LYRICAL LOITERINGS OF A LISTENER Series
Thoughts, ideas and reactions provoked by song lyrics. The series is also featured on Clink Music Magazine.
The United States of America, also known as ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’, has spent a lifetime propagating the bravado of The Great American Dream; a national ethos in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. The phrase “American Dream” was popularised by historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic of America:
The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, also too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
And later he wrote:
The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.
The utopian idealism of this ‘American Dream’ was particularly rife in the 1920s, which was an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess attributed a rise of the stock market in the aftermath of World War 1. But the ideal was famously debunked by F.Scott Fitzgerald in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses his novel to comment on the disintegration of the American Dream. The author portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure, which resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American Dream as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals.
While The Great Gatsby explores society’s reckless corrosion of America’s utopian dream, more recently, Daniel Kauf’s short-lived TV series Carnivàle, focuses on the practical hardships that made the American Dream all the more elusive and improbable. Set in the 20s/30s, Carnivàle decapitates the grandiosity of American idealism. The fantastical and supernatural elements within the show emphasise the harsh realities of the time. Poverty and unemployment were results of the economic crisis that was an aftermath of the Wall Street crash in 1929. And to make matters 
worse, natural disasters (including drought) added to the nation’s miseries. Life was struggle for survival – of mind, body and soul. And none personify this struggle better than the travelling carnival in Carnivàle. The carnival’s physical deformity represents a mangled spirit that has been distorted through rejection and poverty. Some dream.
And then we have Rob Zombie: pop culture icon, musician, screenwriter, film director and producer. A man who has created an artistic metaphor, quite unlike any other, for the putrefaction of the Great American Dream. Through music, film and Horror, Rob Zombie has constructed the antithesis of the American Dream; his ideological stance is summated in a song entitled The Great American Nightmare.
The Great American Nightmare
Dig deep down from Planet X, yeah
Thirteen ghosts in the devil’s head
Step right up and feel the fire
Hardcore love of the never dead
Call me the American nightmare
Call me the American dream
Call me your soul corrupted
Call me everything you need
Yeah, motherfucker
Yeah, who do you love
Yeah, motherfucker
Who do you love, yeah
Black boots stomp and penetrate, yeah
Lust and death gone in your head
Rat pack mind degenerated
Thirteen ghosts sing the body red
Call me the dark intruder
Call me the haunted sea
Call me your Monster Zero
Call me anything you need
Call me the American Nightmare
Call me the American dream
Call me your soul corrupted
Call me everything you need
Yeah, motherfucker
Yeah, who do you love
Yeah, motherfucker
Who do you love, yeah
Call me the American Nightmare
Call me the American dream
Call me your soul corrupted
Call me everything you need
Yeah, motherfucker
Yeah, who do you love
Yeah, motherfucker
Who do you love, yeah
Yeah, motherfucker
Yeah, who do you love
Yeah, motherfucker
Who do you love, yeah
Art is a reflection of society; it encapsulates the attitude of an era and the ethics of a people. Based on this premise, the Horror genre, like all other ‘types’, is a vehicle for social commentary. Horror, in its typical form, personifies human depravity in the form of monsters or villainous fiends – it delves into the core of human obscenity and wrenches out that which is so dark that it is buried beneath consciousness, where it prowls…waiting for a lapse in control, waiting to pounce. Whether the fiend of the moment is Freddy Krueger, Frankenstein, Leatherface or Jigsaw, each enemy represents an evil that lurks deep within the human soul.
Entrenched in Horror is a poignant irony; although Horror’s ‘baddies’ are the Hyde to society’s Jekyll – the so-called alter ego of the human race, instead of endearing us to the actuality of our duplicitous nature, the ‘Hydes of Horror’ distract us from our ugliness. Horror’s creatures are so far removed from humanity, in appearance and supernatural ability, that we moralistically extract ourselves from their consciousness. We cannot bear to acknowledge any sort of affinity with the monstrous beings that permeate art (in all forms) as that would force an uncomfortable introspection on behalf of the individual.
But in The Great American Nightmare Rob Zombie tells us to “Step right up and feel the fire.” In other words, we cannot escape the corruptibility of our inherently iniquitous nature. The song’s irreverent tone, evident in the lines “Call me the American nightmare/ Call me the American dream/ Call me your soul corrupted/ Call me everything you need,” is ambivalent; the ‘me’ in the chorus refers to the song’s narrator, who adopts a demonic persona, but as one gives one’s own voice to the song, the ‘me’ is pronounced in first person and is thus rendered personal. So the ‘monster’ Rob Zombie speaks of is not external to our consciousness but is rather intrinsically part of it.
So what? Are we supposed to embrace our ‘inner demon’ and run wild? I think not. William Golding told us what would happen if moral codes became suggestions rather than rules; Chaos is not a fun place to be. I think that Rob Zombie calls on his listeners to cull denial. He asks us to ‘keep it real.’ He says “Yeah, motherfucker/ Who do you love, yeah” – the demonic entity speaking the words of the song rhetorically suggests that we love it. And that entity is a mirror image of our own human debauchedness; so then who do we love? Ourselves – is the answer. Whatever the monster is that creeps beneath – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride (to keep it simple) – we love it. And when this ‘love’ overcomes our ability to rationalise and reason (our conscience), the nightmare lives and the dream dies.
Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
