Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen

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Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen

Postby chlamor » Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:44 pm

The Musical Patriot
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen

By DAVID YEARSLEY

A darkened stadium massed with tens of thousands of fanatics in precise formation, marching in place to patriotic music of the homeland. Powerful searchlights sending their columns up into the inifinity of the night sky in a display seen for miles around and in striking shots from an overhead Zeppelin to be used for propaganda. Nuremberg 1937 and the Nazi Party Congress?

No, it’s Tampa 2009 and the Superbowl halftime show.

Both in the high-energy event itself and even more strikingly in stills, the iconography of the Bruce Springsteen’s grand Superbowl entertainment owed its inspiration to Albert Speer’s Cathedral of Light with its 150 vertical beams rising up from the Nuremberg Zeppelin fields into the Bavarian heavens. The designers of the Superbowl strayed from the static effect of Speer’s installation, by waggling the stately shafts of light as if they were unable to resist the infectiousness of the Boss’s full-throttle music. This lascivious quavering demonstrated why the Nazis distrusted the beat of degenerate music from America—jazz and its miscegenated descendents. The menacing majesty of Speer’s original architectural concept would have been weakened if the beams had taken to shaking their booties to a jungle beat.

With one eye on the past and the other on the future, the Superbowl strove to outdo Nazi precedent with the massive effusions of fireworks that punctuated the show at the climax of songs, then finally and orgasmically after Springsteen and co’s twelve minutes were up and the mock referee ran on stage to throw a penalty flag and bring the show to a close. That was when all hell broke loose in a mighty fusillade. With the Nazi imagery clearly in one’s head, the rockets’ red glare was pure Eastern Front. Thus the halftime show combined two aspects of Speer’s dark creativity: the architect and the director of munitions. The fascist design in repose leapt into action with terrible dynamic energy: the Cathedral of Light shattered by a re-enactment of the Blitz.

But when those streaking bolts of fire were frozen by photography for more considered contemplation, Speer’s presence loomed as brightly as the searchlights and flares. Masters of mass spectacle, the Nazi would have admired how the Superbowl exploited the primordial power of light and dark, stasis and movement.

No less incisive a commentator on American culture than the late George Carlin laid bare with comic precision the military metaphors that give meaning to football: the Steelers’ final drive, “marching down the field,” was the last of many examples of this discourse in Sunday’s game. As I recall, the Blitz is one such metaphor Carlin never mentioned, though it’s perhaps the most terrifying of the lot.

What must the international television audience, especially those watching the Superbowl who have experienced real American bombs falling, thought about this theatrical representation of military might and national unity?

Also unsettling was the way these searchlights and fireworks cast a retrospective glare on Springsteen’s most recent national, indeed international, appearance only a couple of weeks ago in front of the Lincoln Memorial to kick-off Obama’s inauguration welcome week with the “We Are One” Concert—the very title yet one more sinister slogan of blind allegiance to America. On that Sunday the Boss stood on the steps of the monument in front of a robed choir in columnar formation singing the post-9/11 anthem “The Rising.” A version of that same choir, also in church garments, appeared briefly in the Superbowl show on football’s most sacred Sunday. Yet again, the Nazis come to mind in the way they attempted to divert the power of organized Christian religion for the purposes of fascist adoration and ritual. I’m not forecasting a Putsch, but I get doubly nervous when I see church choirs singing in front of nationalist sites.

At Springsteen’s Lincoln Memorial performance all was bright and gleaming. The patriotic ballad “The Rising” moving from the darkness of terrorist attack to the redemption of the “sky of fullness, sky of blessed of life”, traces a predictably trajectory from dark to light. The backdrop of the monument’s white marble presented an absolute contrast to the dark pit of the Tampa stadium at halftime. But during Superbowl I again saw the gleaming Apollonian facade of the columned monument even more starkly for what it is: too square, too white, too hulking in its proportion. And when one envisions the colossal Lincoln statue and remembers how frighteningly stiff, godlike, scary it is, one might also be forgiven for thinking of the Nazi sculptor Arno Breker’s Aryan nudes. Thankfully Abe is not naked. In a word the Lincoln Memorial, too, is architecture Speer himself could have created. That Speer clearly admired and wanted to surpass the grand axes and monumental classical buildings of Washington DC in his architectural plans to transform Berlin into Germania, the capital of the Thousand Year Reich, only helps to confirm these associations.

