Genre 2
Playlist to the American Dream
This genre touches on linguistic and musical intelligences to create a series of three songs that convey strong emotions about the American Dream, emotions such as frustration, hope, joy, pain, etc. Students choose the songs based upon their own imagining of the American Dream, thereby making this project also an intrapersonal assessment.
Neil Young's hard rocking tune stirs emotions of frustration and rage in the face of poverty in the United States. The song "Rockin' In The Free World" is a satirical piece, for it at juxtaposes terms such as "freedom" with images of starving and homeless people. It comments on the American Dream insofar as it equates the "Dream" to "freedom" to do what you want in the United States if you work hard and play by the rules. But, given the images of poverty, it appears that this "Dream" of freedom is only available to a few, while many struggle to survive.
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"Pink Houses" by John Mellencamp appears on the surface to be a celebration of the United States in its outwardly positive chorus, "Ain't that America, you and me. Ain't that America, something to see." But a close reading of its imagery and of its tone reveals a different reading. That tone is one of frustration, as if to say there should be something more than just living in "little Pink Houses." This is a response to the trope of the American Dream that dictates that one should pursue the two-kids-and-a-white-picket-fence kind of success. I think the true message of this song is that conformity to the trope of the American Dream leads to stagnation and a corrupt system where there has to be "winners and losers."
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Bruce Springsteen was in high school during the Vietnam War; he was actually drafted but deemed unfit to serve. "Born in the U.S.A" is a response to the war and the loss of life resulting from it, written less than ten years after the end of the conflict. But more than just a response to the war, "Born in the U.S.A" deals with what it means to be an American. Springsteen's lyrics delve into his anger at the loss of life in the war, what many felt was a necessary cost to uphold the American way of life. The American way of life is also the American Dream, but as Springsteen shows, the "Dream" is problematic in that it required the death of so many people in the Vietnam War.
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