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