Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 65

September 22, 2023: AmericanStudying the Panic of 1873: Anti-Chinese Prejudice

[On September20th, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for tendays, a key moment in the developing economic crisis that came to be known as the Panicof 1873. So for the 150th anniversary of that moment this weekI’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Panic contexts, leading up to a weekend post on2023 echoes of those histories!]

On thePanic’s key role in three stages of the era’s evolving anti-Chinese movement.[NB. For a lot more on all of this, keep an eye out for mynext book!]

1)     TheWorkingmen’s Party of California: While the Panic of 1873 and the resultingLong Depression affected all Americans, as I discussed in yesterday’s post ithit railroad workers especially hard; many of those railroad workers were inthe Western U.S., and so workers in states like California felt the effects particularlyacutely. In 1877, a group of labor leaders in that state formed a third party,the Workingmen’s Party of California (sometimes known as the Workingmen’s Partyof the United States), in an effort to stand up for the rights of workingCalifornians—or rather, of white working Californians, as their platform(hyperlinked above) directly targeted and attacked Chinese American workers asa principal source of their woes. Indeed, this prejudice wasn’t just acomponent of their platform—“The Chinese Must Go!” became the party’sconstantly repeated slogan. This labor-linked political party could havechosen to fight for all laborers, but instead made attacks on Chinese Americanworkers an essential element of its identity and goals.

2)     TheSan Francisco Massacre (often called a race riot, but you know my feelingson that): As American history has demonstrated time and time (and time andtime) again, such prejudiced and hateful propaganda always results in violence,and this rising anti-Chinese narrative was no exception. In late July 1877, theDaily Alta California newspaper ranan article on the evolving Great Railroad Strike, and the Workingmen’s Partycalled for a July 23rdrally at the space near San Francisco’s City Hall known as the Sandlot.While the rally’s first speakers sought to downplay anti-Chinese sentiments infavor of broader labor activism, the audience was primed by the Party andmovement’s overall messages and repeatedly chanted “Talk about the Chinamen”and “Give us the coolie business.” When a Chinese American man happened to walkby, the crowd attacked him, and the hate crime exploded into a multi-dayorgy of violence targeting the city’s longstanding (indeed, pre-UnitedStates in origin) Chinatown neighborhood. By the massacre’s end on July 25th,much of that community had been burned to the crowd, with substantialcasualties as well as widespread destruction that permanently altered thisneighborhood, city, and American community.

3)     Denis Kearney’s Speeches: Denis Kearney, theIrish immigrant and San Francisco business leader turned labor activist andeventual national face of the anti-Chinese movement, took a circuitous path into themovement, as I will discuss at much greater length in my book. But bySeptember 1877, Kearney was giving his own speeches at the Sandlot, and the heart of those speeches(which made Kearney a hugely prominent and influential figure on the nationalstage) was a thoroughly interconnected critique of capitalist bigwigs andChinese Americans. To quote the final two paragraphs of his most famous stump speech: “Weare men, and propose to live like men in this free land, without thecontamination of slave labor…California must be all American, or all Chinese. Weare resolved that it shall be all American, and are prepared to make it so.”This Kearneyism, which became the most significant factor in the passage of thenation’s first federal immigration law, stemmed entirely from theintersection of the Long Depression and anti-Chinese prejudice and hate.

2023connections this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

September 21, 2023: AmericanStudying the Panic of 1873: The Railroad Strike

[On September20th, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for tendays, a key moment in the developing economic crisis that came to be known as the Panicof 1873. So for the 150th anniversary of that moment this weekI’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Panic contexts, leading up to a weekend post on2023 echoes of those histories!]

On how ahugely important labor action was influenced by the Panic, and vice versa.

