Crime, Lawbreaking, and Counterhegemonic Humanism in the Songs of Bruce Springsteen

Abstract

legislatures, courts, and police departments - assume primary responsibility for criminal definitions and designations, but elected officials, religious leaders, and the media also contribute significantly. media in fact eagerly report on how much crime exists, thereby inviting one and all to understand crime as a species of phenomenological fact. Overall, this multifaceted hegemonic tact confirms norms and values, reinforces the state's legitimacy, and contributes generally to the hegemony's self-preservation.2 Unfor- tunately, the process also makes those designated as criminals into extreme outsiders. stage is set for them to be incarcerated, marginalized, denigrated and rejected. An argument can in fact be made that this concern stretches through Springsteen's four decades of singing and songwriting. To be sure, with maturity and changing times Springsteen's styles and focus have changed. verbose ditties of his youth gave way to roaring anthems which in turn gave way to sober reflections on marriage, fatherhood, and responsibility. Instead of singing about kids and their cars, Springsteen came to sing about unemployment and personal disappointment and then, as if that was not enough, about the horror of 9-1 1. One of the great treats for a longtime Springsteen fan is tracking his changes. But still, Springsteen's topical interest in crime and lawbreaking has been present throughout his stylistic shifts and thematic turns. We can think of Guilty and The Hitter as the beginning and current embodiment of Springsteen's attention to crime and lawbreaking. He sang the song Guilty in 1969 and 1970 with Steel Mill, his early band from the Jersey shore. song presents a young lawbreaker who is dragged into court and a jury only too eager to convict.3 The Hitter, meanwhile, appears on Devils and Dust (2005) and is another song about a young lawbreaker. He flees to New Orleans with the police on his tail, makes his way as a prize- fighter, and then is paid off to illegally throw a fight to Big John McDowell. Between Guilty and The Hitter, Springsteen's albums and compact disks have routinely in- cluded treatments of crime or lawbreaking. Nebraska (1982) and Ghost of Tom Joad