of etiquette and manners. It describes which fork to use with a fish course and how to tell the difference between a demitasse and a small teacup. It discusses acceptable posture at a formal luncheon table. In the section on acceptable subject of conversation, it states in bold capital letters, “it is best not to mention Sigmund Freud or any of his work in casual conversation.” My imaginary book is not an antique of the Victorian age; it is a modern Twenty First Century Amazon.com best seller. This bold warning about Freud does not surprise me. I have experienced the eye rolling. I am fully aware of the taboo. In a twist that would surely excite Sigmund, we have dismissed Freudianism on the ego level and yet the theories have crept into our unconscious experience.

It is not strange to hear conversations outside of academia in which folks dismiss Freud as a misogynist who contributed to nothing other than patriarchal sexism. I am amazed by how often people who have never read anything written by Freud consider everything he wrote to be wrong, if not offensive. I remember my mother once telling me that Freud was proved wrong years ago. Why, then, I wondered, did our pop psychology seem to be a vulgarized version of Freudian theory? The same people who dismiss Freud are also indelibly inundated with his theoretical understanding of the world. Freud is all around us, particularly in our popular culture artwork. Our popular stories locate the cause of all adult aberrations in early childhood trauma. This can be seen in our culture’s preferred dramatic structure.  The accepted structure of movie screenplays seems to be a vulgarized version of Freudianism combined with Aristotle’s Poetics (350 B.C.E.). Aristotelian catharsis is understood by modern Hollywood to mean emotional cleansing in an unsophisticated Freudian psychoanalytic sense—the uncovering of repressed childhood memories. For example, the plots of the majority of American films can be summarized in one of two ways.

Let us call the first way, “single traumatic event” theory. In these films, a single childhood traumatic event provides the primary motivation for all of a character’s actions. In other words, back-story seems to be defined as one event in early life that triggers the life’s trajectory toward the cathartic moment. Single traumatic event theory is almost always used in biographical films such as Walk the Line (Blomquist, Cash & Mangold, 2005). In this biography of country singer Johnny Cash, guilt about fishing while his older brother suffers a fatal table saw injury is presented as primary motivation for all of Cash’s future actions. Flashback is a common cinematic device used to tell the audience that current plot events are psychologically associated with back-story events. Whether or not the character is supposed to be conscious of these connections is often unclear, the important thing is that the audience realizes that the protagonist is motivated by a single childhood trauma. While American moviegoers may not necessarily believe that life is this simple, the fact that we both accept (by buying tickets, dvds, etc.) and reward (buy giving Oscars, Golden Globes, etc.) these narrative condensations of reality is illustrative of our cultural acceptance of a simplified version of Freudian theory.    

The second way we might summarize movie plot lines might be called  “repressed event” theory. In these films, the uncovering of a single past event either motivates the climactic action or the revealing itself constitutes the climactic moment. For example, in countless movies the action hero shoots the antagonist after a flashback to the death of a loved one. The flash back is an “ah-hah” moment— Aristotelian catharsis–that puts the final piece in a dramatic puzzle. Sometimes we have seen a series of memory events that don’t make sense until the climax adds the traumatic event to the flashback narrative.  We are to understand that the protagonist’s life up to this moment has been motivated by an unconscious need to reconcile the early childhood event. For example, the protagonist may need to avenge the murder of a loved one. When he becomes aware of the memory of the murder in the climactic scene, he will still kill the villain, but he is freed from the puppet strings of the unconscious. Or, in a vulgarized Oedipal variation, Luke Skywalker is devastated by the realization that he is destined to murder his father when Darth Vader says, “Luke, I am your father” (Empire Strikes Back, Lucas &  Kershner, 1980).

Although overly simplified, these are examples of the Freudian contribution to our perception of reality. Popular culture is ripe with Freudian clichés. The film industry is not alone in interpreting our experiences through unrefined psychoanalytic lenses; the music industry is also fertile with examples. In his book Rock ’n’ roll wisdom: What psychologically astute lyrics teach about life and love,  (2007) Barry A. Farber, identifies some examples of rock and roll lyrics which seem to analyze the world through a Freudian lens. The Who’s rock opera Tommy  (Townsend, 1969), for example, takes an unsophisticated look at repression.

