Bruce Springsteen and the Death of the Monoculture in Music
Last night I finally got around to watching the Bruce Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. It wasn’t quite as pretentious as I expected, nor did it rise above the level of a three-star movie, but it did speak to a theme I’ve discussed on here before, namely the death of the monoculture.
The film starts out well enough, with an artistic crisis and meeting a girl, then gradually falls apart later on. We are expected to care about a rockstar going to therapy, which is a tough sell at the best of times, and we’re not really given a reason why poor old Bruce is depressed about his massive success. It seems to be related to his relationship with his father, which is also underdeveloped.
It’s as if they’re expecting us to have read Springsteen’s autobiography, and come in already caring about these things. Well, I have read most of the autobiography and love his music, and I still didn’t care.
The relationship angle is slightly more interesting, though ends up very much like the recent Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, i.e. with Bruce binning off the girl because he’s too dedicated to his art and his own self-mythologising.
Thankfully the film doesn’t go into Springsteen’s political views, which are those of any rich Democrat NPC.
What is most interesting to me about the movie is the extreme reverence for the artist displayed by those around Springsteen. Obviously this is largely due to their own commercial interests, but even that is telling, as an artist as serious as Springsteen also being a giant cash cow is something that belongs to a particular era of the ‘monoculture’.