As I wrotein my recent LaborDay Saturday Evening Post ConsideringHistory column, labor unions and labor activism go all the way back to thefoundational moments and eras in American history, and became significantlymore possible still (at least in legal terms) and thus more widespread afterthe 1842 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision I discuss there. Butthose antebellum labor organizations and actions generally remained local,contained to the specific communities and settings where they originated. Itwas in the period immediately following the Civil War that a truly nationallabor movement began to emerge, as illustrated by the August 1866 foundingof the National Labor Union in Baltimore and the 1869 creationof the Knights of Labor in Philadelphia. And not too long after, the firsttruly national labor action took place, the 1877 protests and riots that cameto be known collectively as the Great Railroad Strike.

The GreatRailroad Strike thus certainly has to be contextualized by both the labormovement’s longstanding presence and its unfolding late 19th centuryshifts, and it’s in those contexts that I’ve always thought about these 1877events. But in researching this week’s series, I’ve learned just how much thestrike was also influenced by the Panic of 1873 and the resulting depression. AsI discussed earlier in the week, the collapseof the railroad boom was a major factor in the Panic itself; moreover, oneof the immediate results of the Panic was the September1873 failure of financier Jay Cooke’s banking andinvestment company, which was closely tied to railroad bonds and thecollapse of which furthered the railroad implosion. Due to these factors(complemented and extended by the usual corporate greed and short-sightedness,natch), railroad companies began to cut workers’ wages consistently and steeply,culminating in three distinct and equally sizeablecuts in 1877 alone. As I discussed in that Saturday Evening Post column, the fight for better wages was alwaysat the heart of the American labor movement, and these post-Panic wage cutswere without question the central cause of the largest and most national laboraction to date.

So theGreat Railroad Strike of 1877 was clearly interconnected with and even causedby the Panic of 1873—but I would argue that the strike surely played a role aswell in helping end the post-Panic economic downturn. Most of the narratives ofthat 1870s Long DepressionI’ve encountered suggest that it simply “ended in 1879” (with some lingeringaftereffects, of course), but if American history teaches us anything abouteconomic downturns, it’s that counteringand reversing them requires specificand sustained government intervention.And I think it’s no coincidence that the first such sustained federalgovernment response to the Long Depression seems to have begun in late 1877,spurred on by newly elected President RutherfordB. Hayes’ Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman as well as Congressmenlike Missouri’sRichard Bland and Senators like Iowa’s William Allison.Government intervention requires both acknowledgment of the problem and acollective appetite for solutions, and I can’t imagine anything providing moreclarity on both counts than a nationwide labor strike.

Last 1873contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

September 20, 2023: AmericanStudying the Panic of 1873: Two Panics

[On September20th, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for tendays, a key moment in the developing economic crisis that came to be known as the Panicof 1873. So for the 150th anniversary of that moment this weekI’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Panic contexts, leading up to a weekend post on2023 echoes of those histories!]

On whatwas quite similar and what was distinct about two 19th centuryeconomic downturns.

Rampantspeculation, a longstanding bubble that was about to burst, changes ininternational monetary and lending policies, and concurrent declining pricesfor key products led to widespread economic panic and resulting bank runs. Whenthe banks ran out of their reserves, customers were unable to access (much lessredeem) their currency and other holdings, and the economy quickly collapsed. Whilethat sounds very much like the 1873 conditions I described in yesterday’s postthat culminated in the Panic of 1873, here I’m actually describing the conditions in late1836 and early 1837 that culminated in the May events which became known asthe Panicof 1837. Despite some specific time period variations (for example, the1837 bubble was in land speculation, rather than railroad companies and stocksas was the case with the 1873 bubble), the two Panics share many similarities,as do thedepressions that followed eachof them. (One can say the same about their mutual resemblance to the 2008financial crisis, on which more this weekend.)

As theman said, though, history might rhyme but it doesn’t repeat, and therecertainly were also important and telling differences between the Panics of1837 and 1873. Perhaps the most telling was the role of the U.S. President inhelping cause the earlier panic—not MartinVan Buren, who had been inaugurated only weeks before the Panic started(although he was blamedfor the economic crisis nonetheless, a fate that many presidents havesuffered), but his predecessorand mentor, Andrew Jackson. As with most questions of historical causation,there has been significantdebate over whether Jackson’s infamous Bank Wardirectly contributed to the Panic, and I’m not going to pretend to be expertenough to weigh in on that debate. But it seems clear to me that the absence ofa centralized national bank was at least a factor in the collapse of the banks,and that absence was due directly to Jackson’s refusal to extend the charter ofthe SecondBank of the United States.

Historicalcauses are complicated enough to pin down, but I’d argue that effects can beeven trickier. Over the next two posts I’ll focus on two particularlycomplicated and unquestionably crucial aftermaths of the Panic of 1873, each ofwhich is unique to that era and thus distinct from the effects of the Panic of1837 and the resulting depression. But I would argue that by far the biggesthistorical difference between the two Panics was that in 1873 the nation was inthe midst of one of the largest federal government initiatives in Americanhistory, Federal Reconstruction—and the extended depression that followed thePanic of 1873 withoutquestion contributed to the frustratingly and tragically early conclusionto that federal effort. It did so in a variety of ways, including heavily influencingthe pivotal Congressionalelections of 1874 that voted out many members of President Grant’sRepublican Party. One could also argue, with a great deal of validity, thatboth the depression and the elections provided cover for white Americans toabandon Reconstruction’s commitments to racial justice and equality. Buthowever we parse the relationship, there’s no way to analyze the Panic of 1873without situating it in the Reconstruction era, and that certainly represents akey difference from 1837.

Next 1873contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

September 19, 2023: AmericanStudying the Panic of 1873: The Coinage Act

[On September20th, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for tendays, a key moment in the developing economic crisis that came to be known as the Panicof 1873. So for the 150th anniversary of that moment this weekI’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Panic contexts, leading up to a weekend post on2023 echoes of those histories!]

On complexfinancial realities, simpler ones, and causes and contingencies.

This mightmean I have to give back my Gilded Age Historian membership card (and I’d liketo think I’ve thoroughly earned it, between the diss/firstbook and the many-times-taughtclass), but I’ve never entirely gotten the whole silver/gold debate. I doknow that the Populists were entirely opposed to the late 19thcentury move to a gold standard, as exemplified by perennial presidential loserWilliam Jennings Bryan’s famous 1896“Cross of Gold” speech. And apparently a key stage in that shift was the April1873 Coinage Act (also known as the Mint Act), a federal law which made itillegal for silver bullion to be converted into dollars while allowing for theconversion for gold. That law was caused at least in part by the GermanEmpire’s ending the minting of silver coins in 1871, which put morepressure on the US silver supply and pushed the federal government to hastenthis shift toward a gold standard. But the law also significantly reduced theoverall domestic money supply, which contributed to the runs on banks that Idiscussed yesterday and that blossomed into thePanic of 1873.

Okay, Ithink that has about exhausted my take on the silver and gold debate (and aswith literally everything I write about in this space, I welcome additions,corrections, impassioned rebuttals, and what have you). But one thing I do geton a broader level is the narratives and realities alike that came to definethe Gilded Age, and it’s important to note that while Mark Twain and CharlesDudley Warner didn’t coin that phrase until their 1874novel of the same name, the period’s trends were of course well underway by1873. For example, it seems clear to me that the Coinage Act came to becolloquially known as the Crime of 1873 notbecause of specific details about silver and gold so much as due to a broaderunderstanding that this was a law that benefitted the wealthy (who were able toobtain and stockpile gold much more easily) at the expense of poorer Americans.While that doesn’t seem to have been a main impetus for or purpose of the act,it’s fair to say that President Grant’scorrupt corporate buddies weren’t sorry when he signed it into law.

So theCoinage Act was unquestionably controversial, and reflects developing divisionsthat would only deepen alongside the Gilded Age over the next few decades(perhaps culminating in Bryan’s 1896 speech). But was there really enough timebetween its April passage and the September start of the Panic for the Act tohave played a key role in causing that financial crisis? Given the earlier contributingfactors like the 1871 and 1872 fires on which I focused in yesterday’s post(among other long-term factors like the collapsingrailroad boom), was the writing already on the wall for the Panic longbefore Grant put pen to paper? The relationship between causes andcontingencies when it comes to historical events always makes for compelling(if ultimately unanswerable) questions, and that’s certainly the case for thispair of 1873 events. And wherever we come down on those questions, putting theAct and the Panic in conversation helps us see both as stages in the evolvingand deepening Gilded Age, an example of historical interconnection with a lotto tell us about late 19th century America.

