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Bent out of shape from society's pliers: A sociological study of the Grotesque in the songs of Bob Dylan
John Wells

To cite this Article Wells, John(1978) 'Bent out of shape from society's pliers: A sociological study of the Grotesque in the

songs of Bob Dylan', Popular Music and Society, 6: 1, 39 44 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/03007767808591108 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007767808591108

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BENT OUT OF SHAPE FROM SOCIETY'S PLIERS: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE GROTESQUE IN THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN by John Wells

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. Bob Dylan

Although Bob Dylan is widely known for his musical and lyrical contributions to the rock culture, few attempts have been made to examine the symbolic expressions and experiential dimensions of his lyrics from a sociological point of view. No doubt this lack of attention is due to the belief that Dylan is not a "serious" artist, or merely a folk singer or pop star and thus, he has no bearing upon legitimate inquiry. It is my contention that Dylan is an important artist whose writings portray unique societal themes, symbolic representations and structures of consciousness found in contemporary society. Furthermore, these topics are deeply rooted within a socio-historical context and provide linkages to similar themes throughout other historical settings. This essay does not attempt a total evaluation of Dylan's lyrics from this standpoint, but more specifically it concentrates on a re-occurring theme in his work: the notion of the grotesque through his dramatic representation of a fictional cosmos. The reader familar with Dylan knows that he has developed his art in a series of "stages" beginning with the classical and traditional folk idiom, progressing through a surrealistic folk-rock phase and more recently incorporating a more toned-down version of country, folk and Spanish influences. An artist may resent his placement into arbitrary categories, pigeon-holes, or "stages" in a career, but it is considered necessary to the purpose of this analysis. Certainly it is undeniable that the Dylan who wrote "Blowing in the Wind" is not the same man who wrote "Like a Rolling Stone"-at least not in an artistic sense. Consequently, I will focus upon the period between 1965 and 1966 in which he recorded three albums including Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. These years can be considered the "surrealistic chains of rhyming images" phase of his career and particularly lends itself to the present discussion. THE GROTESQUE IN A FICTIONAL COSMOS Most individuals in society prefer (or would prefer) to view the world in relation to a central standard or natural order of the universe. They like to feel as if they belong in a society held together by safe well-constructed systems of belief, logic and rationality 39,

POPULAR MUSIC IN SOCIETY which makes the everyday world both familiar and dependable. However, as hard as people try to orchestrate their lives in accordance with some harmonious consistency, at some historical point in time, the system seems to spring small leaks within its tightknit structure and even occasionally collapses at its foundation. At these historical junctures, the universe is transformed and sometimes rather suddenly into a chaotic, distorted and contradictory place. People loose their collective moral bearings, traditional beliefs and firm footholds on reality/No longer does everyday life seem comfortable and secure, but individuals feel lost, alienated and confused about their existence. This experience is certainly not a new phenomenon. Emile Dirkheim warned long ago that if a society's moral structure splintered into desparate components, then anomie or a "feeling of normlessness" could result. (1) GeorgSimmel asserted that, "The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heretage, of external culture and the technique of life."(2) In addition, numerous literary writers such as Franz Kafka, Charles Dickens, Samuel Becket and Albert Camus conveyed this problematic notion about the world in which they lived, i.e., under some societal conditions existence may not be viewed as essentially "ordered" in any real sense, but on the contrary, may seem utterly grotesque. The word grotesque is certainly not a well-defined category of scientific understanding and is often used in extremely vague terms like "strange," "incredible," or "unbelievable."(3) In his book, The Grotesque(4), Philip Thompson includes categories such as "disharmony," the "comic and terrifying," "extravagance and exaggeration," "abnormality," plus related terms and modes such as the "absurd," the "bizarre," and the "macabre." He even covers functions and purposes of the word encompassing among others "aggressiveness and alienation," "tension and unresolvability"and "playfulness." Obviously, the variety of phenomena associated with the grotesque limits its usage as a valuable scientific word. One must be careful to clarify its definition and examine the immediate social context in conjunction with'its chosen meaning. In this regard, I intend to use two components of the term grotesque which are formed most frequently in Dylan's lyrics. These include elements of disharmony and alienation of the individual within a social milieu. In creating a fictional cosmos composed of many people who seem "bent out of shape from society's pliers,"(5) Dylan represents a picture of reality separated from its ordinary psychic underpinnings. His characters are often fantastic or distorted persons caught in a terrible moral drama. For Dylan in his surrealistic phase, the ordinary world and a nightmare madhouse are virtually undistinguishable. THE WORLD AS A MADHOUSE In Bringing It All Back Home(6) Dylan's songs reflect a man trapped in an insane world not quite of his own making. For example, in the song "Maggie's Farm" (which could easily be interpreted as modern society) the continuing refrain, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more" echoes Dylan's resentment against a woman whose brother "hands you a nickel, hands you a dime, asks you with a grin, if you're having a good time." Here Dylan is wrestling under disturbing conditions superimposed upon his own sensibilities to the point where he just can not manage to function anymore. Maggie's' farm is a grotesque place not only because it represents an overtly authoritarian locality, but offers a contradictory view of his existence. The normal routine patterns of life are juxtaposed against jumbled confusion. His attitude toward his "job" at Maggie's farm contradicts the excessive bureaucratic operations which
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BENTOUTOFSHAPE FROM SOCIETY'S PLIERS: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OFTHE GROTESQUE IN THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN

rule our so-called familiar world. Disharmony and alienation arise through a desparate attempt to maintain his personal identity in the face of a world gone mad with the routinization of specialized, boring tasks. Dylan proclaims at the end of the song that he trys to be as he is, but everybody wants you to be like they are and while other people sing while they slave, Dylan just gets bored. A similar reaction, one even more grotesque, is displayed in "On the Road Again". Throughout the song Dylan stumbles through a series of utterly incomprehensible misfortunes and meets a demented world where there are fistfights in the kitchen, Santa Claus is in the fireplace, there are frogs inside his socks, a milkman wears a derby hat, someone's daddy walks in wearing a Napoleon Bonaparte mask, and an uncle steals everything inside his pockets. At the end of each chorus Dylan wonders why his woman wants to know why he does not live here when it is obvious that they are both caught up in a precendented realm of absurdities. This corresponds closely to Wolfgang Kayser's observation that in genuine grotesque art, the everyday world is suddenly changed into a strange and unpleasant place, into a world in which we do not wish to live.(7) Dylan's use of incongruent scenes and stark images are reminiscent of the French symbolist poets, particularly Rimbaud and Baudelaire. One of the key functions of these poets was to provoke their audience into a different kind of perception by presenting to the ordinary eye an object or person so dazzling that it would destroy the dominant temporal-spatial order and rational mode of consciousness. (8) Indeed, Dylan's creations of grotesque disharmonies reveal a farcical universe not founded upon any systematic and logical representations, and his work during this period is aligned with Walter Bagenot's declaration that "...taken as a whole the universe is absurd...all is incongruous."(9) Highway 61 Revisited(lO) contains some of the best poetic imagery Dylan has ever written. His blurring of reality and irreality in such songs as "Desolation Row," "Tombstone Blues," "Ballad of a Thin Man," and "Highway 61 Revisited" further challenges the familiar world to which we are accustomed. In "Tombstone Blues" one again finds the world-as-a-madhouse theme. Dylan encounters, among others, the city fathers trying to endorse the reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse, Jezebel, a nun who violently knits, Jack the Ripper who sits at the head of the Chamber of Commerce, an hysterical bride in a penny arcade, and John the Baptist who tortures a thief. Throughout all these charades Dylan repeats the alienated refrain that "Mama's in a factory (she ain't got no shoes") and daddy's in an alley (he's looking for food) and Dylan's in the street with the tombstone blues." In "Desolation Row" Dylan descends completely into the abyss of modern society. Here is a place inhabited by extremely grotesque figures in a cold cunning and mechanical environment. As he descends into this Dantesque netherworld he meets a riot squad who needs some place to go, sexless patients trying to blow-up a leather cup, Ophelia'who is an old maid on her twenty-second birthday, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, the Titanic sailing at dawn, and Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in a captain's tower. In one of the more chilling choruses Dylan declares: Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do Obviously Dylan is experiencing a radically different kind of existence and the surrealistic images he projects causes one to shudder because they reflect a totally estranged world. It is his own season in hell and here especially the similarities between Dylan and Rimbaud are quite apparent. Rimbaud, almost a century earlier, experimented with aD sorts of drugs, underwent hunger, exhaustion and other extreme physical deprivations to produce a "complete deregularization of the senses." Through this method Rimbaud hoped to achieve poetic visions which would loosen the moorings of ordinary consciousness through the dissolution of ordinary reality. Dylan himself 41

