Great music is timeless. It can speak to anyone in any setting in any era. Of course, a frame of reference doesn’t hurt. I don’t see the Dalai Lama getting down to the immortal soundtrack from Purple Rain anytime soon, do you? Lama strikes me more as a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” guy anyway. Think about that when I tell you the premise of this movie: the eldest son of a Pakistani immigrant in Luton, England falls in love with the music of The Boss … or as his father calls him, “that Jewish-American Bruce Springsteen.”
It took me until the mid 1980s to distinguish Bruce Springsteen from Rick Springfield, which I only mention now because the error of assuming The Boss is Jewish is not only funny, but very relatable, as is, strangely, much of this film.
Like every sensible person in Luton, Javed (Viveik Kalra) dreams of living somewhere else. Aside from the accents, the Luton of Blinded by the Light could be any dead end, blue collar town in Ireland, Germany, or … New Jersey. In 1987, the economy ain’t great and Javed’s no-nonsense father Malik (Kulvinder Ghir) has just been laid off. Blue collar towns are not traditional havens for racial harmony even during salad days and Luton has a grand share of racists. The local boys have even taken to peeing through the mail slot to show their disapproval. But the urine and the racially charged graffiti isn’t half as striking as our local white supremacist tiki torch rallies. Oh, did I just equate 1987 English anti-immigrant Neo-Nazi skinhead scum with the right-wing MAGA assholes who rally right now in the US? Oops. Clumsy me.
Friends, neighbors, teachers keep asking the poetic and sensitive Javed to write more and share, which strikes me as a little suspect; do you really want the teens you know to share their poetry? Well, hey, maybe the kids inspired by Wham! were deeper souls. Speaking of which, the reluctant Javed does finally find his muse when a Sikh friend lends him two Springsteen cassettes. Suddenly the lyrics of The Boss literally explode onto the screen engulfing their listener with a wave of oral empathy. After all, what English-Pakistani teenager cannot relate to: “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack?”
I kid because it is genuinely amazing how universal The Boss is. Bare minimum, Bruce Springsteen speaks to all blue collar people looking for something better. The movie knows this and repeats it often, and then some more, and then once or twice again, and then a few times just to make sure you were really listening and not just humming along. It prints the words of Bruce as a security blanket enveloping the world of Javed. They become both his muse and his armor. And before long, he starts dressing like The Boss, too. In the United States, a lapdog-like allegiance to a pop star doesn’t generally lead to good things. This story is, thankfully, different.
Bruce Springsteen is another artist I wish I’d appreciated more at the time. I was put off by the superficial and fallacious assumption of “Rah Rah” national jingoism derived from the façade of “Born in the USA.” But as Blinded by the Light points out, it’s never too late nor too far removed for a muse to be effective. Bruce, of course, was biggest in the wake of “Born in the USA,” and by 1987 we’d moved on the The Beastie Boys. Whether or not the pop scene is forgiving doesn’t strangle the muse, it just mutes it a bit. Inside, we’re all searching for a voice to encourage us to be the best people we can be. As encouraging voices go, Bruce ain’t bad; you can do a lot friggen worse. I liked Blinded by the Light, although the territory is hardly new. The parent-child relationships here are lifted straight from Bend It Like Beckham and the cynic [read: me] would tell you this film seems yet another platform for the seduction of Asians through Anglo artistry. You saw Yesterday, right? How about Bohemian Rhapsody? However, if you’ve ever found yourself listening to a Bruce Springsteen song and insist that he’s singing about you, Blinded by the Light is a must see, no question.
♪Got a wife a kids in east Luton, Raj
And my hole in the wall? Well, it sure ain’t no Taj.
Like an on-line tech not strong on the knowing
I’ll pass you up and I’ll keep on going
Everybody’s got a supporting part
Everybody’s got a supporting part
You live to imprint everlasting art
Just to find you’re back there at the start♫
Rated PG-13, 118 Minutes
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Writer: Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha, Sarfraz Manzoor, Bruce Springsteen
Genre: The wisdom of white people *sigh*
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of The Boss
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Bigots
♪ Parody Inspired by “Hungry Heart”