Next 1873contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

September 18, 2023: AmericanStudying the Panic of 1873: Two Fires

[On September20th, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for tendays, a key moment in the developing economic crisis that came to be known as the Panicof 1873. So for the 150th anniversary of that moment this weekI’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Panic contexts, leading up to a weekend post on2023 echoes of those histories!]

On how twodisasters helped set the stage for the Panic, and why they’re even moresignificant than that.

I wrote atlength about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 for my SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columna few years back, so in lieu of a first paragraph here, I’d ask you to checkout that column and then come on back here. Thanks!

Welcomeback! For whatever reason (maybe it’s that damned cow), the Chicago Fire is farbetter remembered than the following year’s GreatBoston Fire of 1872, but that latter one seems to have been just about asdestructive, meaning that one of America’s oldest cities and one of its newestones both experienced parallel, equally terrible tragedies in the early 1870s. Whilethere are lots of contributing causesof the Panic of 1873 (including the most proximate one, a Congressional lawI’ll discuss in tomorrow’s post), these two fires are definitely high on thelist, as the stunning level ofproperty damage they produced led to significant bank and financialshortages as the communities sought to respond and rebuild. Much like the GreatDepression, this Panic and the subsequent depression (on which more inWednesday’s post) really began with runs onthe banks, and it’s fair to say that those runs were due both to actual financialshortages and to the widespread uncertainty and fear that can follow thesekinds of disasters.

So theChicago and Boston fires were important factors in the lead-up to the Panic of1873, and well worth more of a place in our collective memories as a result(Boston at all, and Chicago more accurately, as I discussed in that column). ButI would argue that these two fires also reflect and exemplify something elseabout America in the early 1870s, a related but more overarching point: itshugely rapid (and only increasing) urbanization. Obviouslyfires can and do occur in any community, and are hugely destructive and tragicwherever and whenever they happen. But there’s a certain kind of fire thatconsumes a developing urban center, as embodied most famously perhaps by the 1666Great Fire of London and as would define another rapidlydeveloping American city a few decades after Chicago and Boston. I’m notnecessarily suggesting that fires are a given in those settings and periods—butit does seem a common (if still tragic) part of the urbanization process, areflection perhaps of growth that outpaces infrastructure. That’s a big part ofwhere America was in the early 1870s, a moment ripe for fires and, it seems,Panics as well.

Next 1873contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

September 15, 2023: AmericanStudying The Rising: “My City of Ruins” and “Superman (It’s Not Easy)”

[For thisparticular AmericanStudier, there’s no better way to think through anotheranniversary of September 11th, 2001 than to consider some of themany lessons we can learn from the best cultural work depicting that moment: BruceSpringsteen’s album The Rising (2002). Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy pairs of songs from that vital work—please shareyour own responses, nominations for other vital 9/11 cultural works, andfurther thoughts for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On how artcan radically change in meaning alongside history.

The song,and one of the cultural works in any media, that became most overtly associatedwith September 11th and its aftermaths was released almost exactly ayear before the attacks. America Town,the second studio album from Five forFighting (the stage name of singer-songwriter Vladimir John Ondrasik), was releasedon September 26th, 2000 and included the song “Superman (It’s Not Easy).”That song, an interesting psychological examination of Superman’s innerperspective and emotions, was the album’s second single and had already becomea minor hit by September 2001; but in the aftermath of the attacks it became ananthem for the first responders, an expression of their collective service andsacrifice on and after that horrific day. Five for Fighting’s live piano performanceof it at the October 20thConcert for New York City was one of the most moving moments in a period ofAmerican and world history fullof them, and cemented this song’s enduring status as a definitive artistic expressionof the best of post-9/11 America.

