The Good Fan

Michael Schulman wrote in a September 2019 issue of the New Yorker about a freelance music critic named Wanna Thompson who faced prolonged online harassment after she posted on Twitter about Nicki Minaj. “You know how dope it would be,” she wrote, “if Nicki put out mature content? No silly shit. Just reflecting on past relationships, being a boss, hardships, etc. She’s touching 40 soon, a new direction is needed.” Immediately after her sincere, straight-to-the-point criticism went public, Thompson’s inbox was flooded with direct messages from so-called superfans who questioned her fan loyalty and implored her to kill herself. One from Minaj’s official account told her to “eat a dick.” She was soon fired from her internship at a hip-hop blog run by marketing strategist Karen Civil, who counts Minaj as one of her clients. 

The mob rule fervency active fans exert through online forums (here meaning not just formal fan sites but online communities formed through Twitter, Facebook and other social media) has endowed them with significant power. Their reaction is a major consideration in the shaping of any movie with a pre-existing fan base. (Paramount spent $5 million to remove the teeth on the CGI Sonic the Hedgehog after the scathing online response to a trailer for the 2020 movie). What this sadly implies is that intense fandom is now synonymous with online harassment. As Stephen King, the occasional target of such vitriol, observes in Schulman’s article, “People have gotten invested in culture and make believe in a way that I think is a little bit unhealthy…I mean, it’s supposed to be fun, right?”

Fandom can be an insecure and self-involved experience if one clings to it too deeply. It becomes difficult for a superfan to share their love for a particular artist without devolving into insecure competitiveness. Their attachment leads them to misinterpret modest criticism of the fan object as a personal attack on their own character. Online fan forums intensify this insecurity because, despite the feeling of virtual community they create, the people who use them are generally alone in a room. And emotions tend to go unchecked if no one is around to check them. 

But fandom can also lead to liberation from this insecurity. At its heart, it is about giving, not clinging. It is the process of sharing in a dream, the object of fandom creating the dream life in which the fans take part. It can enable one to engage with the world, not retreat from it, like William Miller in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000) who from his wish to share in the dream of his rock n’roll heroes makes a life for himself, the sincerity, even purity, of his fandom improving the lives of those who inspired it. But to find a current model for this healthier kind of fandom seems almost impossible. 

One movie, Blinded by the Light (2019), comes close to providing one. It follows Javed (Viveik Kalra), a lost British-Pakistani teenager living in Luton, a London suburb, in the late 1980s, who finds confidence and sense of purpose through his love for the music of Bruce Springsteen. Based on the memoir Greetings from Bury Park by Sarfraz Manzoor, (who has seen Springsteen in concert over one hundred and fifty times), and directed by Gurinder Chadha (Bend it like Beckham), it is on one level a story about conflicting cultures and generations. Fundamentally, though, it is about how to be a good fan. 

It demonstrates a fan’s understanding of Springsteen’s music from its opening image: a freeway sign pointing in opposite directions, one towards London, the other towards Luton. Like a Springsteen protagonist, Javed feels that he is always in the shadow of something better: his town in the shadow of London, his community in the shadow of the white English, himself in the shadow of his friend Matt, for whom he writes lyrics that Matt passes off as his own. When, on his first day of college, his new schoolmate Roops (Aaron Phagura) hands him cassettes of Born in the USA and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Javed shrugs him off. “What does [Springsteen] know about people like us?”

After throwing pages of his own poetry in the garbage in a fit of self-loathing, Javed listens to ‘Dancing in the Dark.’ In a lovely slow zoom, we watch the music, snatches of lyrics flashing on screen, speak to him directly. The very choice of song shows the filmmakers’ understanding of why Springsteen’s fans feel so close to him. As Chadha says, “People might listen to ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and go, ‘What a great song.’ But when you listen to the words, it’s a song about alienation and a kid feeling out of step with where he is, hating himself and wanting to get out, feeling that something better is happening somewhere else.” 

Manzoor, reflecting on what inspired his fandom, said, “It wasn’t music about escapism, but about confrontation — confronting what it’s like to grow up in a town that has problems, to have issues with your parents.” Springsteen’s most beloved songs all have that core formulation - digging into one’s sense of inadequacy until the ground closes in and the only option left is to break free. These lines from “The Promised Land,” which Javed hears while walking in the middle of a storm, perhaps best encapsulate the essence of Springsteen’s catalog:

I’ve done my best to live the right way I get up every morning and go to work each day But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode Explode and tear this whole town apart Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart Find somebody itching for something to start. 

