Light of Day (1987) is about Being Held Back by the Trauma of Finding Yourself
I love Joan Jett, black leather jackets, 1970s punk, and greaser style. Light of Day appeared to be about Joan Jett playing a character who was basically herself in a struggling rock band with her brother played by Michael J. Fox. Fun, right? Not at all. I did not expect the film to be so touching and focus a lot on their relationship with their good Christian mother. I was blown away at how accurate it was for Joan’s character, a single mom of a young boy, to be lost in her 20s. She had this psychological barrier in her mind convincing herself that her mother had placed it there to follow a strict cadence and prevent her from experiencing the world. I guess it was not surprising for an old movie to construct meaningful relationships, but it was surprising for a rock ‘n’ roll movie with a real rockstar for the rockstar to actually depict a suffering, struggling, emotional person. Joan Jett is a really great actor, and her depth proves that her rock band is a mask over the true meaning of the movie. Light of Day is about the violent internal struggle in your 20s of parting from your parent's ideals and trying to navigate a sea of convoluted rip currents dragging you between your developing lifelong goals, and your parents' established ones. It is about not succeeding in fully developing your goals and continued stagnation of being thrown against the waves of life uncontrollably, unable to find yourself.
People in their 20s may come to a point where they struggle to understand how to navigate life and they come into contention with their parents who are getting old and are set in their ways. The parents have their established ideals and they naturally project those onto their kids and those around them. The anger comes in and the 20-year-old just wants nothing but to watch their old world burn in hell, for they may not have fully developed their direction in life and are haunted by how their parents are more stable than they are. Joan Jett perfectly illustrates this violent internal war in her mind. She doesn’t want to be couch ridden in her parent’s house and her son to grow up there, as she describes being angry about all the same walls she grew up in, the calendars, the posters, and the fish on the wall (that was honestly so funny, it was unexpected and a very specific thing she named, but it is so powerful that she didn't even need to look at it to know that the familiarity kills her). Joan perfectly acts out the stress and anxiety that characters like John Rambo experience coming back from Vietnam without any support and everyone he knew died, culminating in an extremely emotional scene where they bawl their eyes out and their knees collapse. This breakdown happens every day to a young person who is lost with no direction. While Joan's character has a direction with her band, they get nowhere, as they pull in no money. Over the course of the movie, the characters split into other musical opportunities, so the band effectively had no direction.
Joan Jett is a great actor, and her character was still lovable under the rebellious image. Joan Jett could be intimidating, and she perfectly depicted a young adult struggling to find their way. I envisioned her like that from her music and her backstory but in the movie, she killed it. I compared her to Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious. Ignoring all the later movies and some cheesy lines here and there, Vin Diesel was a good actor, and he also depicted a heavily traumatized character in their 20s with no direction in life but to cause harm. His introduction and his commanding presence could intimidate those around him. He used to live his life a quarter mile at a time, nothing else mattered to him, until Brian changed him and showed him that family is all that matters. Joan Jett had that same intimidating presence and raspy voice. When she yelled at Michael J. Fox’s character, the room shuddered in fear. Despite this, Joan’s character also without a doubt loved her son to bits. She expressed extreme bonding when she hugged her son despite all her failures and her devious ways, which, while plentiful, don't detract from the size of her heart. Most importantly she didn't hate her mother, and she comforted her when she experienced a decline in health. Her character is morally good.
Another great thing about this movie is the way the mother is written. Even though young people may clash with their parents, they don’t stop loving them, and the parent is not the enemy either. The mother was very humble and often stepped back when she realized she overstepped a boundary especially when talking to Michael J. Fox’s character about his sister. The mother was always there for them to provide anything they needed. More importantly, the mother never truly gave up on Joan Jett’s character, and she kept telling her still how much she loved her and how much more resilient she was compared to her brother. The mother understood her boundaries and the struggle her kids were going through. I salute her inspiring leadership. A scripted character can be designed and rewritten to be a perfect role model. Most people aren't going to be as honorable as that.
It is rare anymore to depict movie characters with extreme trauma, which is a shame because trauma dictates strong motivations in those characters, which leads to good, interesting conflicts. Without struggle, nothing the character does is justified. They’re simply a person on a screen. It is especially rare for a female actor to depict extreme trauma and struggle.
This movie could’ve been longer. After the mother’s incident and Joan's character experiencing a quitting phase like Maverick in Top Gun, the movie could’ve easily been another hour, or there could’ve been a Light of Day 2, where Joan’s character has to overcome the incident and rejoins the band as Michael J. Fox’s character encourages her. I imagine a Light of Day 2 could’ve been about this struggle to keep on pushing the band and progresses into like a Forrest Gump type of movie where the kid grows up and it focuses on Joan’s character's changing relationship with him and her having more responsibilities. A side plot could be Joan or Michael J. Fox's character trying to convince their father to go on the vacation their mother wanted for him.
I always thought Point Break was a movie that perfectly illustrates being lost in your 20s. Everyone in their movie is completely lost and have no direction. Bodhi wants to enlighten people like Johnny Utah and help them find their ways because he could never find his own. Bodhi is a genuinely good person. The bank robberies can be seen as a symbol of the violent internal struggle of your 20s where you clash with your parents’ ways and you struggle to understand who you are. When I watched Light of Day, this movie is right up there in my mind with Point Break. The same goes for The Fast and the Furious, which is essentially the same kind of story as Point Break. Like Bodhi and Toretto, Joan's character's will to steal, violence, and anger are all symbolic of the frustration of being thrust against the convoluted rip currents uncontrollably when your life has no direction other than living inside your parent's ideals.
When Joan's character reconciles her trauma with her mother, the rockstar can finally see the light of day and walk the path to success without agony firing hollow point bullets in her heart.
P.S.
I also didn’t know Joan was a hardcore gamer. Wonder if that was true lol.
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