Obviouslyall of Bruce Springsteen’s 2002 album TheRising comprised another, and much more intentional, such artistic expression.But interestingly enough, perhaps the single song from that album which becamemost overtly connected to 9/11 and its aftermaths—including a similarlive performance at another benefit concert, September 12th,2001’s televised special “America:A Tribute to Heroes”—was likewise written a year before that event. Springsteenfirst wrote the song “MyCity of Ruins” in November 2000 for a Christmas benefit concert for AsburyPark, New Jersey, the seaside community that had been such a vital element ofSpringsteen’s childhood and earlymusical career alike. By 2000 Asbury Park was in pretty rough shape (hencethe need for a benefit concert), and so was the titular city of ruins to whichSpringsteen’s speaker repeatedly implores that it “come on, rise up!” Byperforming the song at the Tribute to Heroes benefit Springsteen already began toshift its association to post-September 11th New York City, however,and then his inclusion of it on TheRising—indeed, it is the album’s concluding track—cemented that new andenduring association.

Thespecific circumstances and ways in which these two songs became so closelyassociated with September 11th are thus quite different, but thefundamental facts are nonetheless similar: songs written in the fall of 2000becoming repurposed a year later after the attacks and in the process coming tofeel like collective artistic anthems of that moment and its emotions. And that’swhat I would especially emphasize about this interesting and telling pair of9/11 songs: a particular and potent form of what literary critics would call reader-responsetheory. That criticalperspective argues that the meaning of texts is made not by the authors(nor by intrinsic elements within those texts), but by audiences through their engagementwith and responses to the texts. In my understanding reader-response generallyfocuses on individual reader/audience member, but there’s no reason why we can’tthink about collective such responses, and indeed when it comes to historicalevents that affect an entire community or nation, it makes sense that therewould likewise be collective experiences of cultural and artistic works.Moreover, Springsteen sought to produce such a collective experience with hispost-9/11 album The Rising, and it’sclear that he succeeded very fully indeed.

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what do you think? Other 9/11 texts you’d highlight?

September 14, 2023: AmericanStudying The Rising: “The Fuse” and “Let’s Be Friends”

[For thisparticular AmericanStudier, there’s no better way to think through another anniversaryof September 11th, 2001 than to consider some of the many lessons wecan learn from the best cultural work depicting that moment: BruceSpringsteen’s album The Rising (2002). Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy pairs of songs from that vital work—please shareyour own responses, nominations for other vital 9/11 cultural works, andfurther thoughts for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On thevital role of art about sex in challenging times.

One of themore frustrating recent debates has been over whethersex scenes in film and TV are necessary or outdated. Part of myfrustrations have to do with a significant historical mistake: many of thosearguing against sex scenes seem unaware that films were quite sexy until theemergence of the industry’s restrictiveHayes Code in the 1930s, and thus that sex scenes are far more foundationaland defining to the genre than they are modern. But even leaving thoseimportant details aside, it’s also very frustrating to see so many folksarguing that sex scenes in films or TV shows serve no storytelling purposesother than to titillate or appeal to the male gaze or the like. Of course somesex scenes might be superficial or unnecessary (or even sexist and shitty), butthe same could be said for virtually any type of scene in cultural works; ofcourse there are specific issues around intimacy that need to be addressed withthis particular type of scene (and are being conscientiouslyaddressed these days, it seems), but that’s a distinct question fromwhether the scenes themselves contribute to elements like plot,characterization, and themes.

Songs aresex are not identical to sex scenes in visual media (although there’sunquestionably a problematichistory of blatantly sexist music videos), but many of the same questionscould nonetheless apply. More exactly, I’d likewise make the case that songsabout sex similarly can play important cultural and social roles, well beyondtitillation or the like. And one of the songwriters who has most consistentlyincluded sexy songs on albums where they might seem out of place but insteadcontribute meaningfully to the whole is Bruce Springsteen. Take “Cover Me,” for example,which immediately follows “Born in the U.S.A.” at the start of thatalbum and reflects the speaker’s desire for physical companionship (notlimited to sex, but certainly including it) amidst that challenging 1980sworld. Or “You’ve Got It,”for another example, which comes halfway through Wrecking Ball and importantly offers sex and romantic love as waysto counter that album’s darkand depressing themes.

