The Photo Atlas, Bruce Springsteen and the Great American Teenage Myth

The Photo Atlas taps into the motifs of what I call the Great American Teenage Myth in the lyrics of "Dress Code". We have kids hopping into a car, hitting the interstate and driving fast even though they won't make it, which is significant not only because its a scene that might as well have been sung by Bruce Springsteen (The first three lines of Born to Run), but because it was sung by guys who grew up in Colorado, not New Jersey, and yet share the same basic events of driving fast and reckless down a highway towards a place they know they won't reach.  There is even a shared wailing of "woah oh", and although it represents the ecstatic emotion of being briefly wild, uninhibited and free in one song, and perhaps a cry of pain from unrequited love in another, both emotions are part of the same event. Because what is the physical scene of the Great American Teenage Myth but running away from home and having to come back? Starting as the little child that packs a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and his stuffed tiger to get away from a hegemonic mom, how much have we progressed to the rebellious teen that just wants to run away and live his dreams. And there in lies not only the image of running but also the sense that The Great American Teenage Myth is a chase of something that has only become more solidified since childhood. A yearning of something that has become increasingly intense, and less and less bearable to not act on. 

But the myth is not satisfied. Calvin returns home and Bruce doesn't know when his dream is going to be fulfilled but he hopes one day. And there is the emotional underpinning of the shared story. It's a time of hope and dreams, but also of denial, impotence and inability. The balance of those emotions, and the knowledge that one has to return back to a cage of home is what creates the tension and ultimately the ecstasy of the brief escape or the grief of returning unfulfilled.

All this tied in with images of cars, the open road, and addressing a romantic interest builds up to create a common story that we can enjoying by nodding and thinking 'Yeah, I get that' when we hear someone else say it. 

Anyway, here's The Photo Atlas's new song "Dress Code" off of their new album Stuck in a Honeytrap. It's fun, angsty, unrequited, and comforts me with a feeling of warm nostalgia for our shared story.