“A Pakistani into Springsteen. Now that’s
got potential,” sneered the editor of Javed
Khan’s (Viveik Kalra, “Next of Kin”) high
school newspaper in 1987 Luton, England.
Javed had just submitted an article in
homage to the American rock legend — or
myth, depending on where you stand —
Bruce Springsteen.
But I wonder if that is how Warner Bros.
responded when “Blinded by the Light,”
the story of the empowerment of a working
class, British-Pakistani teenager via Bruce
Springsteen’s music, was first pitched. And
I wonder if the filmmakers would have
taken issue with that reductive stance. Still,
I wonder if that’s always what it takes —
exotic, absurd shock value — to persuade the
establishment that an anti-canonical story
deserves a platform. No matter the extent of
your own cynicism regarding the future of
representation in Western media, “Blinded
by the Light” still registers as a product of
this regime, so it fails to reinvigorate a genre,
merely propping up a new story with the old
tricks.
Javed can’t find a girlfriend. His parents
are conservative and keep usurping his
independence, his youthful pleasure-seeking.
His high school cafeteria is divided into
cliques he calls “tribes,” and he voices-over
his uncertainty about where to sit. Sound
familiar? Sound like every other high school
comedy-drama? By and large, that’s “Blinded
by the Light”: endearing but unsophisticated,
youthful but unpracticed.
Still worse, the film distills parts of Javed’s
unique experience into something existing
tropes can contain: for instance, it localizes
skinheads’ racist, xenophobic violence into
the high school bullying trope, which helps
conceal the already well-guarded systemic
dimension of this violence. A similar film
that more successfully broke the mold of
high school storytelling is George Tillman
Jr.’s (“The Longest Ride”) adaption of Angie
Thomas’s book “The Hate U Give,” which
not only sought out a new cast of characters,
but changed the terms of the high school
narrative itself. Starr (Amandla Stenberg,
“Everything, Everything”) and her brother
bicker over breakfast before their father
briefs them on how to behave when a cop
stops them. Starr has a white, wealthy
boyfriend,
but
their
racially-motivated
expectations about each other shape the
relationship. None of the social complexities
are drowned in the ordinary parts of Starr’s
adolescence.
All the same, perhaps “Blinded by the
Light” stands out in the way it connects a
working-class musician from New Jersey
with
a
working-class
British-Pakistani
teenager in a raw, comforting, empowering
way. Given my experience, I can’t fully
appreciate what Springsteen’s music can
do, so neither am I in a position to discredit
it. But a throwaway line in “Blinded by the
Light” stood out to me: “You do know Ronald
Reagan listens to him, right?” Javed’s activist
girlfriend Eliza (Nell Williams, “London
Town”) asks him. While the line is delivered
in jest, I couldn’t help but wonder if people
of privilege in America hear the same thing
— if the skinheads, amid their Thatcherite
resurgence in the time of the film, would hear
what Javed hears — when Springsteen sings.
Nor could I help thinking of poet
and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib’s
perspective on Springsteen. In “A Night in
Bruce Springsteen’s America,” Abdurraqib
regales his experience of a Springsteen
concert in New Jersey, days after visiting the
place where Michael Brown was killed. “I
have been thinking a lot about the question
of who gets to revel in their present with an
eye still on their future,” the author reflects.
Applying this framework to the mythology
of Springsteen, Adburraqib adds, “What
I understand about The River now that I
didn’t before I saw it in New Jersey is that
this is an album about coming to terms with
the fact that you are going to eventually die,
written by someone who seemed to have an
understanding of the fact that he was going
to live for a long time. It is an album of a
specific type of optimism — one not afforded
to everyone who listens to it.”
In the world that this film imagines, Javed
cashes in on this optimism, repeatedly. It
gets him out of his parents’ house, across
the Atlantic and, in the end, to his dream
school, on the path to his dream career. But
I am doubtful it could sustain him forever,
and I can instead see it bankrupting him,
somewhere outside of the film’s frame.
Perhaps within a decade, even, as the
War on Terror and Islamophobia began
to take a more regional hold, especially in
Springsteen’s homeland.
