June 18, 2024 • 36 mins
Jesse and Holly have anointed themselves with Queer Scientific Research Status and they’re ready to put The Boss to the test. Can he fulfill the first item on their checklist: CAMP?
Show notes:
Read a transcript of today’s episode
If this is your first time thinking about The Boss as a queer icon, and you want to explore these new feelings you’re having, me and Holly have made a playlist: Queer Springsteen. Think of it as a Queer Bruce 101 - it’s a combination of Bruce songs that we think are queer anthems, and then covers of Bruce songs by legendary queer artists. Some of them are their friends, who made the covers to celebrate the release of the show!
Credits:
Because the Boss Belongs to Us is a production of Molten Heart and iHeartPodcasts
Creator: Jesse Lawson
Hosts and Executive Producers: Jesse Lawson and Holly Casio
This episode features: Eleanor Medhurst and Brooke Palmieri
Producer + Sound Designer: Jesse Lawson
Production Assistant: Tess Hazel
Mix Engineer: Michelle Macklem
Original music and theme: Talk Bazaar
Show Art: Holly Casio
Fact Checking: Selena Solin
Legal: Rowan Maron and Feil
Molten Heart Executive Producer: Jazmine (JT) Green
iHeartPodcasts Executive Producer: Lindsey Hoffman
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, this is Jesse and Holly with a quick note
before we start.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This is the first time that we've ever made media
that's published in the United States, and in light of that,
we have a couple of things to say. Number One,
we are not ever making any speculations on Bruce Bringsteen's
sexuality or gender.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Number Two, we wanted to give you a heads up
that in this episode we use historically derogatory language which
we have reclaimed as queer people. So this is every
Bruce zem I've ever made.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
So I think.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's yeah, it's from queers.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Near to town. It's just part you.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Nobody thinks about loneliness and small town fatigue like Bruce.
Nobody can write so succinctly about the dark, quiet emptiness
when you are lonely and out of place, and then
wrap it up in a three minute pop song like
Bruce can. Nobody can write about them danity of depression
and the infatuation of being in love like Bruce. I
was Bruce in born to run thunder Road, ready to
(01:07):
break out of my small town and never look back.
I was Bruce in dancing in the dark, staring in
a mirror, hitting my clothes, my hair and my face.
I was tired and bothered myself and dreaming of getting out.
And sure I had crushes of plenty, but more than anything,
I just wanted queer friends to make me feel normal,
and that just didn't exist in my small town. It's
(01:29):
all a bit emo and dramatic now considering I've lived
in a big city with queer friends and culture and
punk and art in my life, but things are a
bit emo and dramatic when you're a lonely teenage queer.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
And Bruce understood my pain. I'm Holly.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
You're hearing recordings of me in my natural habitat, sitting
on the floor in my bedroom, surrounded by my zeines.
I was just reading from one I made about Bruce
Brinkstein called Queer's on the Edge of Town. I started
makingnes in the nineties when I was living in a
small town in West Yorkshire, and it was my entry
to the world of DIY queer punk. It's not very
(02:10):
common for queer DIY punks to be into Bruce Springsteen.
When my friends found out about how much I loved Bruce,
they'd often just take the pace, not understanding why I
spent so much time listening to this pretty mainstream rock musician.
So one night in twenty ten, I decided to make
a zine that would explain why I'm.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So obsessed with Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
This scene was made while listening to Nebraska, the Rising
and Live in New York. The introduction says, wait, you
like Bruce Springsteen, but Holly, I thought you were super
cool and punk rock and awesome Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Really.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I made I think ten copies, gave them to my
friends and was like, this is how Bruce Springsteen makes
me feel.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Stop making fun of me.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
About a year later, my friend convinced me to take
some copies to the Queer sine Fest in London, and
about halfway through the day it already sold out. It
was the first time I realized that there were other
queer Bruce Nerds out there, So I started making mousines.
Issue Too, a bit of a soppy one Is This
Issue Too, came out in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Me and Bruce and.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
My dads Why a Northern Queer, working class feminist fam
Love of Druce Sprinsteen, which is literally just all about
my dad and class and being working class and working
factories and the similarities there's really famous Bruce Sprinsteen songs
like Born's Ron thunder Road, which are all about escape
(03:42):
and leaving somewhere and never coming back. But Bruce is
also really good at writing about what about the people
who don't leave? What about the people who can't leave
because they're stuck? And I feel like it was just
this big thing to listen to Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And hear my family. My dad reflected in those.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Lyrics if she got lost in the move.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
I moved house se many times in London. It's just
I lost the originals.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Leading to issue four, which you heard at the start
of the episode. I'm just going to read a segment
from an updated edition about the many queer butch camp
personalities I've projected onto different eras of Bruce Brinstein's fashion. Okay,
I want Bruce to be queer. I want Bruce to
(04:35):
be a hot butch girl. I'm thinking about Bruce in
the eighties now, with muscle teas and high waisted jeans,
plaid shirts tucked in, hair slipped back but curls, breaking free.
Bruce the mechanic as she slides out from underneath the car,
Gruce stains on her overalls I'm thinking of Tunnel of
Love era Bruce with baggy blouses and tailored suits as
(04:58):
Bruce abandoned the denim and plaid and embrace being forty
and handsome as fuck. Or Bruce as a silver Fox,
the hot older academic, smart jeans and a waistcoat and
shirt and slicked back hair. I want Bruce to be
the butch girl of my dreams. I want Bruce to
be a fag. I want him and his leather jacket
(05:19):
and his tight, scruffy jeans making out with all the boys,
messy hair, messy beard, white vests and tight black jeans.
I'm thinking about seventies Bruce when he was at his
musk gruffy and his must cheeky Bruce dancing in the
dark with Clarence on stage, leaning back as Clarence pulls
him in for a kiss. Or eighties Bruce when his
(05:41):
muscles were completely out of control, his super match of
biceps bursting through his shirt, demanding to be set free
in tight white vests, Bruce grunting and leaning up against
Miami Steve on stage, playing guitar back to back and
singing about being blood brothers and singing of his one
true lost love.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I want Bruce to be the queer boy of my dreams.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Because this is because the bus belongs to us a
podcast where two queer friends who bonded over their love
of Bruce Bringsteen go on a mission to get the
bus recognized as the queer icon we know that he is.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Hey Jesse, Hey Holly.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I love all the imagined versions of Bruce and your Zcene.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I too want Bruce to be the twinkie vag of
my dreams.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
And the fact that Bruce has had so many looks
over his career is part of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yes, because last episode we made a big decision.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, we decided to annoyt ourselves with queer icon scientific
research leaders.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
To prove that Bruce Bringsteen is in fact a queer icon.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
In order to do this, so the thing with Cam
is that you can never really completely pin it down.