The Rising includes not one but two such songs,a pair of sexy tracks that complement each other and collectively represent sex’svital role in these kinds of fraught and fragile historical moments. The couplein “The Fuse” arealready together, and so the speaker’s repeated plea of “Come on let me do youright” in response to a moment when the “Devil’s on the horizon line” reflectshow existing companionship can counter such darknesses. Whereas “Let’s Be Friends (Skin toSkin)” is as its title suggests a proposition, one that makes direct (andmaybe slightly cynical, but it doesn’t feel that way to this listener at least)use of the moment’s uncertainties (“Don’t know when this chance might comeagain/Good times go a way of slippin’ away”) to make the case that the speakerand addressee “get skin to skin.” As with all of Springsteen’s sexy songs, bothof these tracks exist not in spite of nor separate from their album and moment’sbroader contexts, but as important layers to those contexts, reminding us as somuch great art does that sex is fully part of art and world alike.

LastRisingStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other 9/11 texts you’d highlight?

September 13, 2023: AmericanStudying The Rising: “You’re Missing” and “Mary’s Place”

[For thisparticular AmericanStudier, there’s no better way to think through anotheranniversary of September 11th, 2001 than to consider some of themany lessons we can learn from the best cultural work depicting that moment: BruceSpringsteen’s album The Rising (2002). Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy pairs of songs from that vital work—please shareyour own responses, nominations for other vital 9/11 cultural works, andfurther thoughts for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On a pairof couplets that reflect two sides and stages of loss and grief.

This feelslike a somewhat gross thing to write about, given the (apparently) entirely unfoundedrumors about Springsteen having an affair with one of them (I’m not going tohyperlink to that story, but it’s out there if you’re interested in readingmore, with the caveat that many of the links will be to the rumors rather thanthe debunking), but in the years after September 11th Bruce becamean ally to and advocate for thecommunity of folks who had lost their spouse (or another family member) inthe attacks. As that hyperlink illustrates, that community has become active invarious political and social efforts of the decades (most recently issuinga statement when the PGA Tour merged with the Saudi Arabian LIV tourearlier this year), but of course it started with a very particular and somberpurpose: linking those who had lost a loved one in this sudden and unexpectedway (ie, differently from those who have lost a loved one to a terminalillness, while fighting in a war, or in other circumstances for which theremight be a bit more preparation, as much as there can be for tragic loss atleast), and whose experiences of grief were thus a bit distinct from othervariations of that emotion.

I’m notsure how much Springsteen had connected with that community prior to writingand recording The Rising, but in anycase he certainly made sure to include songs that foreground the perspectivesof those who had lost loved ones (that was also true of the firefighter’sspouse whom I discussed in Monday’s post, but here I mean more the survivingfamily members of people killed in the attacks themselves). And a pair ofcouplets from the two most overt such songs, located back to back on the album,powerfully capture two very distinct sides and stages of such loss and grief. Thelatter of the two, “You’reMissing,” is the album’s saddest song, and its final couplet, located afterthe last chorus, exemplifies how that sadness extends beyond even the speaker’spersonal loss: “God’s drifting in heaven, devil’s in the mailbox/I got dust onmy shoes, nothing but teardrops.” The second line connects directly to the spouse’sdeath in the attacks (and the speaker’s unsuccessful search for them among thedust of the aftermath), but the first line links that grief to parallelemotions of uncertainty and fear (ones felt by all Americans, but even morepotently by those who had been personally affected by the 9/11 attacks),including those prompted by the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks illustratedby the post-9/11anthrax mailings.  

