A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE BOSS WRITES DICK LIT: Via today's NYT we learn of this provocative PopMatters essay by Charles A. Hohman on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A., focusing on the album's take on gender and sexuality. His conclusion:

From the hypermasculine stance on the cover to Springsteen’s forcefully vigorous vocals throughout, Born in the U.S.A. is an album about masculinity, clearly operating from a man’s point of view. To Springsteen’s credit, his women are seldom sex objects, and when they are, such as on “Darlington County”, that objectification is punished. However, there is little subversion of assigned gender roles within Springsteen’s portraits. In fact, his women are largely powerless, kept firmly in the private sphere, functioning as trophies or even as entitlements for the male protagonists. Such blind traditionalism was especially notable in 1984, when everyone from Madonna to Cyndi Lauper to Chrissie Hynde and Tina Turner were subverting the standard rock masculinity. Hell, even Springsteen’s mega-selling male rivals, Michael Jackson and Prince, did more, in both appearance and sound, to challenge the common expectations of masculine performance. In being a rock and roll revivalist, Springsteen also revived the less savory aspects of rock and roll, namely the Eisenhower-era female submission that coursed through so much early rock.