We spoke to an expert on our first point of
queer icondom Camp.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I'm an Ellena Medhurst and I'm a historian of lesbian fashion.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Her account Dressing Dykes has taught me so much about
queer fashion history, and she just published a.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Book Unsuitable, A History of lesbian fashion, which I'm really
excited about.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
In order to find out if we can see Bruce
through a camp lens, we need a definition for camp.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I think that there's like different kinds of camp.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
There's the more archetypical, gay, male centric camp, the one
that's more widely recognized feathers and glitter and Priscilla Queen
of the Desert. My uk R reference for camp is
like strictly come dancing is like so camp and if
you're American, that's dancing with the stars.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Camp is extravagant and knowing.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
But I do think that that kind of camp as
well is quite difficult to actually achieve, like you have
to really know what you're doing. It's quite self referential.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I will say this kind of stereotypical camp aesthetic that
Eleanor's describing glitter, lights, sparkles, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That's not really Bruce's vibe. But I love the phrase
extravagant and knowing. None of Bruce's like center like glitter,
but I definitely think that some of them are self
referential and over the top in his own way.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
There's this complete are the side of camp that's very
down to earth, practical, like die Key camp. And I've
written before about like sensible footwear being lesbian camp and
how like a search for pump and a very sort
of again this self referential like knowing the stereotype and
(09:00):
embracing them anyway, it's kind of cam.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
The thing that I'm getting for you is this like
that self referential and like awareness of what you're doing
is really important in camp. Yeah, and so that kind
of makes sense in terms of if you're like sensible
footwear for lesbians camp, because that's making an in joke
about what lesbians are like.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, and that way it is.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Over the top, even if the product is like a
comfortable slipper.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
The problem is, though, you can't always be sure what
people are referencing when they're wearing certain clothes. I had
an experience where I was like out in a club
and I was like dancing with this person who is.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Wearing cordalry trousers and had a mullet, and then I
like try to get with her, and then she was like,
hife straight, Oh, obviously that's totally fine. But in the
moment my reply was like, but you can have a mullet,
and so is there so it's like kind of progression
(10:01):
of like marginalized communities do it first, and then it
slowly becomes absorbed, and then marginalized have.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
To come up with news.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, kind of like things.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
Yeah, and this is something that's been going on for
a while. There's a quote that I use quite a
lot in my lectures and stuff, which is from nineteen
ninety seven.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I think looking Good The Lesbian Gays and Fashion Imagery
by Raina Lewis.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Raina and Lewis said something like we used to just
know by looking at a pair of sensible shoes, but
then everyone started wearing Doctor Martin's and foot wears. Lesbian
coding was undermined. And that's for me, you know, twenty
six years ago. And like you said, like dongarees very
fashionable for any straight woman at the moment. But I
(10:48):
always say, like, people ask me this quite a lot,
and I say, I think that's a good thing for
like women, especially because great, you're wearing comfortable clothes.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Good for you. I'm so pleased, do you know.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I mean, I agree, I'm very happy for straight women
to be comfortable. But yeah, it does kind of change
queer people's ability to be self referential, as your clubbing
experience shows, we need to know how to spot each
other two.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I think this is also a good illustration of why
camp is so hard to pin down, because, like queer fashion,
camp is by definition contextual. Clothes themselves do not camp make,
but they can form part of a bigger camp picture,
depending on the circumstances.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Eleanor, shockingly is not really a Sprinstein fan, so she
didn't know about just how versatile Bruce was with his looks.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
He like serves b looks like. It's not that he
consistently looked one way for his career. He looked so
many different ways, and a lot of them for us.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Feels super queer.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
To get Eleanor up to speed, we sent her a
bunch of photos of Bruce Brinstein's different outfits, which we
very professionally labeled daiki Bruce looks and faggy Bruce looks.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
That's after the break, Jesse Holly.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Because the bus belongs to us.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
We asked Eleanor aka are queer fashion expert dressing Dykes
to put Bruce to the camp test by analyzing photos
of his different fashion eras hang.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
On because I saved them on my phone we started
with the faggy Bruce Looks folder the Born in the
USA Hubbo.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Released in nineteen eighty four. It's a picture of his ass. Basically,
he's wearing a white T shirt, tight blue jeans, and
a black leather studdard belt with a red cap hanging
out of his right back pocket. This image is superimposed
over the red and white stripes of the American flag.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It's giving a hanky cut.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
There's a photo series by Hal Fisher called Gay Semiotics
from nineteen seventy seven that documented fashion and signals war
my gay men in San Francisco in the late seventies.
One of the pictures is of the Hanky code and
its two men wearing jeans. It's like the same amount
(13:22):
of their body is on show as in the Born
in the USA cover. They both have handkerchiefs in their pocket,
red handkerchief. It's in the same pocket as Bruce has
his red cap.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
I don't think it was intentional, but it's just such
a solid connection, Like I'm sure there were gay men
who saw that, pitch loads of gay men or queer
people of all kinds who saw that picture and went,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Brice Let's sing, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Look, we're not saying that Bruce wants a fist up
his ass, but regardless, this image is so rooted in queericnography.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Having that reference to gay culture, to the hanky code,
with the red, white and blue, with the stripes, with
the born.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
In the USA.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
There's something about mixing the like American patriotic symbolism with
quer symbolism and going.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
This is this is the thing that's happened. Now, what
are you going to do about it?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
We can't ever know the intentions of Bruce and the photographer,
but could this count as a tick for Camp if
we take Eleanor's description of Camp as extravagant and knowing,
we can at least agree that this look checks the
extravagant bucks.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
To continue the research, we switched over to the DIKI
Bruce Looks folder. We started with a foot that I
like to call Bruce's stone butch blues. He's older in it,
salt and pepper vibes.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
In a sort of like western outfit, a denim jacket,
a shilling jacket on top, holding a cowboy hat. I
was looking at them with my wife and she went, oh,
that looks like Kadi Lang so much, and we were like,
these are all KD.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
LG.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, yes they are. They're the same.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
And there's an early picture of Kadie Lang from Cadie Lang,
and there are clines a cover from an album from
nineteen eighty seven where she's wearing like the same outfit
and has a cowboy hat in her hands.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
If dear listener, you would like to compare these licks
yourself image that Bruce Springsteen Western Stars Jacket and Kadie
Lang Absolute Torch and Twang nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Can you see? Oh, I've put them next to each other.
It's like the same as Oh my god, that's made
by Deer.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I cannot stress enough how identical these licks scene, both
in double jackets, blue denim underneath with brown on top,
both on cowboy hats, oozing butch sexiness.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
As recommended by our lawyer, we do have to say
that we are not accusing Bruce of stealing looks from KD. Lack,
but in terms of his camp credentials, this look is
hell a butch.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's like you squint and everyone can be a butch.
I love this.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I will be squinting for the rest of my days.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
It's actually a famous name in the queer Bruce fandom world.
I shared it all my books.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Springsing jag account is a screenshot of a tweet on
Dumbler asking can a sis guy be butch?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And someone I was commenting Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Some of the images we said, eleanor are from his
eighties muscle era, so much plaid, lots of tight jeans.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Cut off shirts, bandannas around his head.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, what would be your kind of like professional fashion analysis.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Of those bits of his fashion journey?