To call the essence of Springsteen’s music a formulation is not to cheapen it. The songs clearly maintain that essence because Springsteen himself feels it, and the connection it creates between himself and his fans is as meaningful to him as it is to them. As he said himself, “For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in. Music, when it’s really great, pries that shit back open and lets people back in, it lets light in, and air in, and energy in, and sends people home with that and sends me back to the hotel with it. People carry that with them sometimes for a very long period of time.” 

Javed carries it with him throughout the movie, the music granting him the confidence to pursue his writing, find a girlfriend and fashion himself into the kind of person who can move away and become someone who matters, joyful dance sequences illustrating his journey. (One, set to “Thunder Road,” in the middle of a street market, is particularly affecting).

As Javed’s fandom elevates his life, it creates an escalating rift between himself and his conservative and domineering father, who wants him to stay in Luton, get a stable job and live out his responsibilities to the family unit, stifling as they may be. Towards the end, Javed learns that he’s won an essay contest that will send him to a conference in New Jersey, Springsteen’s hometown. His father tells him that if he goes, he shouldn’t bother coming back. Javed goes. 

Imagine for a moment if the movie were set today instead of the late 1980s. After leaving home, Javed might decide to stay in New Jersey for good. He might find a basement apartment, struggle to find work, continue writing but have trouble getting published. He might get a Twitter account to promote his work, but spend most of his time on the forum tracking Springsteen accounts, venting his bitterness and regret on anyone who posts a modest criticism of his north star. As he sinks into this loneliness, he might begin to spend evenings alone at a bar, scrolling through Twitter on his phone. Then, one night, he’ll hear a husky, familiar voice a few stools away. He'll sees his hero in the flesh and walk up to him, try to talk to him, to convey how much his music and message have meant to him, how much he has staked in it, only to have an uncomfortable Springsteen pat him on the shoulder, thank him for being a fan and wish him luck. Javed will sit at the bar alone, more lost and disillusioned than ever before.

Mercifully, that is not the direction in which Chadha takes us. Instead, Javed comes home, wanting to reconcile with his father but unsure how. He goes alone to an event at school where he has been asked to read aloud from an essay about his connection to Springsteen’s music. He begins, but stops when he sees his entire family, his father included, enter the auditorium. He isn’t sure he can go on. But he decides to speak from the heart:

I know having dreams doesn’t make me a bad son. I also know that everything that I am is because of the sacrifices that my mom and dad made…

I think Bruce Springsteen would understand my dad. Because like his father, they both came from poor backgrounds, both worked hard in factories, both had dreams which never came true which left them angry, and they both had sons who wanted a chance to make them proud…

I was blinded by the light when I first heard Springsteen because I was only thinking in that moment about Springsteen and me. But we’re not all just individuals. We are friends and family and what they think does matter. Success without them isn’t really success. Being blinded meant I couldn’t really see how much I am like my dad and my dad is like me. And as much as I wanted to leave Luton, I understand that it will never leave me. Bruce says, ‘No one wins unless everybody wins.’ My hope is to build a bridge to my ambitions, but not a wall between my family and me. That’s my dream.

Throughout the film, the dream of Javed’s fandom, the map Springsteen lays out for him, threatens to consume him. But instead, it leads him, simply put, to who he is. He clings to it initially, but his choice to eventually share in it allows him to become a complete person. He could renounce his family for the sake of his fandom, mistakenly believing it will cure his insecurity. But instead his fandom allows him to embrace his family in a way that he couldn’t when he was mired by insecurity. It is often this sense of personal incompleteness that creates a superfan in the first place. The current online landscape allows the self-validation that fandom creates to become a vehicle for anonymous harassment, obscuring the gentleness and generosity at fandom’s core. Blinded by the Light shows us that fandom can guide one out of their insecurity rather than trap one in it. It can lead towards a more complete life. As examples of the worst of fandom clutter our media experience, Javed reminds us of its blinding light. He “blows away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted,” just like Bruce said he should.