POPULAR MUSIC IN SOCIETY certainly used various drugs, particularly amphetamines and marijuana as documented in Dylan,(12) a biography by Anthony Scaduto. It is impossible to accurately estimate the importance of the drug experience in connection with artistic achievement. One does not necessarily need drugs to induce a visionary experience or produce fantastic images. As Salvadore Dali once said, "I do not take drugs. I am drugs." Nevertheless, Dylan does make numerous references to drugs in his songs and one may safely say that he used some method similar to Rimbaud's to gain visionary insights and surrealistic chains of rhyming images devoid of any conscious control by a rationalistic state of mind. The album Blonde on Blonde(13) contains many stylistic resemblances to Highway 61 Revisited, although perhaps expanding even more significantly the deeply rooted paradoxical nature of human relationships - especially those between a man and a woman. In virtually every song Dylan alludes to a woman he loves or cares about, but someone, something or some unfathomable forces are always operating to prevent any real substantial union between them. The titles themselves reveal this dilemma: "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)," "I Want You," "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine," "Fourth Time Around." Whereas many of Dylan's earlier songs depicted a man alienated and confused from impenetrable forces in society, Blonde on Blonde focuses upon a man alienated from practically the only thing left to confind in and find security, i.e., a woman. Ultimately, this attempt also fails. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the sadly ironic "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine," in which Dylan laments the loss of his girlfriend who is not strong enough to hold him. Dylan even wonders why it gets so hard to care ("it can't be this way everywhere") and in the end he resolutely lets her go her own way. But if Blonde on Blonde has one song which somehow perfectly captures the grotesque disharmony and alienation themes with which we are dealing, it must be the superbly written "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again." Discussing Dylan's lyrics in this context is severely hampered by the fact that the reader is only reading the lyrics and not listening to the song as it was produced in the studio. This song in particular cannot possibly be wholly experienced as a truly remarkable work of art unless one actually hears Dylan's vocalization and musical instrumentation. Aided with the use of an electric guitar, an eerie circus-like organ sound and a steady drum beat, Dylan sings as if this is his last day on earth. When he delivers the repeated refrain of every chorus, "Oh Mama can this really be the end - to be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again", there is no doubt that this is a man crying from the utter depths of experience. It has been said that with the Beatles you thought you had a chance; with the Rolling Stones you knew you didn't want one. In this song Dylan confirms that you will never have a chance. This, as he says, is really the end. After repeated listening one realizes that Mobile no longer just means being stuck in an Alabama city, but more symbolically, Mobile represents the grotesque turbulent world we all inhabit. In this song Dylan drinks some Texas medicine which strangles up his mind and experiences people getting uglier, loses his sense of time and wonders what price he has to pay for going through all these things twice. Among other grotesque scenes Dylan portrays a ragman drawing circles up and down a block, Shakespeare in an Alley, railroad men who drink up his blood like wine, a grandpa who is buried in the rocks and after all this he moans "wouldn't it be my luck - to be caught without a ticket and be discovered beneath a truck." Dylan may be stuck in an insane world, but he somehow maintains his sanity by not taking the world or himself too seriously. This may be a terrible place to live, but it is also something of a joke and if a person reaches the point where something has strangled up his mind, he has no sense of time, people just get uglier, and he wonders why he has to go through all these things twice then it is 42

BENTOUTOFSHAPE FROM SOCIETY'S PLIERS: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE GROTESQUE IN THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN obvious that "normal reality" has no meaning whatsoever. The world has become transformed and transformed into a grotesque madhouse. As Benjamin Nelson has noted, "Images of the grotesque...regularly seem to multiply when large numbers of people find it impossible to function, much less thrive, in their everyday worlds."(14) This is why Dylan's work remains important from a sociological point of view. CONCLUSION In developing his poetry fused with an electric guitar sound, Dylan struck a vital chord in the consciousness of contemporary youth. In the ..mid-sixties this symbolic rerepresentation of his own experiences condensed into a few lines and songs the experiences many persons were having at a time. Philip Thompson correctly maintains that the grotesque is an appropriate expression of the problematic nature of existence and "...It is no accident that the grotesque mode in the literature tends to be prevalent in societies and eras marked by strife, radical change, or disorientation."(15) Certainly, the era of the mid-sixties marked a dramatic change in the fluid motion of American society, not only from events such as the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the generation gap, but also many young people began altering their consciousness through various drugs, eastern religions, vegetarianism and so forth. There is no need to chronicle these changes here since they have been well studied and explored but the important point for our purposes is that societies do run courses which are surely not linear and exhibit malises, distempers and functional disorders. Invariable these shifts or breakdowns are coterminous with dramatic shifts in structure of consciousness and re-representations of experience.(16) If these changes in the normal ordering of existence are evidenced by certain writers like Bob Dylan describing the world as grotesque, circus-like, crazy or absurd, and if this image corresponds to other people's experiences, then perhaps social scientists would do well to examine so-called everyday life from a more radical perspective. Although, as Nelson points out, terms like consciousness, experience and existence have largely been dropped from sociological vocabulary, it seems evident that we risk eliminating these concepts at our own peril. FOOTNOTES (1)See Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, translated and with an introduction by George Simpson (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1933). (2)Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 324. (3)Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature translated by Verich Weisstein (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), p. 17. (4)Philip Thompson, The Grotesque (London: Methuen and Company, 1972). (5)This quote is derived from the song, "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) on the Bringing It All Back Home album. (6)Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home (New York: Columbia Records, 1965) CS9128.
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POPULAR MUSIC IN SOCIETY (7)Kayser (1963: 184-185). (8)John Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 95. (9)Walter Bagehot, "the First Edinburgh Reviewers" Literary Studies, Vol. I (1855), 30. (10)Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited (New York: Columbia Records, 1965) KCS 9189. (11)See Enid Starkie, Arthur Rimbaud (New York: New Directions, 1968). (12) Anthony Scaduot, Dylan (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Inc., 1971). (13)Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde (New York: Columbia Records, 1965) C25841. (14)Benjamin Nelson, "The Omnipresense of the Grotesque" in The Psycho-analytic Review 57:3, (1972), 514. (15)Thompson, (1972:11). (16)Nelson, (1972:507-512).

Blackburg, Virginia 24061 I would like to express my gratitude to Donald A. Nielsen, Micahel Moore and Donna Allison for their thoughtful suggestions and comments.

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