Section:GDN 1J PaGe:5 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 19:16 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Thursday 29 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
5
Surprisingly,
my fi lm bridges
cultural divides
in 1987 – and it is about a teenage British Pakistani boy
whose life feels constrained by his class, culture and
community until he discovers the liberating power of the
music of Bruce Springsteen. The fi lm is uncompromising
in its cultural specifi city – and given its subject matter,
one would assume it would mostly appeal to British
Asians who lived through the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen
fans, and in particular, Asian Bruce Springsteen fans who
lived through the 1980s. What I had not appreciated was
the power of storytelling to engender empathy.
The most common responses to the fi lm were in the
ways that audiences found personal connections to the
story. I could not have predicted that Israeli women in
Jerusalem, white teenage boys in Nebraska and older
white women in Australia who had seen the fi lm would
all contact me on social media and thank me for telling
their story. I had not expected to be approached, at
screenings from Glasgow to Seattle, by people who
seemingly had nothing in common with the protagonist
but said they had connected emotionally with the story.
Brendan in Chicago told me that while “we have very
diff erent backgrounds, I found myself refl ecting about
what it was like for me at that age – that feeling of being
in a place where you feel you don’t fi t in but realising it’s
what has helped shape you, whether you like it or not”.
Beth in Missouri had a pithier summation : “Worlds apart
but the same.” In telling a very specifi c story, it turned
out, I was actually telling a universal one.
Perhaps I should not have been surprised. After all,
I was deeply moved and aff ected by This Is England ,
Wild Rose and Annie Hall , even though I am neither
a young white English skinhead, a Scottish country-
music-loving single mum, nor a neurotic middle-aged
American-Jewish comedian.
Javed, the central character in my fi lm, is a teenage
British Pakistani Muslim. Blinded By the Light is being
released at a time when that community is regularly
Sarfraz Manzoor
is an author,
screenwriter and
fi lm-makerdemonised as the other – both Boris Johnson and
Donald Trump have sought to gain political capital by
mocking Muslims. I was apprehensive about whether a
mainstream audience (white and non-Muslim) would
be able to relate to the protagonist , yet it has been
illuminating how much they have seen beyond religion
and ethnicity and responded to the characters as sons,
mothers and fathers – as human beings.
It is, of course, also true that these are a self-selecting
group of people who have chosen to buy a ticket for the
fi lm, just as people choos e to read a particular paper
or watch a specifi c news channel. So one could argue
that the fi lm is not changing anyone’s mind, since only
those who are disposed to watch it would be willing
to spend the money. But when people engage with
stories, they arguably do so with minds more open than
when they engage with politics. When I asked a packed
cinema of more than 700 people – overwhelmingly
white fi lmgoers – in Traverse City, Michigan, how
many had spent two hours in the company of a
Pakistani Muslim family, not a single hand went up.
“You just did,” I told them.
The fact that so many people around the world
who have seen Blinded By the Light have responded
with empathy to characters apparently very diff erent
to themselves off er s some hope in what can feel like
hopeless times. It suggest s that stories can reach
places that journalism cannot. It makes me believe that
perhaps it is just plausible that the next time a fear-
stoking politician or an attention-seeking journalist tries
to demonise all Muslims, those who have seen and been
moved by my fi lm will remember young Javed and his
parents, Malik and Noor. And they will recall laughing
and crying in the cinema.
In a time when politicians seem intent on defi ning us
by our diff erences, my fi lm may remind them that all of
us are characters in a larger human story.Sarfraz
Manzoor
T
here is a polarisation in today’s
political culture that led me to seek
solace in screenwriting, after almost
25 years as a journalist. I found the
entrenched tribalism alienating and
decided instead to explore the world
of fi ction and fi lm. I thought I would
be distracted from the question of our
divided culture, but in fact I found potential clues for
how to bridge the very divide I was fl eeing from.
I have spent the last six weeks travelling across
Britain and the US, promoting Blinded By the
Light. The fi lm, directed by Gurinder Chadha , is a
fi ctionalised retelling of my memoir, Greetings from
Bury Park. It tells what is ostensibly a very personal
story. It is located in a specifi c time and place – LutonRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws