[Only a couple
New England states celebrate
Patriots’ Day, which officially pays
tribute to the colonial Minutemen who helped begin the American Revolution
at Lexington and Concord. But the holiday offers a chance to think about
patriotism in America more broadly, which I’ll do this week, starting with my
annual Patriots’ Day post, continuing through a series on critically patriotic
texts, and leading up to an update on my new
AmericanStudying book!]
On two
critically patriotic texts that together produce one of our best recent
cultural works.
Despite their
being one of my favorite 21st century bands, it seems that I’ve only
written about The Killers in one
paragraph
of one post in this blog’s first 8.5 years. And that paragraph itself
reveals the main reason why they haven’t shown up much here: not only has their
music not generally engaged in the kinds of social
or political commentary that typically lands musicians
on the “pages” of AmericanStudies; but indeed they’ve offered critiques of
those artists who do provide such commentary, at least in front man Brandon Flowers’ October
2006 criticisms of Green Day’s American Idiot
album and tour that I referenced in that prior post. Of course no musical artist
(or artist period) is required to do or feature any particular thing in their
work; but unsurprisingly, many of my favorite artists (in all media) do include
such social threads and themes more consistently in their works, so I can’t say
I haven’t hoped that The Killers might not do so (and haven’t perhaps at times
tried to read contemporary social issues into songs like 2012’s “Battle Born” that don’t
necessarily entirely bear out such readings).
Well, in January
of this year I got my wish, and indeed got way more than I could have predicted
or imagined. That’s when The Killers released “Land of the Free,” their
new single and a song that offers one of the most overt and compelling
critically patriotic takes on American identity I’ve encountered in pop culture
in a long while. “Land” shares much more than most of a title with one of my
favorite American short stories, Sui
Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free (1912)”: like that story, the song opens
with idyllic images of immigration and the American Dream, and then moves into
a series of increasingly
biting, critical depictions of the gaps between such national ideals and
the lived realities and experiences for far too many Americans (if not indeed
us all). The song features a number of such social issues, from racism, police
profiling, and mass incarceration to mass shootings and gun violence. But its
final verse returns to those opening themes of immigration for perhaps the most
ironic engagement with the title phrase and ideal: “Down at the border, they’re
gonna put up a wall/Concrete and Rebar steel beams/High enough to keep all
those filthy hands off/Of our hopes and our dreams/People who just want the
same things we do/In the land of the free.”
Such moments and
lyrics would be more than enough to land “Land of the Free” in this week’s
series, and on the short list of my favorite recent songs and works. But there’s
a whole additional layer, one provided by filmmaker
Spike Lee (!)’s stunning music video (really a
short film unto itself in many ways). From what I can tell, Lee
and his crew spent quite a bit of time with one or more of the migrant “caravans”
that have received such over-the-top political and media attention over the
last year, and the result is a short film that offers both profoundly humanizing
depictions of those would-be asylum seekers and powerfully frustrating
portrayals of the resistance and tear gas with which they have been met at the
US-Mexico border. That film certainly embodies the song’s final verse,
capturing both its critique of current policies and its patriotic recognition
that these potential immigrants embody our national identity and ideals. But it’s
also, again, a cultural work in its own right, and a striking addition to the
career and oeuvre of one of our most consistently thoughtful, complicated, and
critically patriotic filmmakers and artists.
Patriotic series
continues tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other patriotic texts you’d highlight?
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