National Front marches prevent Muslims from attending Mosque and vandals spray paint obscenities and Swastikas on the homes of immigrants. It is England in the late 1980s, and economic hardship is everywhere, impacting immigrants and native-born English people alike. However, seventeen years later, with xenophobia rampant on the world stage, a white nationalist in the White House and the Brexit fiasco in Great Britain, it seems quaint and naive in retrospect. This sort of unabashed sentimentality is a hallmark of director Gurinder Chadha, whose best-known work is probably 2002’s Bend it Like Beckham, a charming movie to be sure, and one that covers many of the same themes of Blinded by the Light such as racism and pursuing one’s dreams despite societal and familial objections. Lyrics are projected on walls and Javed’s face as the music and words give him a newfound purpose. His soul is emboldened and transformed, and the film makes its most dramatic break from literal reality as light and shadows dance across the physical surroundings of Javed’s home and home town. We are with Khan when his friend Roops gives him a Springsteen cassette and, in a truly magical moment, he puts on his headphones and hears The Boss for the first time. It is a testament to Kalra’s charisma as a performer that Blinded by the Light works as well as it does as so much of the film is focused (literally and figuratively) on Khan as he stares longingly just off-camera as he listens to Bruce belt-out his well-known anthems. He could very well be the subject of a Springsteen song, and Kalra plays Khan with the youthful earnestness of a Springsteen character, staring off into the distance at the dreams, any dream, that might take him away from his loneliness. When we meet Javed Khan, played by Viveik Kalra, he’s a lonely teenager looking for a way to get out of his small English town, to find a way to discover both himself and some meaning in the world. But his love for those characters is one he takes very seriously, which is why his music reaches someone like Javed Khan. His songs are not of him, but of characters. A champion of the working class, the everyman, he has acquired the nickname ‘The Boss,” all the while (by his own admission) never working a real job in his life. Springsteen has always trafficked in such wonderful contradictions. As with so much of great art, the music of Springsteen reaches across generations, cultures and continents it is so personal it becomes universal. That simultaneous inevitability and improbability of my own Bruce fandom makes the story of Blinded by the Light so easy to relate to for me, a white American, watching the story of a Pakistani teenager under the boot of racism, family obligation, and economic depressing in 1980s England. As I follow and love the music he has created, and continues to create, since I found my own musical tastes, I keep him with me still. From early memories of finding his catchy anthems irresistible as a child, to being crushed by the brutally bleak storytelling of his Nebraska album while in college, to finally falling in love with his early output in my thirties, Springsteen has always been with me. Yet the hooks of Springsteen never left me. Then again, that inevitability, that connection to my father and his family might seem like Springsteen’s music would be something to rebel against once I came to find my own musical tastes, finding a home in heavy metal and dipping my toes in punk rock. My father’s family is Italian, from a town in New Jersey less than 50 miles from the Stone Pony, the Asbury Park music venue that famously served as a proving ground for the young, aspiring rock star (as well as many other acts). It was almost inevitable that I would become a Bruce Springsteen fan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |