Let's Talk About the Born in the U.S.A. Scene(s) in Air

There’s a scene in the 1984-set “Air,” director Ben Affleck’s retelling of how one Michael Jordan came to be the face of Nike, when the shoe company’s VP of marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) explains how he has not so much misconstrued the lyrics to one of Bruce Springsteen’s big pop hits of that summer, “Born in the U.S.A,” but never really listened to them at all, assuming the song to be a message of hope, to borrow the 40th President’s distortion, when, in fact, it’s a blistering critique of the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is not the best “Born in the U.S.A.” scene in movie history. No, that remains Michael Moore’s otherwise mediocre “Canadian Bacon,” in which a few overly gung-ho Americans invading Canada (it’s complicated) begin singing the chorus to “Born in the U.S.A.” in celebration…and then realize they don’t know any of the other words. It’s a better scene because it essentially lives out Strasser’s speech, though as a longtime Springsteen fan who has been driven around the bend for years by so many misinterpretations of the song, I appreciate the monologue, nevertheless. Once, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and fed up with the patriotic correctness coursing through American culture, and in a fit of embarrassing self-righteousness, I told some dee jay at some bar who saw fit to play “Born in the U.S.A.” that he wasn’t hearing the song right. I was surprised my friends were still at the table when I returned.

 

 

The dee jay, it should be said, conceded my point vis-a-vis the song’s point only to then explain that given the late 2001 context, he was compelled to play it anyway, which struck me as bizarre, confirming the song’s truth while furthering its misconception. And that’s sort of what “Air” does too, explicitly stating that the song, it’s not about what you think it’s about, and yet, misappropriating the ironic triumphalism by dropping the needle on the song for the triumphant end credits, including one showing how the Jumpman logo, the pinnacle of corporate emblems came to be. In explaining the decision to use the song in that spot, Music Supervisor Andrea von Foerster told Esquire, “Many people do still think of that song as like, ‘Yay, America,’ so it was a nice way to end the story about these underdogs,” which, what? “Everything about the sequence hints at some troubling, unspoken tension between what we’re seeing and what it means,” Adam Nayman summarized for The Ringer, “but not to the point where it actually changes the material’s meaning: It’s irony without teeth, and it wouldn’t know who to bite if it could. The main takeaways from ‘Air’ are that an essentially faceless corporation found a way to humanize itself through a perfectly chosen surrogate superhero, and that the middle-aged dudes who made the pick were visionaries—cool rocking daddies in the U.S.A.” 

Bruce might be the American artist for whom I have the greatest affinity, as I said when my friend Jaime posed that question during her Walt Whitman Bicentennial Shindig a few years ago, but recently, whether he knows (cares) or not, the two of us have been on the outs. He played Wrigley Field not long ago and I didn’t go, didn’t want to go, wasn’t even sad about missing it. The tickets, they were just too much and that exorbitant price pissed me off as it did many other fans. “If there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back,” he said in the aftermath of the uproar, as if that meant anything. I wouldn’t want my money back after having lunch at Le Grand Véfour either, Boss, but the question is, can I afford to have it in the first place? A songwriter who has excelled on putting himself in other people’s shoes, suddenly couldn’t. I know, I know, you can’t fight Ticketmaster. Pearl Jam fought Ticketmaster in the 90s and Ticketmaster won. If they couldn’t win, then what was Bruce supposed to do? I don’t know, at the absolute least, he could have not written all this off to market forces. He could have made some move toward understanding and remedying the fan’s lament, as The Cure’s Robert Smith nobly did. Thinking bigger, if not dreamily outlandish, given that he sets his prices, he could have set his prices as zero, meaning the tickets would have solely been Ticketmaster fees, exerting pressure on the monopoly by starkly putting into perspective its highway robbery. 

It might be unfair to ask an artist, any artist, to charge literally nothing to see them live, but then again, Springsteen sold his entire catalog to Sony in 2021 for what was reported as $500 million. And per a Credit Suisse 2016 wealth report, there are less than 2,500 US citizens with a net worth of $500 million or more. That means Bruce Springsteen, blue collar icon, meets the criteria of the so-called “super-rich.” A super-rich person couldn’t play a few shows for free to say, hey, look at what Ticketmaster is doing to you? In fact, that $500 million deal is why “Born in the U.S.A.” was allowed to appear in “Air” in the first place. When Lee Iacocca came calling in 1986 with an offer of $12 million to recast Springsteen’s protest song as the “Like a Rock” of Chrysler, Bruce could tell the CEO to stuff it because it was his song, literally his recording and his intellectual property. And upon selling his catalog to Sony, he literally gave away his recording and his intellectual property, and if, say, Bank of America wants to license “Born in the U.S.A.,” he has signed away the power to stop them.  

“I guess nobody likes the feeling that they wrote a song and in some way the song is bein’ stolen from them,” Springsteen told Kurt Loder in 1984, “or presented in a fashion they don’t feel they’d want to present it in.” He was talking about bootlegs, but he could have been talking about his music in general, though, of course, once he sold it to Sony, it couldn’t be stolen, just possibly presented in a fashion he might not have wanted it presented in, and part of me hopes when he saw “Born in the U.S.A.” kick in at the end of “Air” that he thought, wait a minute now. I’m being unfairly idealistic, perhaps, especially in a world where streaming has reduced the earnings of musicians to a measly trickle. But Bruce is also one of the few musicians remaining who could absorb that hit, and more than that, one who once opined that the key to adulthood is finding a way to maintain your idealism after your innocence is gone, a sentiment I have carried with me, and that I suppose I had hoped he was still carrying with him too. He frequently puts his music where his mouth is, true, and reliably votes blue, fair enough, but it was gravely disappointing to see that in the one way in which he can make a direct and immediate impact on his own fans, he was content to sit it out, lest his pocketbook take a hit, becoming the very cool rocking daddy he legendarily mocked. It’s funny, in a sad sort of way, that at a time when American unions and workers seem more galvanized than ever, and despite still being in strong enough shape to power his marathon shows, workaday hero Bruce Springsteen has gone soft. 