Some might even claim that the virility of such nudes is to be heard in the rough urgency of Springsteen’s voice. The manly was on display at the Superbowl, the modern Grecian games of the macho, even more so on the stage than on the field. Springsteen, having ditched his guitar, grabbed the microphone ,then lay back on the stage with the glinting microphone stand rising above him in impressive display. The subsequent knee-skid into the camera that brought Springsteen’s crotch into the living room’s of millions only confirmed the importance of the money shot when heroes are on the national stage. Expose a female nipple and you’ve got national outrage. Give us a breadbasket blackout and you’ve tears of national elation. (The 30-second “glitch” and thus brightening up the fourth quarter for the benefit of Comcast cable subscribers in Arizona offered the appropriate coda to the halftime strutting.)

Springsteen promised good clean rock ‘n roll fun, though purity is an elastic comcast. But mass spectacle is by definition ideological, the Superbowl the highest holiday of American cultural life. The nostalgic hits Springsteen delivered at halftime tugged persistently at American heartstrings even as the rock n’ rollers shook their creaking hips: the euphoria of the show was built on unalloyed sentimentality. The Boss’s decision to include the title track from his new album was canny product placement, but it also continues in the vein of patriotic vein of “The Rising.” How could such an occasion as Superbowl Sunday pass without yet another variant mantra of Obamian hope uniting the nation in song: “I’m working on a dream / And our love will make it real someday.”

Springsteen is not only a supporter of Obama but also a friend. If you go to his website, which is also his Facebook account, you’ll see most prominently among his friends a photo of the President. In contrast to the amorphous group of FOBs (Friends of Bill) in Clintontime, the new FOBs (Friends of Barack) can be quantified with the powerful Facebook software. I’m guessing that Internet President is literally a Friend to millions.

Much was made about Springsteen’s finally relenting, or better condescending, to do the halftime show after several previous invitations had rebuffed. It was reported that the artist saw such a venue as beneath him and his E Street Band. The claim was that only after major acts like the Prince, Rolling Stones, Bonjovi, and U2 others have appeared at the Superbowl did Springsteen decide the context was worthy of him.

Springsteen’s Lincoln Memorial and Superbowl performances are the musical arch through which the Obama years have made their triumphal entry.

That Springsteen and the E Streeters, like Perlman and his inaugural quartet, were faking it along with a pre-recorded tape is so predictable that it doesn’t deserve mention. Again time constraints and insurmountable logistics provided the justification. That all must go down exactly as planned in mass public spectacle is something the Nazis understood better than anyone

http://www.counterpunch.org/yearsley02062009.html
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Postby JackRiddler » Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:24 pm

.

This was possibly the most shamelessly stupid piece I ever read on counterpunch, and that includes a number of 9/11 conspiracy hysterics.

If you want to argue that all stadium rock shows have Nazi elements, you may well have a case. You may even find Keef and Mick nodding in agreement.

To single out these two Springsteen appearances as something in any way out of the ordinary for rock music played in front of huge audiences (gasp, mygod: fireworks! Really?!) or in any way different in their staging from other recent Super Bowl halftime shows... (which maybe the author didn't see?)

Or, for that matter, to take the current wave of adulation around Obama as somehow unprecedented compared to popular US politicians before him, or as something that's going to last much beyond the usual honeymoon period...

and then to draw the arc straight to the friggin' Nazi party rallies!

Is transparent! opportunist! trash talk!