We’re led to believe that a boy who has seen his father kill his mother’s lover becomes deaf, blind, and mute as a result. In ‘What About the Boy,’ Tommy’s father sings: ‘you didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it!/You won’t say nothin’ to no one ever in your life.’ Indeed, the boy is not haunted by these memories; he has successfully repressed them, and he has no conscious awareness that these actions ever  occurred.”(Farber, p. 86)

Pop culture unintentionally uses a Freudian lens to describe human experience. I wonder, however, if we could turn this model around. Is it possible to use a Freudian perspective to examine pop culture? Below, I will imagine some of the ways we could apply Freudian Psychoanalytic theory to rock and roll. I will not attempt to do this analysis in detail, but rather to imagine what the foundation of  such an analysis of rock and roll might look like.

According to Michael Brog, “the biggest names in rock history can be meaningfully linked with the biggest star of psychoanalysis’ past because they have all been concerned with the same sorts of stuff–the free expression of id-drenched feelings and images”(1995). But the Psychoanalytic study of rock and roll presents some problems. For example, with whose unconscious is the Psychoanalytic critic of rock and roll concerned? Are we to be concerned with the production of rock music or the consumption of rock music? If we were concerned with production, then we would understand the rock song as the unconscious material of the singer- songwriter. In her book Psychoanalytic criticism (1998), Elizabeth Wright writes,  “The aesthetics of id-psychology are grounded in the notion that the work of art is the secret embodiment of its creator’s unconscious desire” (p. 33). But we could also understand the purchasing of rock and roll albums as an embodiment of the consumer’s unconscious desire. In Constructing the self, constructing America  (1995), Philip Cushman explains how early twentieth century ad men saw the act of purchasing as an act of satisfying id desires (p. 155).  And Michael Brog writes,  “Music itself has long been recognized as carrying the power to instill deeply felt feeling states in the listener. These emotions may invite the listener to share in the artists’ emotional world or feel more forcibly thrust upon the listener. These communications can be considered to function as a projective identification”(1995).

Here, I will give a brief example of what psychoanalytic criticism of the production perspective would look like.

Bruce Springsteen’s song “Thunder Road” (1975) can be examined for its musical and lyrical content. Looking through a technical lens, I can study the ways that Springsteen uses unpredictable timing and contrapuntal piano arpeggios without veering from a traditional rock and roll tonic, dominant, and subdominant chord structure. Classical music exegesis illustrates the sonata structure of the song.  The lyrics can be analyzed separately for both the poetic structure and the content.  

Here, however, I will look at the poetic imagery—from a psychoanalytic perspective–as if it were dream imagery.
I imagine Springsteen as the protagonist. In “Thunder Road” he is clearly expressing sexual desire for Mary: “Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.” The Oedipal themes are there. Is Mary just the name of an actual girl in Springsteen’s past or is he unconsciously drawn to the idea of the ultimate virgin mother?

There is sufficient evidence in the associations that the lyrics offer to suggest a connection to the Virgin Mary. There is a wealth of religious imagery throughout the song: “show a little faith,” “make crosses from your lovers,” praying for a “savior to rise from these streets,” “the redemption I can offer,” casing “the Promised Land.” Is Springsteen expressing an incestuous desire for the mother of Christ? I don’t think it’s a stretch to read it this way, considering the proliferation of evangelical language.

Springsteen’s words, “Climb in back, heaven’s waiting on down the tracks” call to mind the nostalgic vision of the 1950’s cultural understanding that sex, not acceptable in the home, happens in the back seats of cars and on rail road tracks. He boasts about his manhood, using his guitar as a phallic symbol: “well, I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.” It is clear that he is not talking about his musical instrument when he again mentions the car and the events to take place in the car: “and my car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk . . . the door’s open but the ride ain’t free.” In a variation on the old fashioned idea that when a man buys a woman dinner he should receive sexual compensation, Springsteen says that he knows how to work is guitar (penis) and they can go to his car, but he expects more than just driving (“the ride ain’t free”).

Then Springsteen announces he is ready to commit the incestuous taboo, “tonight we’ll be free/all the promises will be broken.” Does he mean the promises of civilization, the repression of the forbidden infantile desire to have sex with the mother? Then in the middle of the song he sings, “Oh thunder road, lying out there like a killer in the sun.” Thunder road is the euphemism for incestuous sex with the mother. Thunder calls to mind the thunderbolt of Zeus, or in this case the supreme patriarchal power of Yahweh the ultimate father. But what of the “killer in the sun?” Is Springsteen acknowledging that consummating the infantile incestuous desire is symbolically akin to murdering the father? Is Springsteen himself the “killer in the sun,” “lying out there,” exposed for the world to see? Or is the act itself the killer, “lying out there,” tempting, beckoning? Either understanding validates the Oedipal nature of the song. As Freud writes in Totem and Taboo, “There can be no doubt that in the Christian myth the original sin was one against the father” (Gay p. 508).

In the final verse, Springsteen sings, “There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away/they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets.” This could be understood as a reference to Oedipus’ wandering away from Thebes, just a skeleton of a man, with gouged out eyeballs when he realizes he is a slave to the oracle’s prophecies.

But Springsteen is not one of the boy’s she sent away. He believes he can manage the power of his libidinal drives. He does not need to repress the infantile desires. “So Mary, climb in/it’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win.” Springsteen, as protagonist, is the “savior to rise from these streets.” Offering coital redemption, he is equating himself with Christ, son of Mary, in an incestuous fantasy. He is in competition with the other suitors, the “town full of losers.” The song can be understood like a dream, a fantasy of an Oedipal wish fulfilled.

Understanding “Thunder Road” as Bruce Springsteen’s fulfilled wish is a fun exegetic exercise, but it neglects to take into consideration the particulars of rock and roll. Rock and roll is a predominantly social medium, an interaction between performer and audience. In Psychoanalytic Criticism (1998), Elizabeth Wright discusses this shortcoming of the production type analysis.

Psychoanalytic aesthetics intermittently battles with this problem on two fronts: first how the work of artistic merit is to be distinguished from the ‘work’ involved in the construction of dreams and fantasy; second, how the work as text is to be regarded, now it is no longer property of a single author but produced in a network of social relations.” (Wright p.4)

Approaching rock and roll from the consumption standpoint means imagining the audience as patient and the product as the embodiment of his unconscious desires. Analyzing rock and roll from the perspective of consumer must take into account all of the artifacts of the rock and roll world, not just the song. The rock and roll fans partakes of a variety of other products including, but not limited to: concert tickets, television interviews, magazine articles, t-shirts, etc. The product consumed is essentially the rock star himself. The audience consumes rock and roll like a communion wafer: body of Christ, body of Springsteen. This is why it is important to imagine Springsteen as the protagonist of “Thunder Road.” We imagine that he is sharing the stories of his youth. He is a character in all of his songs. Even when the rock star sings from another perspective, it is understood that it is Springsteen wearing imaginary lenses, not an omnipotent narrator. Springsteen is the object of the consumer’s projective identification. Is it possible that Springsteen functions as a totem for his adoring fans?

Let us analyze the rock star from the perspective of consumption in which the product consumed represents the unconscious desires of the audience. Springsteen’s announcements in “Thunder road,” that he is the embodiment of unrepressed id drives, and that he can satiate his incestuous desires and still “pull out of here to win” (Springsteen 1975), make it crystal clear, from a Freudian perspective, why so many rock and roll fans and critics consider it one of the best rock songs ever written (“Thunder Road,” para. 1, 2009). What Springsteen is boasting about is the secret desire of every man. The “worship” of Springsteen is an example of the external embodiment of the fans’ internal desires. By worshiping the rock god the consumer’s ego satisfies its need for self-preservation because the incestuous id desires are not acted upon; they are transferred onto the performer.

This view of the rock star is radically different from that of most rock critics. For instance, Cornel Bonca writes, “Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t supposed to be about consequences, but Springsteen has turned it into a moral account in a way which forces its Dionysian passion to face the disasters that often follow in its wake” (2008). I would argue that Springsteen does no such thing. Instead, he trades bacchanalia – sex, drugs and aggression – for Oedipal stories from Heartland. Springsteen is the messianic savior who rose from the streets. He contains his fans unconscious desires so that they don’t have to.
Springsteen creates a fertile ground for transference by locating the myth of Oedipus within a Christian canon, and then placing himself at the center. In Springsteen’s Oedipus, Yahweh is King Laius. Mary is Jocasta. Christ is Oedipus. Then Springsteen fuses the myths – Greek and Christian – with American heartland nostalgia. Springsteen identifies and is identified with Christ (and Oedipus). He knows, unconsciously, that it is his Oedipal desires that cause his suffering. He starts “Thunder Road” by announcing the suffering: “Roy Orbison’s singing to the lonely, hey that’s me.” And then goes on to prescribe the cure. The suffering, he says, can only be cured by satisfying his unconscious incestuous desires: “and I want you [Mary/Mother] only.” Christ dies for his follower’s sins and Springsteen violates the incestuous taboo for his followers. The Oedipal nature of this work would be of no surprise to Freud, who insists in Totem and Taboo that, “the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus myth” (Gay p.510).

