Deliver Me Somewhere by Altea Munuera García

Biopics, Springsteen, and Influences

Last week, I watched Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere at the movies. I thought, what could go wrong? With Jeremy-Allen White portraying Bruce Springsteen’s creation of Nebraska, there is no way a film about a star of such caliber could be bad. But, after a long 120 minutes, I discovered that what was wrong was me.

Alas, this is not a review of the movie, which lacks a plot and barely skims the surface of the plot it does tell, choosing solely to focus on his stereotypically tumultuous relationship with his father. Rather, it got me wondering: why are we so obsessed with what we show the world?

In an interview with Josh Horowitz, host of the cinephile podcast Happy, Sad, Confused, White talks about his first encounter with Springsteen, where the star was already sussing him out as a potential actor for this movie. Springsteen knew that with his fame came the possibility to tell his story. But why do we feel entitled to tell people our stories?

We’ve become a society thriving off of doing things for views: going to specific places just to post them on our Instagram, reviewing movies on Letterboxd just to show people we’ve watched them… Over time, this desire to show people who we are has evolved into a need to do things for external validation. In Deliver Me From Nowhere, we encounter a society where one has virtually no control over how they are portrayed: a scenario of art creation for the self, rather than for others. 

Of course, during this period, Springsteen still cared about how his audience perceived him. Still, his art came first before any validation could – choosing to put out the demo’ed versions of Nebraskainstead of the studio-produced ones. This choice for authenticity can also be seen in Timothée Chalamet’s rendition of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, where Dylan chooses to transition from folk to rock, even after being advised not to by his team. It makes sense that artists want to share their life story, also playing into our parasocial relationships with them – making us think we know them when we don’t – but again, they are not showing us everything, just the version of themselves they want to be perceived as. 

Indeed, we have lost our genuineness. We dress in certain ways and partake in certain hobbies to be the person we want the world to see. In no way is this a dig at caring about external perception. I think it is natural to care, and what we are putting forward are parts of ourselves: it’s not a made-up persona. But, is it possible that, with this desire to be perceived in a specific way, we throw away relevant aspects of ourselves just because they don’t fit the image we are trying to create? 

Perhaps it is because of this constant need for validation that we lose ourselves completely, and within that, parts of what makes us humans as we stray far away from genuine, towards a cool, facetiously nonchalant society, which cares more about what people think than when we used to acknowledge that we care.