Blinded by the light

By Alexandra Sepe

Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”  has got to be one of the most misunderstood songs about America. 

"Born in the U.S.A." was twisted into a nationalistic anthem that was even referenced during Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign when, in reality, it describes the alienation and despair that a Vietnam war veteran faced upon returning to America.

 Talk about misinterpretation! 

Although often painted in this oddly patriotic light, Bruce Springsteen is known for singing about dreamers who want to escape the dooms of their hometowns. His music can speak to anyone. My dad became a Springsteen fanatic at the ripe age of eleven. So, when “Blinded by the Light,” a movie about falling in love with Bruce Springsteen, was released, he dragged my entire family to the theaters. 

Directed by Gurinder Chadha, a Kenyan-born Indo-British filmmaker, and based on Sarfraz Manzoor's memoir Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion and Rock N' Roll”, “Blinded by the Light'' tells the coming-of-age story of sixteen-year-old Javed Khan (Viveik Kahlra). Javed, the son of two working-class Pakistani immigrants, finds solace and hope in Bruce Springsteen’s music. The story takes place between 1987 and 1988 in Luton, a small town outside London.

Before discovering Springsteen’s words, Javed resorted to filling diaries with entries and poems to express his sufferings. He also wrote supposedly “too depressing” songs for his best friend Matt's “new wave-esque” aspiring band. Much to the dismay of his father, who commands his every action, Javed formed a passion for literature. 

While rejecting the culture imposed on him at home, things aren’t better for Javed at school. He’s constantly terrorized by a band of young neo-Nazis, being one of the only non-white students at his high school. The film offers a reflective insight into what the Pakistani community, and minorities, faced in England. Although the movie isn’t necessarily political, it doesn’t shy away from integrating the socio-economic inequalities that the working class faced during the Thatcher era. This bears similarities to the structure of Springsteen’s songs—he wasn’t directly protesting for political change, but indirectly, he most definitely was. 

Amidst all the harsh realities the film shows, it also depicts the heartwarming feeling of deeply resonating with an art form. One day at school, a Sikh student named Roops offers Javed cassettes of two of Springsteen’s albums—one being Born in the U.S.A. The discovery launches an awakening, an almost physical one, within Javed. As he listens to him for the first time, the lyrics of “Dancing in the Dark '' and “The Promised Land” animatedly float around the screen, and we see Javed, with an intense look of revelation, gaining a series of flashbacks that align with what Springsteen is singing about. 

Although the filmmakers could have better constructed some of the scenes in this section, the audience received the message they wanted to convey. Javed later becomes hyper-fixated on Springsteen’s music; with Roops, he proposes a school radio show that plays non-stop Springsteen. I found this strikingly relatable; in my senior year of high school, I re-entered my Springsteen phase and decided that my AP Research paper would revolve around him and his music. His nickname “The Boss” makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. 

The lyrics of a 30-something "New Jerseyan'' represented Javed's emotions of not feeling accepted at home and by his peers. In the technical sense, Javed and Springsteen couldn’t be more different, but Springsteen’s words uniquely unite them. Like Javed, Springsteen came from an obscure working-class background, but he escaped and gained success as an American rock star, ultimately giving Javed the strength he always needed to strive for his freedom and work toward his dreams. 

The movie itself is rather uncategorizable as a genre. It flirts with being a musical, a comedy, a drama, and heck, a biopic. But films like it are becoming increasingly popular. Danny Boyle’s film “Yesterday” experiments with similar elements of Chadna’s, but instead of the movie featuring Springsteen songs, it uses ones from The Beatles!

“Blinded by the Light” showcases that music can be healing and universal but is also ironically layered with political and social commentary. Bruce Springsteen fan or not, it is most definitely worth a watch.