It seems, then, that rock and roll must be analyzed from a perspective that takes both production and consumption into account. The Oedipal content is produced from the unconscious of the artist. This is clear because the artist himself is rarely conscious of his work’s potential for cultural transference. R.E.M. front man Michael Stipe admitted this in a 2008 radio interview when he said, “I wouldn’t know a hit single if it was sitting in my lap” (R.E.M. 2008). The potential of the artist and the music to hold the external projection of the fan’s internal experience is nothing more than a happy accident. Or should I say the reasons are not accidental, but unknown, unconscious, to both producer and consumer. In order, therefore, to understand the unconscious drives that are at play in rock and roll, it is necessary to analyze both the production and the consumption.

Clearly, pop culture is ripe for a Freudian harvest. In rock and roll we find the id’s voice amplified like a Fender guitar. At the movies, we see a literary tradition that has absorbed Freud even as it dismisses him. I have only scratched the surface of this type of analysis in this short paper. For example, I have barely even mentioned the plethora of cultural artifacts that work together to create the Phenomenon that is Bruce Springsteen. A thorough analysis would need to look at many more factors. For example, lyrical analysis of more than one song, a thorough interpretation of the imagery of album covers, and careful study of stage choreography and costume choices would provide a much larger and clearer picture of the latent id content that is symbolized in Springsteen’s act. I do not have the space to do this analysis here. I hope, though, that this brief example of psychoanalytic criticism of pop culture shows the reader that a thorough study is necessary, especially considering the strong grip that celebrity worship has on our modern culture.

Lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”

The screen door slams, Mary’ dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again I just can’t face myself alone again
Don’t run back inside darling you know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty but hey you’re alright
Oh and that’s alright with me

You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets
Well now I’m no hero that’s understood
All the redemption I can offer girl is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night’s busting open these two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real, to trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back heaven’s waiting on down the tracks

Oh-oh come take my hand
We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh-oh Thunder Road oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it’s late we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road sit tight take hold
Thunder Road

Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk
And my car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door’s open but the ride it ain’t free
And I know you’re lonely for words that I ain’t spoken
But tonight we’ll be free all the promises’ll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn you hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they’re gone
On the wind so Mary climb in
It’s town full of losers
And I’m pulling out of here to win

References

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Retrieved January 5, 2009, from the internet classics archive:

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html

Blomquist, A., Cash, J (Producers), & Mangold, J. (Director). (2005). Walk the Line
[Motion picture]. United States: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Bonca, C. (2008). Save Me Somebody: Bruce Springsteen’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Covenant.
Retrieved January 6, 2009, from the killing the buddha:

http://www.killingthebuddha.com/dogma/save_me_somebody.htm

Brog, M. (1995). ‘Pop’ Psychology: Putting Rock and Roll Music on the Psychoanalytic
Couch. Psychiatric Times. Retrieved December 29, 2008 from:http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/52461?pageNumber=1

Farber, B. (2007). Rock ‘n ‘ roll wisdom: What psychologically astute lyrics teach about life and love. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger

Gay, P (ed.) (1989). The Freud Reader. New York: W.W. Norton & Company

Lucas, G. (Producer), & Kershner, I. (Director). (1980). Star wars episode V: The empire strikes back [Motion picture]. United States: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Springsteen, B. (1975). Thunder Road. On Born to Run [CD]. New York: Columbia
Records.

Springsteen, B. (1975). Jungleland. On Born to Run [CD]. New York: Columbia Records.

Townsend, P (1969). The Who: Tommy [CD]. New York: MCA Records.

Thunder Road. (2009, January 4). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved
January, 6, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Road_(song)

“With ‘Accelerate,’ R.E.M. hits top speed again.” Fresh Air. National Public Radio.
April 9, 2008.

Wright, E. (1998). Psychoanalytic criticism: a reappraisal. New York: Routledge