Speaker 5 (16:56):
As you know, it's very gender, it's very like playing
with like hyper masculinity in a way that can almost
come back round. I think a lot of queer people
have also experimented with using materials like plans, like denim,
haptile like masculine, almost industrial again, like working class esthetics.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
It's funny because we're looking at these outfits through the
lens of our own experience, so it's kind of impossible
for us to not see a sexy, butch muscle queen.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Are we projecting onto him? Do people choose to be
camp or is it chosen for them?
Speaker 5 (17:38):
In my job as a lesbian fashion historian, I have
to look at the evidence. Often people who can't even
speak for themselves anymore. It's people who have often been
recognized as just being straight, and you have to go, well, no,
I don't think that's the case. And this is part
of this history that I'm writing now for us. Yeah,
(18:00):
if you can see Bruce Springsteen as a camp bike on,
then Bruce Springsteen is a camp hyicon.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
We wouldn't all be.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Here talking about it if we didn't recognize.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
It as camp. I'm so happy that Bruce will not
being cleaned in your book.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
On lesbian Yeah, I'll have to like do a little
addition somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Okay, So a lesbian fashion historian has said we get
to decide if Bruce's camp. She agrees he has campusthetics
mission a gump list.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I know Eleanor said we can just cheese, but I
can't shake that it might just be us seeing the
stuff in him. We see plaid sleeveless shirts and tight
blue jeans as really butch, but another person could just
look at these photos and just think they're really madly.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I do think there's an extravagance to his performance of masculinity, though,
because there's Massilira Bruce, But there's also like studded leather jacket.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Twin here at Bruce.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
It feels like he's trying on different versions of masculinity
in quite.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
A playful way. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
The leather look in particular, like that has a long
queer history.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
I think it's I think it's sort of powerful and
empowering to have someone wearing that.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
This playfulness trying on different versions of masculinity feels close
to the idea of gender as a performance, which is very.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Rooted in queer culture.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
And Bruce said in his autobiography, looking back on these photos, now,
I look simply gay. I'd probably fit right in down
on Christopher Street in any one of the leather bars.
So it seems like, at least in retrospect, he has
some awareness of the queerness of these looks.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
The other huge thing about Bruce's esthetics are that he's
often choosing to reference a.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Particular working class culture. Yeah, totally. He makes loads of.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
References about how he grew up working class in New Jersey.
There's that lyric where he says rich man in a
poor man's shirt, and he seems to think a lot
about his own class status and rolling class struggles. He
acknowledges this funny position he's in. His dad worked in
a factory, but he himself started playing music at sixteen,
and he now jokes that he's never worked a day
(20:12):
in his life, but his songs are about the lives
of working class people. His relationship to class is super interesting,
but I'm not sure if it's got anything to do
with queerness.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That's next a way back, because.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I feel unsure about Camp's relationship to class. We've just
spent a whole conversation looking at a bunch of amazing
Bruce outfits that actually a lot of people would just
see us working class clothing and kind of conflated them
with queer aesthetics. And Camp does that sit right with us?
Is Bruce doing like extravagant working class looks? And if so,
(21:00):
is that solidarity or taking the piss is saying certain
looks are Camp looking down or laughing at.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It does feel sometimes like we're treading a fine line
with appropriation. I guess I've always seen Camp as more
of a camaraderie, a recognition that we're all failing the
made up standards of what we're told we have to
be like to be a respectable human adult and then
finding excellence in how we fail.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, okay, being.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Like capitalist heteropatriarchy is fucking us all over, so we
might as well make our failures fabulous.
Speaker 7 (21:34):
Camp is always about being in on its own, Joe Like,
you can laugh at others because you're doing it lovingly,
because you've spent your whole life laugh at yourself, and
you know that life is full of things that you
have to lear to keep from crying about. This is
brick Bropalmieri. I write a lot about history about queer culture.
(21:55):
All of LiLine like writing an art is sort of
around DIY, like small, homegrown, underground kind of like culture.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
About five years ago, Brooke launched a learning platform combined
with the zine and print library and resource pulling together
references to queer and gender nonconforming histories, and.
Speaker 7 (22:13):
I called it camp Books because for me, the idea
of camping it up is a really fun and accessible
and timeless way of participating in a counterculture in a
kind of esthetic or fashion of like working against the
norms of the world around you.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Brooke was the first ever queer Springsteen fan I met.
They said to me that Bruce has a soul of
a poet and the masses of a sailor, which I've
never forgotten.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Because Brooke literally runs a platform called camp Books. We
were kind of hoping that they would just tell us
if Bruce was camp or not, but they did, in
fact start the interview saying basically the same thing as Eleanor.
Speaker 7 (22:57):
There's no one arbiter. It does have to kind of
be a group mentality, you know, And I just feel like, yeah,
that's why, like student Santag she was writing in her
through her art scene at the time, Christopher iowod writing
through his scene in Berlin at the time. You know,
all these people, they're kind of distilling a group consciousness.
So that's also like, I really appreciate that you're doing that. Now.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
It's exactly what we're doing. Voices of a Generation.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
We're just as important the season stag that's the tagline
for this entire podcast.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
We simply just keep adding important titles to ourselves. We're
qualified scientists finding quer kons and now with the Voices
of a Generation, defining camp for millennials everywhere.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Even though we are perfect, everyone keeps telling us that
we don't need anyone else's opinion to make this decision.
Brooke did eventually tell us their definition of camp.
Speaker 7 (23:49):
Camp is a really joyful immersion in the best and
worst of humanity. It's all about channeling the extremes and
trying to make something fun and enjoyable out of sometimes
like a bad lot in life.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And that's why it's.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
Particularly valuable to queer people, to poor people, to people
who are for whatever reason, on the outskirts and can't
participate in society because of the money that they have
or the power that they have. Camp is kind of
about like changing like where that power comes from. It's
sort of about changing the rules of power relations and
being abject in a really fabulous.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Way, abjects in a really fabulous way. I love that.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
One of the reasons we wanted to talk to Brooke
is that they've spent a lot of time thinking about
class and its relationship to the Camp of Bruce Springsteen.
Brook is originally from Philadelphia and comes from a similar
class background to Bruce.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
I was not socialized like to be masculine, but I
grew up really admiring like the kind of culture and
camaraderie and love that like, for instance, like Grapa had
around his garage because he was a mechanic. My grandpa
would show his love for his neighbors by fixing their
cars for them, and that was his kind of expression
(25:09):
of masculinity. And I always just like grew up feeling
so in awe of those forms of connection.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I grew up working class, and it's validating to hear
someone describe the tenderness of working class culture when other
people might only see the rough and tough. But this
is also where I feel wary of like queer commentary
and class stuff, because I think there can be a
fine line between celebration, self referencing and fetishization of struggle,
(25:42):
and Bruce really tours this fine line.