Did the author see the FOX intro to Super Bowl XLI? Did he notice Gen. Petraeus doing the coin-flip at the beginning of this game? And he's going to tell us about Springsteen's part of the show coming out of Speer?!

Hey, it's easier to get attention with this shit than to just describe the sorry and appalling realities of our country and the new government as they actually are, isn't it? (Next up: As I have failed to applaud this junk, I'll be called an Obama cultist. Because those are the only choices: either you call him Hitler and Springsteen his Riefenstahl, or you're just another brainwashed puppy dog!)

.
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Postby waugs » Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:50 pm

"shamelessly stupid" is what I'd call Springsteen's performance at the Superbowl.
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Postby JackRiddler » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:10 pm

waugs wrote:"shamelessly stupid" is what I'd call Springsteen's performance at the Superbowl.


I quite liked it, actually, which makes me an ardent admirer of the Nazis.

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Postby waugs » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:43 pm

I wouldn't say that, but I thought it was one of the cheesiest performances I've ever seen.
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Postby barracuda » Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:27 am

Pfffft. The NFL wishes they could come close to the Nuremburg pagents. A few minutes of pop songs in the middle of a game of tackle football? Gimme a break.

Image
The whole Stupidbowl and associated parking lot would fit into a little corner of this scene.

JackRiddler wrote:I quite liked it, actually, which makes me an ardent admirer of the Nazis.

That just makes you a New Yorker, and a fan. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with Bruce lipsynching the gig to advertise his new platter. They don't call him "The Boss" for being a crummy business man. But thankfully this is one indignity the 70's punk rockers may be able to avoid. They're all mostly dead already.
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:35 am

Gawd, JR. Fascism can be gruff voices and power chords.

Do you really have that big a blind spot to not know that the Uber Bowl is a Nuremberg Rally affirming power dominance (MILITARISM) and that 'The Boss' (or "Furher/Father/Padre") is one clueless asshole for adding his Telecaster masculinity and nationalist meme (New Jersey is America!) to the Nazi-ism?

Fuck Springsteen for adding his cred props and memetics to the bund.
"America goes to 11!"

Oh...and THANK YOU, CHLAMOR.
You are on it, dude.
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Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:02 am

didn't watch the game, didn't watch the halftime show, didn't watch the commercials . . .

but I just think this writing is pseudo-intellectual crap trying way too hard

The designers of the Superbowl strayed from the static effect of Speer’s installation, by waggling the stately shafts of light as if they were unable to resist the infectiousness of the Boss’s full-throttle music. This lascivious quavering demonstrated why the Nazis distrusted the beat of degenerate music from America—jazz and its miscegenated descendents. The menacing majesty of Speer’s original architectural concept would have been weakened if the beams had taken to shaking their booties to a jungle beat.

With one eye on the past and the other on the future, the Superbowl strove to outdo Nazi precedent with the massive effusions of fireworks that punctuated the show at the climax of songs, then finally and orgasmically after Springsteen and co’s twelve minutes were up and the mock referee ran on stage to throw a penalty flag and bring the show to a close. That was when all hell broke loose in a mighty fusillade. With the Nazi imagery clearly in one’s head, the rockets’ red glare was pure Eastern Front. Thus the halftime show combined two aspects of Speer’s dark creativity: the architect and the director of munitions. The fascist design in repose leapt into action with terrible dynamic energy: the Cathedral of Light shattered by a re-enactment of the Blitz.


Then again, maybe I'm just jealous the writer can use so many SAT vocabulary words to describe what sounds to me like a typical, played-out, lowest common denominator halftime show. It's "the boss," not Rage Against the Machine.
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:11 am

mentalgongfu2 wrote:didn't watch the game, didn't watch the halftime show, didn't watch the commercials . . .

but I just think this writing is pseudo-intellectual crap trying way too hard

The designers of the Superbowl strayed from the static effect of Speer’s installation, by waggling the stately shafts of light as if they were unable to resist the infectiousness of the Boss’s full-throttle music. This lascivious quavering demonstrated why the Nazis distrusted the beat of degenerate music from America—jazz and its miscegenated descendents. The menacing majesty of Speer’s original architectural concept would have been weakened if the beams had taken to shaking their booties to a jungle beat.