I
recalled
Abdurraqib’s
assessment
in almost every instance of Javed’s fiery
speeches
about
Springsteen’s
universal
messages, but especially when he invoked
Springsteen in his pursuit of a girlfriend. I
was once told by a boy, whose Bruce fandom
easily rivals Javed’s, that Springsteen’s music
made him think of me. Before “Blinded by
the Light,” I wasn’t sure if I liked that. After
seeing it, I’m still uneasy about his association.
Our relationship was inappropriate and
exploitative in multiple respects, and I paid
for it. But now I wonder, how much of it
had to do with what he learned from his
idol? I don’t think I could match the woman
Bruce Springsteen promised him he would
find because I was not a figment of a man’s
imagination. I was — am — a real person of
my own. No romanticized ideal will ever
change that. But I don’t know if I will ever fit
into Springsteen’s purview that way.
When Javed went off on the American
Dream sales pitch in an attempt to convince
his conservative father to let him travel to
Springsteen’s home state of New Jersey, the
people around me in the Ann Arbor theater
laughed. If Springsteen danced across
the graveyard of the American Dream, its
ghost still found its way into his lyrics and
ideology. No matter who you are, that ghost
— promising reward for hard work regardless
of identity, when identity continues to be
leveraged against people no matter what
work they do — will greet you as soon as
Springsteen opens his mouth to rasp the first
verse of “Born to Run.” I shook my head and
tried to listen to the rest of a sanguine speech
I’d heard many times before.
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
For whom does Bruce Springsteen
sing? ‘Blinded’ offers few answers
Blinded by the Light
The State Theatre
Warner Bros. Pictures
Tuesdays at 8
Adorned
with
his
signature
red watch cap, Channel Tres has
nowhere to go but up. For the last
year or so, the producer has been
popping up in some surprising
places, trying to make a name for
himself. Aside from his own Detroit
techno-inspired dance music, he
can be found remixing songs from a
wide array of genres, most recently
tinkering with Toro y Moi’s “Who
I Am” and Mark Ronson and Lykke
Li’s “Late Night Feelings.” Both are
great remixes and assist in building
his fanbase, but they fail to flaunt
Tres’s weirder, more exploratory
side. With his most recent release,
Black Moses, Tres has an opportunity
to bring his eccentricities to the
dance mainstream, and maybe even
beyond.
On Black Moses, Tres is heavily
influenced
by
Detroit
techno
overlord Moodymann. Even his
vocal
delivery
and
monologues
are reminiscent of the influential
and hermetic producer. His voice
is low and monotonous, giving
his often visceral subject matter
a subdued feel. However, where
Moodymann’s samples are often
soulful and familiar, calling back
to Detroit’s Motown era, Channel
Tres’s are futuristic and inventive.
On standout track “Brilliant N****,”
Tres creates a musical mosaic, fluid
and vibrant in its sound choices. The
drums are bouncy and danceable
and the bassline is juicy, but the
song’s shining moments occur when
the flute sample manifests itself. It
feels like the flutes carry the listener
through the song, like a cartoon
character being led by the scent of a
fresh-baked pie. It brings the perfect
amount of flair to the song and acts
as an accent to lines like, “The drugs
is in the groove, you know / I’m the
shit that got you comatose.”
Equally danceable but less flashy
is the penultimate track “Sexy
Black Timberlake.” Icy, warbling
synths and sputtering bass serve
as the perfect vehicle to deliver
braggadocious exclamations like,
“Oh, cause bitches goin’ crazy /
Bitches act crazy / Better watch
your old lady / Tryna get in my
house.” Closing song “Raw Power”
is more of the same. It’s a fun song
in which Tres claims that he has
raw, unrefined power at his shows,
just like when Iggy Pop first burst
onto the Ann Arbor scene, but it
drags a little. There just isn’t enough
variation or excitement in the beat
or delivery to justify the length of
the song.
The strangest song on the album
is also the song that best showcases
Channel
Tres’s
potential.
The
titular track is Tres at his most
experimental, and a guest verse
from rap idiosyncrat JPEGMAFIA
cements that claim. Starting with
a demented bassline that could’ve
came straight from Kenny Beats’s
arsenal, Tres sprinkles in short
bursts of vocal chops to fill in the
gaps. He and JPEGMAFIA go on to
spit their game and talk their shit,
and in doing so, they created one of
the most inventive and unique rap
songs of the year.