There’s nota sadder couplet on The Rising, and Iwould argue not a more important one either in achieving the album’s emotionaland historical purposes. But perhaps Springsteen’s most overarching suchpurpose was to present multiple layers of this event and its contexts, and soright before “You’re Missing” he includes another, very different song from theperspective of a 9/11 widow: “Mary’s Place.” “Mary’sPlace” is the album’s most overt party anthem, and became even more so during the Rising tour, when Springsteen would frequentlyintroduce the band’s rollicking performance of it by saying “Let’s roadhouse!” Butwhile the song is most definitely about a house party, it’s also and even moreimportantly about where and how we find optimism in dark times (a subject I’vethought about a good bit overthe years), and a beautiful couplet from the song’s final verse capturesthat tone with particular clarity and power: “I’ve got a picture of you in mylocket, I keep it close to my heart/This light shining in my breast, leading methrough the dark.” To quote one of the mostbeautiful lines ever written about loss and love, “What is grief, if notlove persevering?”

NextRisingStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other 9/11 texts you’d highlight?

September 12, 2023: AmericanStudying The Rising: “Paradise” and “Worlds Apart”

[For thisparticular AmericanStudier, there’s no better way to think through anotheranniversary of September 11th, 2001 than to consider some of themany lessons we can learn from the best cultural work depicting that moment: BruceSpringsteen’s album The Rising (2002). Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy pairs of songs from that vital work—please shareyour own responses, nominations for other vital 9/11 cultural works, andfurther thoughts for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On twovery different ways to push past stereotypes of Muslims.

It’s notan easy subject to discuss, and of course one that can (and has) far too easilylead to racialprofiling and hate crimes of all sorts (in 2001 and across thedecades since), but there’s no way to engage September 11th,in cultural texts as in every form of conversation, without some portrayals ofMuslim extremist terrorists, and specifically of suicide bombers. I hope itgoes without saying to readers of this blog, and to anyone who knows me in anycontext, that I would always argue—and not even argue, but simply state,because these are true facts—that the 9/11 bombers in no way represented Islam,nor their Muslim communities, nor Muslim Americans (they were not from theUnited States at all, of course), and were just as fanaticaland hateful as any other terrorists, pastor present, foreign or domestic.But in the case of September 11th, 2001, fanatical and hatefulterrorists calling themselves Muslims used suicide bombings to attack New YorkCity and Washington, and I repeat that no cultural works about that day orthose events can or should elide that complex but crucial layer to thesehistories and those involved in (as well as, in the case of Muslim Americansand Muslims worldwide, affected by) them.

One of themost complex and interesting songs on TheRising, the penultimate track “Paradise,” engages withsuicide bombers and bombings very overtly and centrally. The song seems to movethrough distinct and equally ambiguous speakers in each verse, all dealing withdeath and the losses and uncertainties it produces (including about whetherthere is such a thing as the titular place beyond death), but the first verse’sspeaker is pretty clearly a suicide bomber, one who takes “the schoolbooks”from a child’s “pack” (presumably the speaker’s own) and replaces them with “plastic,wire, and your kiss,” all of which that speaker then takes to a “crowdedmarketplace” where they will apparently detonate their bomb. We get no more specificidentifying information than that, but in an album so clearly focused onSeptember 11th, it is impossible not to think of this suicide bomberas a Muslim extremist like those behind the 9/11 attacks. On the one hand,then, this song seems to reinforce certain stereotypes about Muslims (if oneslinked to specific 9/11 contexts to be sure); but on another, it adds multiplehumanizing layers to those images, both in the opening verse (the relationship withthe child who is the speaker’s addressee) and in the song as a whole(analogizing this bomber, at least in some ways, to the other speakers who havelost loved ones, quite possibly in the 9/11 attacks).