Speaker 7 (25:45):
I was really excited when you asked me to talk
about Bruce Springsteen because I do think there's so much
camp potential with him. I think camp kind of moves
me on threshold of just wearing a costume or taking
a pose. It's like putting on a costume, taking up
(26:08):
that posture in order to go beyond into a kind
of true embodiment. But I think the sort of secret
to his songs working and his songs having real staying
power and being the kind of songs that you want
to sing along to that create worlds you have an
affinity for, you want to participate in. Or he writes
(26:29):
so well because he doesn't have critical distance from the
subjects of his songs, and that like the characters that
he's building in his songs, because he allows himself too
much affection for them, and he allows himself to spend
too long imagining what it would be like in their shoes.
There's not a lot of critical distance in camp you
(26:50):
really like dive in and you spend a lot of
time in that world is really about like world building
and building the world you want to stay in. And
I think that like for better for worse, when he's
singing in the first person songs that he's singing for
like he wants to be there, even if he wants
to be the one denouncing how awful it is to
(27:12):
work in a factory or singing about how upsetting it
is to kind of live in an apocalyptic post industrial landscape,
He's still doing it from this place of love and affection.
And it's not just drag. It's like a kind of
willful embodiment.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Which is really helping me understand Camp.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I think the way you phrase like so well, because
there's a lyric in Springsten some where he says he's
a rich man at a poor man shirt, which could
be like such an offensive thing to say because there
is no there's no truth that whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
It's just a costume. It's just a bit. It doesn't
mean anything like what you're saying about the tenderness and
the truthfulness of that. You've got to have this combination
of I guess artifice for camp what like you've been saying.
But there's got to be an element of authenticity with
that as well. It can't just be pure artific for
if it's sick, It's got to be authenticity mixed with arurface.
Speaker 8 (28:04):
Is that right?
Speaker 7 (28:04):
Yeah? I think you started exactly, And I think the
authenticity comes from, like, well, how do you spend your time?
Where are you? The difference between someone swooping in and
assuming a kind of outfit in a world that they've
never even tried to spend time in is really different
from someone being embedded in a context and making art
(28:26):
that reflects their genuine affection for that context. It's like
you are sincerely committed to the bit. The look, the persona,
the performance. Whatever it is you're trying to invoke is
like you are sincere to the point of devotional and loving.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And this commitment is so so clear in Bruce Springsteen, you.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
Know that documentary, the promise about the making of Darkness
on the Edge of Town. He does not leave a
single aspect or detail of that of his recording process
to chance. It's all like meticulously And so I just
had this imergine. I just imergine him kind of being
like a like a like an unholy nightmare in a
(29:15):
way that like the problem is you have to love
them for it, because they're right. He is a person
of grand vision executed through like control over minute details.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Well that's camp in itself, right, that that vision that
control that artifice, but from a place of authenticity.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Oh yeah, something that Bruce is really famous for his
life shows. It's just randomly picking out songs from signs
in the crowd. People write requests for the most niche
b side tracks and Bruce will pick them out and
be like, okay, band, let's see if you can remember
this one from twenty years ago. And then they were always,
(29:53):
without fail deliver a perfect performance of that song.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
It is magic.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, I am so sorry to ruin the magic for you,
But I think a lot of this is probably fake.
I don't know for sure, and there is a lot
of fan speculation about this, but my impression of Bruce
is that he's way too in control of his image
to do this kind of thing on the fly, and
a lot of this is probably pre planned based on
songs that the East Street Band have rehearsed, because honestly,
(30:21):
how else does he randomly pick the one song that
guitarist Steven Sant plays mandolin on and then Steve just
happens to have a mandolin in his hand before Bruce
even picks that song. But I actually think maybe this
is more magic. And that's kind of what Brooke said too.
Bruce's undine commitment to the bit is camp.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
The reason for it being an act is so it
will be better because because we deserve nice things, and
like working class people deserve nice things, we deserve to
see a good show of highly talented musicians, and in
order for that to happen, they need to practice. So
I also like that there's an act of generosity there,
like you deserve a high experience, a highly you know,
(31:06):
a wonderful, overwhelming artistic aesthetic experience. Whatever you deserve to
see good art. So in order to give that to you,
the show I'm putting on is is just like high.
I've been so leticulous and considering every aspect of it
and how it will affect you as an audience. And
that feels the like generosity is also very camp to me.
(31:28):
I don't think of camp as stingy. I think of
it like as people giving We're all yeah, I think
I think the generosity is there and the performance of
like endurance.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Bruce is famous for doing shows that often last over
four hours. Even more recently, in his twenty eighteen stage
show Springsteen on Broadway, he performed so many times in
one year there were long stretches where he was performing
it eight times a week.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Like you just don't have to You could just Len
do that. You know, he's Bruce racing. He can give
himself a gentle schedule, is bu Springsteen.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I love this addition of generosity to our definition of camp.
Bruce gives us the gift of extravagant generosity.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
Can tell he has been a therapy so he has
like a kind of he and maybe that's what makes
him amenable to queer culture is like he he clearly
has this lag work of self reflection and self evaluation
that comes from being someone for whatever reason, has had
to question every single thing about themselves.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
As Bruce has gotten older, there seems to be more
and more reflection on his identity in his work. This
comes up a lot in his autobiography and Springsteen on Broadway.
Speaker 7 (32:41):
It's been through like same and what it means to
try to be honorable and accountable to roots that he
has in a time and in a place in an
economy that are so different from the kind of upward
mobility that he's achieved as an orgist. And then this
existential question of if he performs something long enough, like
when do you stop switching modes from being one person
(33:05):
to a performer to just always being that thing that
you're performing.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Something that Tom said last episode when we were discussing
Camp is that camp is also ultimately about telling the truth.
And I think there's something so beautiful in what we
discussed with Brooke, which is that this commitment, this generosity,
this world building is a kind of balance between artifice
and getting into the truth of the situation.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
I think I'm coming round to Bruce's camp credentials. We
did ask Brooke ultimately what their feelings were about this
checklist point.
Speaker 8 (33:43):
I understand that we've just spent a lot of time
speaking with Nuance and Light and Shade, but we are
in fact on a mission, and the mission is to
see whether Bruce can be recognized as a queer icon.
Speaker 7 (33:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (33:55):
In order to fulfill that mission, we need to tick
a check on our checklist, which is Bruce Camp.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yes, and you are the arbor two of that for us.
Speaker 7 (34:04):
Yes, he is. Yeah, he is absolutely camp. He is
so committed to his performance that I thinking in the latest,
like the deep hours of the night, questions whether he's
ever left the performance he's created, you know what I mean. So, Yeah,
(34:26):
and that that is a camp existential crisis to have, stunning.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You heard it here first, Bruce Springsteen is Camp. That's
item want on our checklist. Bird filled, one down, three
to go.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Can Queer's route for Bruce Sprinksteen as an underdog? That's
next episode because because the Boss belongs to us. As
a production of Malten Heart and Heart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
We're hosted by Jesse Lawson and Holly Cassio.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
The series is executive produced by Jesse and Holly and
created by Jesse Lawson.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
This episode was produced and sound designed by Jesse Lawson,
with production assistants by Tess Hazel.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Michelle Maclam is our mixed engineer.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Our original music and theme is by Talk Bizarre at
Talk D A Z A R Underscore, and our.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Show art was designed and illustrated by Holly Cassio at
Holly c Asio.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Fact checking by Selina Serlin. Legal services provided by A
Rowan Morn and File. Our executive producer from Modern Heart
is Jasmine J. T.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Green.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Our executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Lindsay hoffin Bye
Goodbye Cool
Hello, this is Jesse and Holly with a quick note
before we start.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This is the first time that we've ever made media
that's published in the United States, and in light of that,
we have a couple of things to say. Number One,
we are not ever making any speculations on Bruce Bringsteen's
sexuality or gender.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Number Two, we wanted to give you a heads up
that in this episode we use historically derogatory language which
we have reclaimed as queer people. So this is every
Bruce zem I've ever made.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
So I think.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's yeah, it's from queers.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Near to town. It's just part you.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Nobody thinks about loneliness and small town fatigue like Bruce.
Nobody can write so succinctly about the dark, quiet emptiness
when you are lonely and out of place, and then
wrap it up in a three minute pop song like
Bruce can. Nobody can write about them danity of depression
and the infatuation of being in love like Bruce. I
was Bruce in born to run thunder Road, ready to
(01:07):
break out of my small town and never look back.
I was Bruce in dancing in the dark, staring in
a mirror, hitting my clothes, my hair and my face.
I was tired and bothered myself and dreaming of getting out.
And sure I had crushes of plenty, but more than anything,
I just wanted queer friends to make me feel normal,
and that just didn't exist in my small town. It's
(01:29):
all a bit emo and dramatic now considering I've lived
in a big city with queer friends and culture and
punk and art in my life, but things are a
bit emo and dramatic when you're a lonely teenage queer.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
And Bruce understood my pain. I'm Holly.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
You're hearing recordings of me in my natural habitat, sitting
on the floor in my bedroom, surrounded by my zeines.
I was just reading from one I made about Bruce
Brinkstein called Queer's on the Edge of Town. I started
makingnes in the nineties when I was living in a
small town in West Yorkshire, and it was my entry
to the world of DIY queer punk. It's not very
(02:10):
common for queer DIY punks to be into Bruce Springsteen.
When my friends found out about how much I loved Bruce,
they'd often just take the pace, not understanding why I
spent so much time listening to this pretty mainstream rock musician.
So one night in twenty ten, I decided to make
a zine that would explain why I'm.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So obsessed with Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
This scene was made while listening to Nebraska, the Rising
and Live in New York. The introduction says, wait, you
like Bruce Springsteen, but Holly, I thought you were super
cool and punk rock and awesome Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Really.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I made I think ten copies, gave them to my
friends and was like, this is how Bruce Springsteen makes
me feel.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Stop making fun of me.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
About a year later, my friend convinced me to take
some copies to the Queer sine Fest in London, and
about halfway through the day it already sold out. It
was the first time I realized that there were other
queer Bruce Nerds out there, So I started making mousines.
Issue Too, a bit of a soppy one Is This
Issue Too, came out in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Me and Bruce and.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
My dads Why a Northern Queer, working class feminist fam
Love of Druce Sprinsteen, which is literally just all about
my dad and class and being working class and working
factories and the similarities there's really famous Bruce Sprinsteen songs
like Born's Ron thunder Road, which are all about escape
(03:42):
and leaving somewhere and never coming back. But Bruce is
also really good at writing about what about the people
who don't leave? What about the people who can't leave
because they're stuck? And I feel like it was just
this big thing to listen to Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And hear my family. My dad reflected in those.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Lyrics if she got lost in the move.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
I moved house se many times in London. It's just
I lost the originals.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Leading to issue four, which you heard at the start
of the episode. I'm just going to read a segment
from an updated edition about the many queer butch camp
personalities I've projected onto different eras of Bruce Brinstein's fashion. Okay,
I want Bruce to be queer. I want Bruce to
(04:35):
be a hot butch girl. I'm thinking about Bruce in
the eighties now, with muscle teas and high waisted jeans,
plaid shirts tucked in, hair slipped back but curls, breaking free.
Bruce the mechanic as she slides out from underneath the car,
Gruce stains on her overalls I'm thinking of Tunnel of
Love era Bruce with baggy blouses and tailored suits as
(04:58):
Bruce abandoned the denim and plaid and embrace being forty
and handsome as fuck. Or Bruce as a silver Fox,
the hot older academic, smart jeans and a waistcoat and
shirt and slicked back hair. I want Bruce to be
the butch girl of my dreams. I want Bruce to
be a fag. I want him and his leather jacket
(05:19):
and his tight, scruffy jeans making out with all the boys,
messy hair, messy beard, white vests and tight black jeans.
I'm thinking about seventies Bruce when he was at his
musk gruffy and his must cheeky Bruce dancing in the
dark with Clarence on stage, leaning back as Clarence pulls
him in for a kiss. Or eighties Bruce when his
(05:41):
muscles were completely out of control, his super match of
biceps bursting through his shirt, demanding to be set free
in tight white vests, Bruce grunting and leaning up against
Miami Steve on stage, playing guitar back to back and
singing about being blood brothers and singing of his one
true lost love.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I want Bruce to be the queer boy of my dreams.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Because this is because the bus belongs to us a
podcast where two queer friends who bonded over their love
of Bruce Bringsteen go on a mission to get the
bus recognized as the queer icon we know that he is.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Hey Jesse, Hey Holly.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I love all the imagined versions of Bruce and your Zcene.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I too want Bruce to be the twinkie vag of
my dreams.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
And the fact that Bruce has had so many looks
over his career is part of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yes, because last episode we made a big decision.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, we decided to annoyt ourselves with queer icon scientific
research leaders.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
To prove that Bruce Bringsteen is in fact a queer icon.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
In order to do this, so the thing with Cam
is that you can never really completely pin it down.
We spoke to an expert on our first point of
queer icondom Camp.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I'm an Ellena Medhurst and I'm a historian of lesbian fashion.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Her account Dressing Dykes has taught me so much about
queer fashion history, and she just published a.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Book Unsuitable, A History of lesbian fashion, which I'm really
excited about.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
In order to find out if we can see Bruce
through a camp lens, we need a definition for camp.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I think that there's like different kinds of camp.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
There's the more archetypical, gay, male centric camp, the one
that's more widely recognized feathers and glitter and Priscilla Queen
of the Desert. My uk R reference for camp is
like strictly come dancing is like so camp and if
you're American, that's dancing with the stars.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Camp is extravagant and knowing.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
But I do think that that kind of camp as
well is quite difficult to actually achieve, like you have
to really know what you're doing. It's quite self referential.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I will say this kind of stereotypical camp aesthetic that
Eleanor's describing glitter, lights, sparkles, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That's not really Bruce's vibe. But I love the phrase
extravagant and knowing. None of Bruce's like center like glitter,
but I definitely think that some of them are self
referential and over the top in his own way.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
There's this complete are the side of camp that's very
down to earth, practical, like die Key camp. And I've
written before about like sensible footwear being lesbian camp and
how like a search for pump and a very sort
of again this self referential like knowing the stereotype and
(09:00):
embracing them anyway, it's kind of cam.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
The thing that I'm getting for you is this like
that self referential and like awareness of what you're doing
is really important in camp. Yeah, and so that kind
of makes sense in terms of if you're like sensible
footwear for lesbians camp, because that's making an in joke
about what lesbians are like.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, and that way it is.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Over the top, even if the product is like a
comfortable slipper.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
The problem is, though, you can't always be sure what
people are referencing when they're wearing certain clothes. I had
an experience where I was like out in a club
and I was like dancing with this person who is.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Wearing cordalry trousers and had a mullet, and then I
like try to get with her, and then she was like,
hife straight, Oh, obviously that's totally fine. But in the
moment my reply was like, but you can have a mullet,
and so is there so it's like kind of progression
(10:01):
of like marginalized communities do it first, and then it
slowly becomes absorbed, and then marginalized have.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
To come up with news.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, kind of like things.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
Yeah, and this is something that's been going on for
a while. There's a quote that I use quite a
lot in my lectures and stuff, which is from nineteen
ninety seven.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I think looking Good The Lesbian Gays and Fashion Imagery
by Raina Lewis.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Raina and Lewis said something like we used to just
know by looking at a pair of sensible shoes, but
then everyone started wearing Doctor Martin's and foot wears. Lesbian
coding was undermined. And that's for me, you know, twenty
six years ago. And like you said, like dongarees very
fashionable for any straight woman at the moment. But I
(10:48):
always say, like, people ask me this quite a lot,
and I say, I think that's a good thing for
like women, especially because great, you're wearing comfortable clothes.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Good for you. I'm so pleased, do you know.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I mean, I agree, I'm very happy for straight women
to be comfortable. But yeah, it does kind of change
queer people's ability to be self referential, as your clubbing
experience shows, we need to know how to spot each
other two.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I think this is also a good illustration of why
camp is so hard to pin down, because, like queer fashion,
camp is by definition contextual. Clothes themselves do not camp make,
but they can form part of a bigger camp picture,
depending on the circumstances.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Eleanor, shockingly is not really a Sprinstein fan, so she
didn't know about just how versatile Bruce was with his looks.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
He like serves b looks like. It's not that he
consistently looked one way for his career. He looked so
many different ways, and a lot of them for us.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Feels super queer.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
To get Eleanor up to speed, we sent her a
bunch of photos of Bruce Brinstein's different outfits, which we
very professionally labeled daiki Bruce looks and faggy Bruce looks.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
That's after the break, Jesse Holly.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Because the bus belongs to us.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
We asked Eleanor aka are queer fashion expert dressing Dykes
to put Bruce to the camp test by analyzing photos
of his different fashion eras hang.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
On because I saved them on my phone we started
with the faggy Bruce Looks folder the Born in the
USA Hubbo.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Released in nineteen eighty four. It's a picture of his ass. Basically,
he's wearing a white T shirt, tight blue jeans, and
a black leather studdard belt with a red cap hanging
out of his right back pocket. This image is superimposed
over the red and white stripes of the American flag.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It's giving a hanky cut.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
There's a photo series by Hal Fisher called Gay Semiotics
from nineteen seventy seven that documented fashion and signals war
my gay men in San Francisco in the late seventies.
One of the pictures is of the Hanky code and
its two men wearing jeans. It's like the same amount
(13:22):
of their body is on show as in the Born
in the USA cover. They both have handkerchiefs in their pocket,
red handkerchief. It's in the same pocket as Bruce has
his red cap.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
I don't think it was intentional, but it's just such
a solid connection, Like I'm sure there were gay men
who saw that, pitch loads of gay men or queer
people of all kinds who saw that picture and went,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Brice Let's sing, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Look, we're not saying that Bruce wants a fist up
his ass, but regardless, this image is so rooted in queericnography.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Having that reference to gay culture, to the hanky code,
with the red, white and blue, with the stripes, with
the born.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
In the USA.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
There's something about mixing the like American patriotic symbolism with
quer symbolism and going.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
This is this is the thing that's happened. Now, what
are you going to do about it?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
We can't ever know the intentions of Bruce and the photographer,
but could this count as a tick for Camp if
we take Eleanor's description of Camp as extravagant and knowing,
we can at least agree that this look checks the
extravagant bucks.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
To continue the research, we switched over to the DIKI
Bruce Looks folder. We started with a foot that I
like to call Bruce's stone butch blues. He's older in it,
salt and pepper vibes.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
In a sort of like western outfit, a denim jacket,
a shilling jacket on top, holding a cowboy hat. I
was looking at them with my wife and she went, oh,
that looks like Kadi Lang so much, and we were like,
these are all KD.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
LG.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, yes they are. They're the same.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
And there's an early picture of Kadie Lang from Cadie Lang,
and there are clines a cover from an album from
nineteen eighty seven where she's wearing like the same outfit
and has a cowboy hat in her hands.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
If dear listener, you would like to compare these licks
yourself image that Bruce Springsteen Western Stars Jacket and Kadie
Lang Absolute Torch and Twang nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Can you see? Oh, I've put them next to each other.
It's like the same as Oh my god, that's made
by Deer.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I cannot stress enough how identical these licks scene, both
in double jackets, blue denim underneath with brown on top,
both on cowboy hats, oozing butch sexiness.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
As recommended by our lawyer, we do have to say
that we are not accusing Bruce of stealing looks from KD. Lack,
but in terms of his camp credentials, this look is
hell a butch.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's like you squint and everyone can be a butch.
I love this.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I will be squinting for the rest of my days.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
It's actually a famous name in the queer Bruce fandom world.
I shared it all my books.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Springsing jag account is a screenshot of a tweet on
Dumbler asking can a sis guy be butch?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And someone I was commenting Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Some of the images we said, eleanor are from his
eighties muscle era, so much plaid, lots of tight jeans.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Cut off shirts, bandannas around his head.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, what would be your kind of like professional fashion analysis.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Of those bits of his fashion journey?
Speaker 5 (16:56):
As you know, it's very gender, it's very like playing
with like hyper masculinity in a way that can almost
come back round. I think a lot of queer people
have also experimented with using materials like plans, like denim,
haptile like masculine, almost industrial again, like working class esthetics.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
It's funny because we're looking at these outfits through the
lens of our own experience, so it's kind of impossible
for us to not see a sexy, butch muscle queen.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Are we projecting onto him? Do people choose to be
camp or is it chosen for them?
