I was around the same age as Javed, the 16-year-old hero of Blinded by the Light, when I discovered
the music of Bruce Springsteen.
Like him, I was young.
Like him, I felt trapped in my small town, I felt misunderstood by my parents, and I
had dreams that didn’t seem compatible with the life I’d been born into.
Like him, I was about to really fall in love for the first time.
But Javed — a fictionalized stand-in for real-life journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, who
wrote the book on which the film is based and also co-wrote the screenplay — also
has experiences I can’t directly relate to.
He’s a child of Pakistani immigrants.
He’s a person of color.
He’s a Muslim in a country where Muslims are a misunderstood and often despised minority.
And yet when Javed puts on his headphones and listens to Springsteen for the first time,
his eyes light up with recognition the same way mine did, and still do.
The same lyrics that made me feel seen and understood as a teenager make Javed feel that
way, too.
This is the magic not only of Bruce Springsteen, of course, but of all great music, and indeed
of all great art.
Even if Springsteen doesn’t happen to suit your taste, I imagine a lot of you would still
recognize the excitement of discovering a song, a book, a film, something that seems
to be speaking directly to you.
“How does he know?”
Javed asks his Bruce-loving new friend Roops.
Blinded by the Light, directed by Gurinder Chadha (probably best known for directing
Bend It Like Beckham), is a musical of a sort.
The songs of Bruce Springsteen bear a lot of weight in terms of the soundtrack and the
story.
Characters listen and sing along to familiar entries in the Springsteen catalogue like
“Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” and “Promised Land” — and of course, “Blinded
by the Light.”
But the true achievement of the film is to tell a story about the impact of Springsteen’s
music which unfolds like a Springsteen song itself.
Javed, like a typical protagonist of a late-70s-to-mid-80s Springsteen song, is a young man from a working
class town, who feels alienated from his family and most of his peers, who longs to fall in
love but hasn’t yet, who yearns to transcend his present circumstances, to move up, to
get out, to escape, to do something.
Like many a classic Springsteen song, Blinded by the Light shows us a character who is struggling
to understand who he is without referring to many of the most common markers of human
identity: if Javed doesn’t want to be defined by his family, or his ethnicity, or his social
class, or his occupation, then what’s left?
While trying to find an answer to that question, Javed goes through an accelerated version
of what I think is probably the trajectory of many Springsteen fans.
There’s that initial elation of recognition — it’s like he’s singing about me!
This is followed by the hero worship phase, when Bruce takes on the gravitas of an ancient
prophet.
But ultimately, Javed learns the same lesson I and countless other Springsteen fans have
learned: no matter how much you love him at first, you don’t truly understand what he’s
singing about until life has brought you to the point of giving up, or you’ve had your
heart broken, or had to live with breaking someone else’s heart.
Then you turn to those same songs and, just as Javed discovers, you notice things you
didn’t hear before.
Blinded by the Light is a character study, and it could hardly have picked a better character
on whom to focus.
Javed, as played by Viveik Kalra in what should be a star-making performance, is so charming
and likable and sympathetic, it’s impossible not to care for him and root for him.
But, like many a great Springsteen song, Javed’s story doesn’t take place in a vacuum.
He lives with his family in the town of Luton in the south east of England.
It’s 1987.
His father loses his job at a factory.
The fascist, white supremacist National Front has become active in Luton, targeting Pakistani
immigrants in particular.
Politics are a part of this story.
Racism is a part of this story.
But those elements aren’t there to give the filmmakers an excuse to preach.
Politics and racism figure into the story because they figure into the lives of these
characters, just as they figure into the lives of real people like them.
In addition to Javed’s family and some other fellow immigrants, there are a handful of
white characters in important supporting roles.
There’s Matt, Javed’s best friend since childhood.
There’s Javed’s neighbor, Mr. Evans, who becomes an unlikely but much needed source
of encouragement.
There’s Eliza, the classmate in whom Javed takes a romantic interest.
And there’s Javed’s English teacher, Ms. Clay (played by Hayley Atwell), who pushes
him to pursue his dream of being a writer.
Ms. Clay in particular is a wonderful character, not just for who she is but for the place
she occupies within the story.
She’s the idealistic, attractive white woman who sees the untapped potential of the young
man from the immigrant family.
In another film — a film written and directed by white people — she might have been the
main character.
But not here.
She’s important to this story.
But it doesn’t belong to her.
It belongs to the young man of Pakistani heritage with a head full of dreams and a hungry heart
— a young man who is very different from me, but who I relate to emotionally as closely
as to any white American protagonist I can think of, because of the feelings and experiences
we share, and because of the music that bridges the space between us.
This is the importance of representation.
It matters when we let people tell their own stories about people like themselves, because
it’s important for people of color, immigrants, people from all kinds of marginalized communities
to see themselves represented on screen.
But it’s also important for people like me to see stories centered on those who aren’t
like us, people from different countries, people of different ethnicities or religions,
with different cultural backgrounds, with different life experiences, to remind us of
how we are different and also of how much we have in common.
As a Springsteen superfan, I did notice once or twice where Javed was listening to a song
that he probably couldn’t have heard yet — for example, his new friend Roops introduces
him to Bruce by lending him the albums Born in the U.S.A. and Darkness on the Edge of
Town, but when Javed is raving to Roops the next day he quotes from the song “The River,”
which isn’t on either of those albums.
But that’s just nitpicking.
The film does lean pretty heavily on feel-good tropes in its final act.
I’m spoiling nothing if I tell you that Javed’s estrangement from his father doesn’t
last forever.
And the plot is contrived in such a way to allow Javed to give a big, climactic speech
that sums up his feelings and completes his character arc.
It’s a cliche.
But you know what?
It’s a really well executed cliche.
And I think that’s appropriate, given the subject matter.
After all, those of us who love Springsteen don’t love him because he’s innovative
or avante garde.
He isn’t, particularly.
His songs don’t try to reinvent music.
He’s not saying anything we haven’t heard before.
He’s doing what one of the characters in the film says all good writers do: he’s
saying things the world needs to hear.
And those things are familiar, but they’re also informed by personal experience, and
said with passion and sincerity.
That’s why the music of Springsteen works, and that’s why Blinded by the Light works.
Javed begins the film too afraid to pursue his dreams, and he ends it on the cusp of
realizing those dreams.
And he learns a thing or two along the way.
He learns that he and his parents are more alike than he might have realized or wanted
to admit.
He learns that we aren’t islands unto ourselves, that other people matter and that we need
each other.
He learns that while it is possible to escape where you come from, a part of yourself will
always be back there.
And he learns the answer to that question he asks Roops after listening to Bruce Springsteen
for the first time.
“How does he know?”
He learned it the same way the rest of us did.