At a mere five songs, Black Moses
is over almost as soon as it begins,
forcing listeners to restart the EP at
least one time (in my case, after my
first listen, I replayed the tape four
more times). Its brief length pulls
listeners in and traps them inside the
hypnotizing productions, leaving
them practically begging for more.
If Black Moses is a sign of things to
come, Channel Tres is about to be in
a favorable position. These songs go
hard and can be played in nearly any
circumstance that calls for letting
loose and dancing like a fool, and
for an artist trying to put their name
on the map, this can only be a good
thing.
Tres bounces on ‘Black Moses’
JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer
Like many young girls between the ages
of four and nine, as a child I desperately
wanted to be a princess. I wrote
books about a magical kingdom called
Abdominium (original name, I know)
where I would be queen, with a beautiful
knight to save me from the boredom of
the Michigan suburbs I called home. I
convinced myself not only that fairies
were real, but also that I could talk to
squirrels, and briefly, control the weather.
If you couldn’t tell by now, I was a weird
kid.
Although my obsession with my made-
up dream world only lasted until around
fourth grade, a fixation on the idea of the
princess remained. My mom had stopped
buying me Barbies and I realized that the
production value on the Pegasus movie
series wasn’t high enough to warrant
my viewership. But still, I wanted long
dresses. I wanted a prince and a castle
and a canopy over a big four-poster bed. I
wasn’t ever going to be a real princess —
that was silly, I was older now, entering
middle school like a real girl — but I could
at least look like one. And so I began
growing my hair.
My mother relished in the prospect of
a baby Rapunzel, plunking me in a chair
every morning to pull and brush my
golden locks into braids and pigtails and
everything in between. She was and still
is extremely skilled with complicated
hairstyles, and I trust her to blow my hair
out when it’s really important. But from
her, I learned the art and importance
of good hair. It continued to grow, I
continued my life as a princess in spirit,
and secretly read “The Princess Diaries”
in bed even though it was uncool.
I grew out of my flashlight reading, but
not out of my ponytail. At least not for a
while. As I was thrust into the world of all-
girls middle school and high school sports,
I became the designated hair braider of
each sports team locker room and free
moment we found in the halls. I was proud
of my skills, and wore my hair in ballet
buns and braids and even dyed it pink for
a moment. Then, as all women do once
and a while, I had an existential crisis. I
chopped off the hair I had prized for so
many years to a shoulder-length bob, tried
to put it in a ponytail and cried. But the
loss of my high pony wasn’t completely a
bad thing. I could do new things with my
hair. And something more important had
occurred. I wasn’t a princess anymore; I
was just a girl.
Although trivial to the naked eye, my
hair and everything I learned from it
may have started in a way to get close
to princess-dom, but became a way for
me to bond with other women. It still
is, honestly. If you traverse The Daily
newsroom on any given day, there is often
one victim of my braiding sitting at the
Arts desk. This is something I kept from
my childhood obsession, something that’s
served me well at sleepovers and parties
until the present day. Hair, though purely
aesthetic, means a lot to women. When
you understand that, you start to realize
how much bravery it takes to put your
hair in someone else’s hand: Every choice
ripples out further than just your head,
affecting your self-image and confidence
simultaneously.
Now, after six years of hair that has
barely brushed my clavicle, I have decided
to grow it again. It’s reminded me of what
it’s like to feel so incredibly feminine, and
it’s reminded me of how I found feminity
beyond my appearance during my short-
haired years. Away from the princesses and
into the rock and art scenes I discovered
later, my life as a feminine woman became
something completely unrelated to my
hair. By separating the remnants of a
girlish ideal from my identity as an adult,
I found another way of being myself,
embracing style and writing and music as
the things that make up who I am. Yes, I
still love hair. But it’s not everything. I’ve
climbed down from the tower, only to cut
off the ladder and build a new path.
Clara Scott: Women
and their ponytails
CLARA SCOTT
Daily Gender & Media Columnist
EPIC RECORDS
GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN
MUSIC REVIEW
Black Moses
Channel Tres
GODMODE
It’s reminded me
of what it’s like to
feel so incredibly
feminine
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, September 6, 2019 —6A