Speaker 5 (17:38):
In my job as a lesbian fashion historian, I have
to look at the evidence. Often people who can't even
speak for themselves anymore. It's people who have often been
recognized as just being straight, and you have to go, well, no,
I don't think that's the case. And this is part
of this history that I'm writing now for us. Yeah,
(18:00):
if you can see Bruce Springsteen as a camp bike on,
then Bruce Springsteen is a camp hyicon.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
We wouldn't all be.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Here talking about it if we didn't recognize.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
It as camp. I'm so happy that Bruce will not
being cleaned in your book.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
On lesbian Yeah, I'll have to like do a little
addition somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Okay, So a lesbian fashion historian has said we get
to decide if Bruce's camp. She agrees he has campusthetics
mission a gump list.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I know Eleanor said we can just cheese, but I
can't shake that it might just be us seeing the
stuff in him. We see plaid sleeveless shirts and tight
blue jeans as really butch, but another person could just
look at these photos and just think they're really madly.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I do think there's an extravagance to his performance of masculinity, though,
because there's Massilira Bruce, But there's also like studded leather jacket.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Twin here at Bruce.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
It feels like he's trying on different versions of masculinity
in quite.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
A playful way. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
The leather look in particular, like that has a long
queer history.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
I think it's I think it's sort of powerful and
empowering to have someone wearing that.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
This playfulness trying on different versions of masculinity feels close
to the idea of gender as a performance, which is very.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Rooted in queer culture.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
And Bruce said in his autobiography, looking back on these photos, now,
I look simply gay. I'd probably fit right in down
on Christopher Street in any one of the leather bars.
So it seems like, at least in retrospect, he has
some awareness of the queerness of these looks.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
The other huge thing about Bruce's esthetics are that he's
often choosing to reference a.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Particular working class culture. Yeah, totally. He makes loads of.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
References about how he grew up working class in New Jersey.
There's that lyric where he says rich man in a
poor man's shirt, and he seems to think a lot
about his own class status and rolling class struggles. He
acknowledges this funny position he's in. His dad worked in
a factory, but he himself started playing music at sixteen,
and he now jokes that he's never worked a day
(20:12):
in his life, but his songs are about the lives
of working class people. His relationship to class is super interesting,
but I'm not sure if it's got anything to do
with queerness.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That's next a way back, because.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I feel unsure about Camp's relationship to class. We've just
spent a whole conversation looking at a bunch of amazing
Bruce outfits that actually a lot of people would just
see us working class clothing and kind of conflated them
with queer aesthetics. And Camp does that sit right with us?
Is Bruce doing like extravagant working class looks? And if so,
(21:00):
is that solidarity or taking the piss is saying certain
looks are Camp looking down or laughing at.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It does feel sometimes like we're treading a fine line
with appropriation. I guess I've always seen Camp as more
of a camaraderie, a recognition that we're all failing the
made up standards of what we're told we have to
be like to be a respectable human adult and then
finding excellence in how we fail.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, okay, being.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Like capitalist heteropatriarchy is fucking us all over, so we
might as well make our failures fabulous.
Speaker 7 (21:34):
Camp is always about being in on its own, Joe Like,
you can laugh at others because you're doing it lovingly,
because you've spent your whole life laugh at yourself, and
you know that life is full of things that you
have to lear to keep from crying about. This is
brick Bropalmieri. I write a lot about history about queer culture.
(21:55):
All of LiLine like writing an art is sort of
around DIY, like small, homegrown, underground kind of like culture.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
About five years ago, Brooke launched a learning platform combined
with the zine and print library and resource pulling together
references to queer and gender nonconforming histories, and.
Speaker 7 (22:13):
I called it camp Books because for me, the idea
of camping it up is a really fun and accessible
and timeless way of participating in a counterculture in a
kind of esthetic or fashion of like working against the
norms of the world around you.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Brooke was the first ever queer Springsteen fan I met.
They said to me that Bruce has a soul of
a poet and the masses of a sailor, which I've
never forgotten.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Because Brooke literally runs a platform called camp Books. We
were kind of hoping that they would just tell us
if Bruce was camp or not, but they did, in
fact start the interview saying basically the same thing as Eleanor.
Speaker 7 (22:57):
There's no one arbiter. It does have to kind of
be a group mentality, you know, And I just feel like, yeah,
that's why, like student Santag she was writing in her
through her art scene at the time, Christopher iowod writing
through his scene in Berlin at the time. You know,
all these people, they're kind of distilling a group consciousness.
So that's also like, I really appreciate that you're doing that. Now.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
It's exactly what we're doing. Voices of a Generation.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
We're just as important the season stag that's the tagline
for this entire podcast.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
We simply just keep adding important titles to ourselves. We're
qualified scientists finding quer kons and now with the Voices
of a Generation, defining camp for millennials everywhere.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Even though we are perfect, everyone keeps telling us that
we don't need anyone else's opinion to make this decision.
Brooke did eventually tell us their definition of camp.
Speaker 7 (23:49):
Camp is a really joyful immersion in the best and
worst of humanity. It's all about channeling the extremes and
trying to make something fun and enjoyable out of sometimes
like a bad lot in life.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And that's why it's.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
Particularly valuable to queer people, to poor people, to people
who are for whatever reason, on the outskirts and can't
participate in society because of the money that they have
or the power that they have. Camp is kind of
about like changing like where that power comes from. It's
sort of about changing the rules of power relations and
being abject in a really fabulous.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Way, abjects in a really fabulous way. I love that.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
One of the reasons we wanted to talk to Brooke
is that they've spent a lot of time thinking about
class and its relationship to the Camp of Bruce Springsteen.
Brook is originally from Philadelphia and comes from a similar
class background to Bruce.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
I was not socialized like to be masculine, but I
grew up really admiring like the kind of culture and
camaraderie and love that like, for instance, like Grapa had
around his garage because he was a mechanic. My grandpa
would show his love for his neighbors by fixing their
cars for them, and that was his kind of expression
(25:09):
of masculinity. And I always just like grew up feeling
so in awe of those forms of connection.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I grew up working class, and it's validating to hear
someone describe the tenderness of working class culture when other
people might only see the rough and tough. But this
is also where I feel wary of like queer commentary
and class stuff, because I think there can be a
fine line between celebration, self referencing and fetishization of struggle,
(25:42):
and Bruce really tours this fine line.
Speaker 7 (25:45):
I was really excited when you asked me to talk
about Bruce Springsteen because I do think there's so much
camp potential with him. I think camp kind of moves
me on threshold of just wearing a costume or taking
a pose. It's like putting on a costume, taking up
(26:08):
that posture in order to go beyond into a kind
of true embodiment. But I think the sort of secret
to his songs working and his songs having real staying
power and being the kind of songs that you want
to sing along to that create worlds you have an
affinity for, you want to participate in. Or he writes
(26:29):
so well because he doesn't have critical distance from the
subjects of his songs, and that like the characters that
he's building in his songs, because he allows himself too
much affection for them, and he allows himself to spend
too long imagining what it would be like in their shoes.
