Bend It Like Beckham remains a vital portrayal of… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Bend It Like Beck­ham remains a vital por­tray­al of British Asian adolescence

03 Jun 2018

Words by Salma Haidrani

Two women in white and red football jerseys smiling and talking on a football pitch.
Two women in white and red football jerseys smiling and talking on a football pitch.
As a Desi girl com­ing of age in the ear­ly 2000s, Gurinder Chadha’s film has a pro­found impact on me.

On the sur­face, Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 film Bend It Like Beck­ham may seem like the sto­ry of a young British Asian girl sneak­ing behind her parent’s back to play foot­ball. But for young British Asian girls like me, who were com­ing of age in the ear­ly 2000s, it was a nar­ra­tive that reflect­ed our real and lived experiences.

Just as Jess (Par­min­der Nagra) was dis­cov­er­ing her­self as she was jug­gling mul­ti­ple loy­al­ties – pur­su­ing a West­ern career path over the tra­di­tion­al path her par­ents want­ed her to fol­low – we were with her too. No oth­er film has since encap­su­lat­ed the guilt that British immi­grant teens can silent­ly car­ry and the need we feel to prove’ our loyalties.

Just like Jess, the lega­cy of racism and hos­til­i­ty that our par­ents faced when they first arrived in Britain still weighs heav­i­ly on our life choic­es. Just like Jess, I felt bound by the pres­sure to repay the sac­ri­fices they made by stay­ing loy­al to the tra­jec­to­ry of those like her sis­ter Pinky – get good grades, get mar­ried and of course, make the per­fect aloo gobi. I knew then what I know now: that this wasn’t the right route for me.

The film also marked the first time I realised that racism came in many forms – up until Jess and her Irish foot­ball coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers), bond­ed over on their mutu­al expe­ri­ences of being dis­crim­i­nat­ed, I hadn’t realised that those who were white-pass­ing’ could expe­ri­ence it in sim­i­lar ways I had.

And when Tony (Ameet Chana), a British Asian man, came out ear­ly on in the film, reveal­ing a sex­u­al iden­ti­ty I was not yet ful­ly aware of, and Jess embarked on her own rela­tion­ship with her white foot­ball coach much to the cha­grin of her com­mu­ni­ty, I final­ly I realised I wasn’t the only one strad­dling two selves.

There’s a lot I owe Bend It Like Beck­ham – name­ly the under­stand­ing that it’s okay to take a dif­fer­ent path and forge an iden­ti­ty out­side the con­straints of your com­mu­ni­ty. And that obsta­cles will always remain; white accep­tance’ isn’t a guar­an­tee, like when a rival play­er calls Jess a Paki”. Or that you might still have to make even more sac­ri­fices as your career pro­gress­es, like Jess does when she head­ed to the US to play professionally.

What is par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant is the film’s unapolo­getic cel­e­bra­tion of how dual British South Asian iden­ti­ty can be a source of pride. It’s worlds away from the months and years that fol­lowed the film’s release. Six­teen years ago, it was an amaz­ing time to be British Asian: Pan­jabi MC hit the UK Top 10 with Mundi­an To Bach Ke’ and for once it felt like we weren’t try­ing to prove we were the good immigrants’.

But soon after the film stopped show­ing, we had become the ene­my with­in’. I no longer heard bhangra blar­ing out of win­dows and brown faces all but dis­ap­peared from screens – the only reg­u­lar fix­ture was The Simp­sons’ Apu, a char­ac­ter that has recent­ly (and quite right­ly) been embroiled in con­tro­ver­sy. When I saw brown faces in the media, more often than not they were accom­pa­nied by the word ter­ror­ist’. Now that a num­ber of British Asian col­lec­tives are spring­ing up in the UK, the film’s cel­e­bra­tion of these two iden­ti­ties feels as time­ly as it did when it was first released.

It’s dis­heart­en­ing that there has not been anoth­er main­stream film to spot­light the intri­ca­cies of British Asian iden­ti­ty for young Desi girls to relate to, espe­cial­ly post 911. It’s dis­ap­point­ing, too, that South Asian rep­re­sen­ta­tion seemed in sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter health almost ful­ly two decades ago, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an era where the notion of wok­e­ness’ has become hard social and polit­i­cal currency.

We need more films that cap­ture the com­ing of age, the con­flicts and the chal­lenges of being a young British South Asian girl in the way that Bend It Like Beck­ham did. If a young Desi girl were to come across the film today, I hope that she might recog­nise her­self in Jess, just like I did all those years ago. Oh, and I nev­er did man­age to make that aloo gobi – I guess me and Jess had more in com­mon than I first thought.

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