With one eye on the past and the other on the future, the Superbowl strove to outdo Nazi precedent with the massive effusions of fireworks that punctuated the show at the climax of songs, then finally and orgasmically after Springsteen and co’s twelve minutes were up and the mock referee ran on stage to throw a penalty flag and bring the show to a close. That was when all hell broke loose in a mighty fusillade. With the Nazi imagery clearly in one’s head, the rockets’ red glare was pure Eastern Front. Thus the halftime show combined two aspects of Speer’s dark creativity: the architect and the director of munitions. The fascist design in repose leapt into action with terrible dynamic energy: the Cathedral of Light shattered by a re-enactment of the Blitz.


Then again, maybe I'm just jealous the writer can use so many SAT vocabulary words to describe what sounds to me like a typical, played-out, lowest common denominator halftime show. It's "the boss," not Rage Against the Machine.


I think that writing is dead on solid. An accurate description of show biz Naziism.[/i]
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Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:15 am

also, without meaning to personally insult you, Jack, the persecution complex among self-avowed Obama supporters is getting a little old. It is beyond me how people like you and Professor Pan can see nuance in every other topic, particularly in your own views about Obama, but feel the need to view anyone who is more critical or less optimistic as demanding a black/white either/or choice.

SOME people here have expressed that opinion. Most of what I have read from RI posters falls into a much grayer area.


I'll be called an Obama cultist. Because those are the only choices: either you call him Hitler and Springsteen his Riefenstahl, or you're just another brainwashed puppy dog!)
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Postby IanEye » Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:53 am

Image

Prince was way better than Bruce.

Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling off a church
And killed everyone inside
U turn on the telly and every other story
Is tellin' U somebody died
A sister killed her baby cuz she couldn't afford 2 feed it
And yet we're sending people 2 the moon
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Postby ultramegagenius » Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:51 am

Image
“Cathedral of Light” on Zeppelin Field during the last NSDAP Party Rally, 1938 (Stadtarchiv Nuremberg).

The Zeppelin Field (312 x 285 metres interior area, bigger than 12 football fields) with the main grandstand was the only planned construction work to be completed. It provided space for up to 200,000 people. Here mass parades of the German Labour Service, the Wehrmacht, and of the “political leaders” (office bearers of the NSDAP) were staged to assemble before the “Führer”, Adolf Hitler. The “Cathedral of Light” provided spectacular effects, when over 150 particularly strong floodlights beamed right up into the sky.


http://www.kubiss.de/kulturreferat/reichsparteitagsgelaende/englisch/zeppelinfeld.htm

i'd have to go with barracuda on this one...
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Postby beeline » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:04 am

Hmmm, here are a few quotes from Springsteen. What a Nazi.

"Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed."

"Poor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be kings, and a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything."

"Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves."

"I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost."

"If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it."

"If my work was about anything, it was about the search for identity, for personal recognition, for acceptance, for communion, and for a big country. I've always felt that's why people come to my shows, because they feel that big country in their hearts."

Clearly the man is a facist, with nothing but hatred in his heart for puppy dogs, flowers, and all things non-Germanic.
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Postby JackRiddler » Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:26 pm

.

And don't you remember the words to Springsteen's proposal for a fascist national anthem?

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 covering up

[chorus:]
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

[chorus]

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"

[chorus]

I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms

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

I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

.
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Postby JackRiddler » Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:29 pm

IanEye wrote:Prince was way better than Bruce.



Far the greater artist, to be sure, his work would be my preferred music for eternity as a "Desert Island Disc." But I thought Springsteen's 12 minutes were better, perhaps because they were canned, but someone should provide a source for that claim, as I won't believe that on the word alone of Yearsley's carpet-bombing piece.

.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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