Air

In “Air,” when Nike sits down to pitch Michael Jordan and his family about being their preeminent brand ambassador, they fire up a highlight video. This video, it is Marketing 101, slick, entertaining, and empty. Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), the shoe company’s foremost scout for basketball talent, the one who has convinced a reluctant Jordan to take this meeting in the first place, immediately senses Jordan’s family, especially his mother Deloris (Viola Davis), tuning out this video and stops it, much to the chagrin of CEO Phil Knight (Affleck). It’s ironic, given how Affleck doubles as director and yet never senses that his own movie ultimately comes across as slick, entertaining, and empty as that highlight video itself. You see it straight away in an efficient opening credit pop culture nostalgia trip, not even so much setting the scene, though it does, as function like an advertisement for 1984, even as it dazzlingly gives away the game, as if we are seeing the world through “They Live” sunglasses outfit with the wrong prescription. 

Oh, “Air” is a sheer pleasure to watch, don’t get me wrong here, just as the commercialist and jingoist 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics were a sheer pleasure to watch. The Olympics comparison is apt. Despite the geopolitics and Hollywood machinations, Affleck’s Oscar-winning “Argo” was structured very much like a sports movie, designed to elicit similar weepy uplift, and so it makes sense that Affleck would be so in his wheelhouse on “Air.” This is an underdog story with a sports shoe rather than a sports team, evoked in one two-faced image where a glowing neon Nike sign is framed to look an awful lot like the picture of the Hickory Huskers above the gymnasium door at the end of “Hoosiers.” Indeed, Nike might be named for the Greek goddess of victory but in 1984, it lagged far behind its competitors, an anomaly in Oregon fronted by a nouveau hippie like Knight, sans a cutthroat competitive edge which is what Sonny gives it, introduced as both a gambler and a student of game tape, who sees the young Jordan for the cutthroat competitor he is and is determined to risk it all on him, just as Jordan’s mother Deloris (Viola Davis) is determined to shift the business paradigm. 

This three-pronged narrative structure goes a long way toward giving “Air” so much juice, ensuring there is always a new angle to play and meaning the movie never lags, moving forward at a pace that is not quite frenetic but just fast enough, underlined in how major characters are often introduced with intertitles, keeping us firmly committed to the narrative treadmill. And though “Air” is sculpted almost exclusively out of conversations, writer Alex Convery renders inside baseball with wit and comedy, often solid throwaway jokes, like a James Worthy-level one about Kurt Rambis. During the more business-y dialogue, meanwhile, Affleck keeps his camera roaming and quivering and editor William Goldenberg crisply cuts them, refusing to let us get bored, while for more emotional and personal moments, the camera and the cutting calms down, letting us truly absorb it. Scene after scene, and transition after transition, meanwhile, are marked by pop hits of the era, so much so that the movie has the feel of a jukebox musical, one more tune to keep you engaged (“I know that song!”), even if the curation, like Run-D.M.C.’s “My Adidas” when the action briefly segues to Adidas headquarters sometimes skews bleatingly obvious.

In the manner of “Air” itself, Damon’s turn both does and does not work. He evinces a love for the game that helps evince a love for his work, resulting in a likable presence that helps carry us through, even though, well, there’s just enough dirt under those figurative fingernails. He has several phone scenes with Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina), so single-focused and unlikable that the character himself says he’s destined to end up alone. Sonny, however, is portrayed the exact same way, an irony neither Damon nor the movie itself ever grasps, an incredible oversight that inadvertently exposes an overall lack of dimension preventing “Air” from finding another gear. Affleck fares better as Knight, playing an eccentric, perhaps, but also a sort of unlikely and, in turn, stressed out CEO who never feels exactly like a business genius, more like an eccentric in over his head, who in some ways knows it, and in other ways doesn’t. And while Dolores Jordan has far less characterization, Davis’s turn fills out the role anyway, simultaneously caring and commanding, effusing parental protection and control, split right down the middle. 

All these conference table dramatics suggest “Moneyball,” and while there are distinct similarities, despite the fudging of some real-life details and hints of hagiography in its presentation of mastermind Billy Beane, there was also shading to Beane, in the way the character was written and not just in how Brad Pitt played him, anguish and regret. Even more, there was tension in the plot, between science and romance, between business and romance. Such tension is weirdly absent in “Air,” rendering the whole movie [frantically searching Thesaurus for synonym of airless] insubstantial. Part of this stems from Affleck’s own hagiographic insistence on essentially making Jordan invisible onscreen (occasionally seen more than played by Damian Young), preferring to let his admittedly massive place in the culture do the work for him. The impulse is understandable, but in doing so, it makes what we already know paramount, turning Sonny and Deloris into prophets, negating so much drama and depth. Even then, however, Affleck might have made it work with a more expressionistic sensibility. Alas, that isn’t Affleck’s forte, and just as the shoe itself is mostly kept offscreen, there is no sense of how the shoe became an expression of Jordan, or how Jordan expressed himself through the shoe. Even there, Affleck turns to the historical record, literally tagging his movie with the Be Like Gatorade ad, finally dropping the facade and literally just becoming a commercial.