Again,complicated and difficult stuff, and if it were the only way that Springsteen’salbum engages with Muslims I think that’d be a missed opportunity. But it’snot, and in the other overt such engagement, “Worlds Apart,”Springsteen offers a vitally distinct vision of that global community. Thespeaker and situation are similarly ambiguous, but to my mind the speaker is aMuslim and Arabic man, perhaps from Afghanistan (a “dry and troubled country”that longs for “Allah’s blessed rain,” and of course one very connected to theaftermath of 9/11 as of 2002), in an interfaith relationship with a Westernwoman (presumably an American one, given Springsteen’s own identity and thealbum’s overall focus). I would argue that the song’s best verse, and one ofthe very best on the album, is its second “Sometimes the truth just ain’tenough, or it’s too much in times like this/Let’s throw the truth away, we’ll findit in this kiss/In your skin upon my skin, in the beating of our hearts/May theliving let us in, before the dead tear us apart.” I’m not sure I need to saymuch more after those potent lines, but will just add that that’s a reflectionon intimacy, identity, community, and times like 9/11 and its aftermath—for Muslimsand for all of us—without which this album would be sorely impoverished.

NextRisingStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other 9/11 texts you’d highlight?

September 11, 2023: AmericanStudying The Rising: “Into the Fire” and “The Rising”

[For thisparticular AmericanStudier, there’s no better way to think through anotheranniversary of September 11th, 2001 than to consider some of themany lessons we can learn from the best cultural work depicting that moment: BruceSpringsteen’s album The Rising (2002). Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy pairs of songs from that vital work—please shareyour own responses, nominations for other vital 9/11 cultural works, andfurther thoughts for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On twocomplementary but also contrasting ways to see 9/11 firefighters.

The Rising is about many different things, as Ihope this week’s series will make clear, but there’s no doubt thatSpringsteen’s inspiration for and main perceived focus of the album was theexperience of New York City firefighters and first responders and their lovedones on and after September 11th, 2001. Bruce and New York have beenintertwined for his whole career, as illustrated by both the famous May 1972 ColumbiaRecords audition for John Hammond and an early song like “It’s Hard to Be a Saint inthe City” that he played there (not to mention his youthful sojourns to thecity, through which he first truly encountered live rock music as he describesat length in hisautobiography). And when a passingdriver shouted out “Bruce, we need you” on the afternoon of September 11th,2001, it seems clear from the album that eventually resulted from that momentthat Springsteen took the first-person plural pronoun to mean not just allAmericans (although yes) but specifically the community of New Yorkers, andmore specifically still that first responder community.

A numberof the album’s songs connect to that first responder community and its 9/11experiences in one way or another, but two of the album’s bookends do so veryspecifically and centrally for NYC firefighters: the second song, “Into the Fire”; and thethirteenth, the title track “The Rising.” The twosongs share a very similar through-line, imagery of those firefighters climbingthe steps of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th,ascending into the fire that was both their expected (if still courageous)professional destination and the source of their tragic deaths. But theirspeakers and perspectives represent two distinct if interconnected sides of thecoin when it comes to that subject and experience: “The Rising” is narrated byone of the firefighters himself, thinking about his wife and family at home aswell as his 9/11 experiences; while “Into the Fire” is narrated by the spouse(presumably wife, although the gender is unspecified) of a firefighter,reflecting on their family life as well as her husband’s (again presumably)9/11 experiences.

Of coursethose two perspectives are complementary, and they don’t present radicallydifferent views of the experiences or events (this isn’t Springsteen’s Rashomon,that is). But there is one interesting and important way in which theycontrast, and that’s in their overarching tone. “Into the Fire” certainlystrives for optimism at times, particularly in the repetition of lines like“May your strength give us strength”; but to my mind the song’s central tone isthat of loss and mourning and grief, one captured in more intimate lines like“I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher” and “You layyour hand on me/Then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave.” “TheRising” acknowledges those darker emotions, especially in lines from the bridgelike “Sky of blackness and sorrow” and “Sky of longing and emptiness”; but tomy mind its central tone is that of the power and potency of shared sacrifice,one captured with particular clarity by the opening lines of the chorus: “Comeon up for the rising/Come on up, lay your hands in mine.” The speaker of “Fire”remembers the intimate laying of hands that was lost on 9/11, while “The Rising”reflects the communal laying of hands that can result from such tragedies—both prettycrucial perspectives to remember on the anniversary of such events.

NextRisingStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other 9/11 texts you’d highlight?