DANCING IN THE DARK

I read a quote from director Tim Burton once saying [and I’m paraphrasing] “I don’t understand what people mean when they talk about viewing the world in a ‘child-like’ way; even when I was a child, I felt like I was always viewing the world as maturely as I could.”

When I was a kid, all my mom’s friends loved Bruce Springsteen. Born in the USA was hot; my mom wasn’t much of a music fan and its passed her by. On some level, I understood that part of this mom/aunt/family-friend 25-50-year-old female demographic (at the time this was the “Old Ladies” age-range, to me) attraction to Bruce was not necessarily based on the great songs or even the overtly-optimistic / discreetly-pessimistic commentary on the American Dream that permeated the album, but on Bruce’s new biceps, the three-unbuttoned buttons in the “Dancing in the Dark” video, and the fact that you could very nearly pinch his butt on the album cover (which was probably part of the point – I mean, its pretty knowingly Sticky Fingers, with a butt). Born in the USA was the first album I loved, one of the first albums I owned, the first album that made me ignore what was going on around me and just listen. One of my mother’s friends told me I wouldn’t really be able to properly appreciate “Dancing in the Dark” until I saw the video. I was so excited to see it – the hopeless, sparse noir of the song already had gripped my heart; the melody – though I couldn’t articulate it then – struck me as moronic and nearly atonal, yet somehow perfect, like Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

I imagined the video as dark and cinematic – I didn’t even understand these words as descriptors at the time, but that’s what I imagined. Something amazing, the likes of which hadn’t been seen on MTV before. Born in the USA was crushing Thriller as my favorite album, so obviously the “Dancing in the Dark” video was going blow the “Thriller “ video into a million pieces, raining zombie parts and red pleather all over the video wasteland.

Of course, when I did see it, the fake-live-show + dancing-with-Courtney-Cox was a huge disappointment. And I never trusted old ladies again.