Where is the ‘Promised Land’?: Class and Gender in Bruce Springsteen's Rock Lyrics

Abstract

'New' cultural geography is now over a decade old. Analysts have forged innovative ways to interpret landscapes. Critical geographers interested in power relations have demonstrated that culture is a process which is continually politically contested. Feminist materialist approaches are not as popular as others in the 'new' cultural geography, but can still contribute much to an investigation of the production of culture. By reading popular cultural media through materialist and feminist lenses, a monolithic depiction of an urban landscape, like the city being a jungle and the streets leading to a "Promised Land", breaks down leaving in its place a complex interpretation of the assumptions underlying the construction of that landscape. In this paper, I examine a set of Bruce Springsteen's lyrics. I identify three themes around which I discuss the ways in which two sets of power relations, class and gender, manifest in the landscapes Springsteen depicts. The three themes are: (1) dichotomized notions of gender, based on Western philosophies, and class, based on American working class traditions; (2) a concomitant expression of oppression of women within the working class and awareness of dominating class relations; and (3) a comparatively subtle expression of an entrenched patriarchy and an overt characterization of class consciousness.