There's not a lot of critical distance in camp you
(26:50):
really like dive in and you spend a lot of
time in that world is really about like world building
and building the world you want to stay in. And
I think that like for better for worse, when he's
singing in the first person songs that he's singing for
like he wants to be there, even if he wants
to be the one denouncing how awful it is to
(27:12):
work in a factory or singing about how upsetting it
is to kind of live in an apocalyptic post industrial landscape,
He's still doing it from this place of love and affection.
And it's not just drag. It's like a kind of
willful embodiment.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Which is really helping me understand Camp.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I think the way you phrase like so well, because
there's a lyric in Springsten some where he says he's
a rich man at a poor man shirt, which could
be like such an offensive thing to say because there
is no there's no truth that whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
It's just a costume. It's just a bit. It doesn't
mean anything like what you're saying about the tenderness and
the truthfulness of that. You've got to have this combination
of I guess artifice for camp what like you've been saying.
But there's got to be an element of authenticity with
that as well. It can't just be pure artific for
if it's sick, It's got to be authenticity mixed with arurface.
Speaker 8 (28:04):
Is that right?
Speaker 7 (28:04):
Yeah? I think you started exactly, And I think the
authenticity comes from, like, well, how do you spend your time?
Where are you? The difference between someone swooping in and
assuming a kind of outfit in a world that they've
never even tried to spend time in is really different
from someone being embedded in a context and making art
(28:26):
that reflects their genuine affection for that context. It's like
you are sincerely committed to the bit. The look, the persona,
the performance. Whatever it is you're trying to invoke is
like you are sincere to the point of devotional and loving.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And this commitment is so so clear in Bruce Springsteen, you.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
Know that documentary, the promise about the making of Darkness
on the Edge of Town. He does not leave a
single aspect or detail of that of his recording process
to chance. It's all like meticulously And so I just
had this imergine. I just imergine him kind of being
like a like a like an unholy nightmare in a
(29:15):
way that like the problem is you have to love
them for it, because they're right. He is a person
of grand vision executed through like control over minute details.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Well that's camp in itself, right, that that vision that
control that artifice, but from a place of authenticity.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Oh yeah, something that Bruce is really famous for his
life shows. It's just randomly picking out songs from signs
in the crowd. People write requests for the most niche
b side tracks and Bruce will pick them out and
be like, okay, band, let's see if you can remember
this one from twenty years ago. And then they were always,
(29:53):
without fail deliver a perfect performance of that song.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
It is magic.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, I am so sorry to ruin the magic for you,
But I think a lot of this is probably fake.
I don't know for sure, and there is a lot
of fan speculation about this, but my impression of Bruce
is that he's way too in control of his image
to do this kind of thing on the fly, and
a lot of this is probably pre planned based on
songs that the East Street Band have rehearsed, because honestly,
(30:21):
how else does he randomly pick the one song that
guitarist Steven Sant plays mandolin on and then Steve just
happens to have a mandolin in his hand before Bruce
even picks that song. But I actually think maybe this
is more magic. And that's kind of what Brooke said too.
Bruce's undine commitment to the bit is camp.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
The reason for it being an act is so it
will be better because because we deserve nice things, and
like working class people deserve nice things, we deserve to
see a good show of highly talented musicians, and in
order for that to happen, they need to practice. So
I also like that there's an act of generosity there,
like you deserve a high experience, a highly you know,
(31:06):
a wonderful, overwhelming artistic aesthetic experience. Whatever you deserve to
see good art. So in order to give that to you,
the show I'm putting on is is just like high.
I've been so leticulous and considering every aspect of it
and how it will affect you as an audience. And
that feels the like generosity is also very camp to me.
(31:28):
I don't think of camp as stingy. I think of
it like as people giving We're all yeah, I think
I think the generosity is there and the performance of
like endurance.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Bruce is famous for doing shows that often last over
four hours. Even more recently, in his twenty eighteen stage
show Springsteen on Broadway, he performed so many times in
one year there were long stretches where he was performing
it eight times a week.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Like you just don't have to You could just Len
do that. You know, he's Bruce racing. He can give
himself a gentle schedule, is bu Springsteen.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I love this addition of generosity to our definition of camp.
Bruce gives us the gift of extravagant generosity.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
Can tell he has been a therapy so he has
like a kind of he and maybe that's what makes
him amenable to queer culture is like he he clearly
has this lag work of self reflection and self evaluation
that comes from being someone for whatever reason, has had
to question every single thing about themselves.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
As Bruce has gotten older, there seems to be more
and more reflection on his identity in his work. This
comes up a lot in his autobiography and Springsteen on Broadway.
Speaker 7 (32:41):
It's been through like same and what it means to
try to be honorable and accountable to roots that he
has in a time and in a place in an
economy that are so different from the kind of upward
mobility that he's achieved as an orgist. And then this
existential question of if he performs something long enough, like
when do you stop switching modes from being one person
(33:05):
to a performer to just always being that thing that
you're performing.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Something that Tom said last episode when we were discussing
Camp is that camp is also ultimately about telling the truth.
And I think there's something so beautiful in what we
discussed with Brooke, which is that this commitment, this generosity,
this world building is a kind of balance between artifice
and getting into the truth of the situation.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
I think I'm coming round to Bruce's camp credentials. We
did ask Brooke ultimately what their feelings were about this
checklist point.
Speaker 8 (33:43):
I understand that we've just spent a lot of time
speaking with Nuance and Light and Shade, but we are
in fact on a mission, and the mission is to
see whether Bruce can be recognized as a queer icon.
Speaker 7 (33:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (33:55):
In order to fulfill that mission, we need to tick
a check on our checklist, which is Bruce Camp.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yes, and you are the arbor two of that for us.
Speaker 7 (34:04):
Yes, he is. Yeah, he is absolutely camp. He is
so committed to his performance that I thinking in the latest,
like the deep hours of the night, questions whether he's
ever left the performance he's created, you know what I mean. So, Yeah,
(34:26):
and that that is a camp existential crisis to have, stunning.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You heard it here first, Bruce Springsteen is Camp. That's
item want on our checklist. Bird filled, one down, three
to go.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Can Queer's route for Bruce Sprinksteen as an underdog? That's
next episode because because the Boss belongs to us. As
a production of Malten Heart and Heart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
We're hosted by Jesse Lawson and Holly Cassio.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
The series is executive produced by Jesse and Holly and
created by Jesse Lawson.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
This episode was produced and sound designed by Jesse Lawson,
with production assistants by Tess Hazel.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Michelle Maclam is our mixed engineer.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Our original music and theme is by Talk Bizarre at
Talk D A Z A R Underscore, and our.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Show art was designed and illustrated by Holly Cassio at
Holly c Asio.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Fact checking by Selina Serlin. Legal services provided by A
Rowan Morn and File. Our executive producer from Modern Heart
is Jasmine J. T.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Green.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Our executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Lindsay hoffin Bye
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