In 2003, things were changing for me. I started high school, bought my first pair of jeans that actually fit (flared, with the lowest rise possible), picked my favourite Beatle (John, but also George), and saw Bend it Like Beckham for the first time. All of these events were major milestones, but the last one has probably been the most influential to my life trajectory.
As a teenager, I was obviously obsessed with being conventional in the ways that mattered: being pretty, being popular, and being white. I got upset when people referred to me as “Indian” because I associated Indians with stereotypes I saw on TV. Apu from The Simpsons, with his heavy accent, tons of children, and general inability to fit into American society, seemed to be my only representative in popular culture during my childhood. Whenever anyone imitated an Indian accent, sat in a “lotus” position, or said that the burfi I brought into school for Diwali had a weird name, I felt shame, anger, and confusion. I couldn’t articulate my problem, except to try and assert that I wasn’t like “those Indians” that were so often the butt of the joke. But I had no other point of reference for what real Indians were like.
Like most young people, I looked to pop culture to help me figure out the answer to this unfair situation, particularly when asked the impossible question: “Do you feel more Indian or Canadian?” My answer was definitely the second, because I felt no connection to the first and hoped no one would find out that I did indeed have one. Before Bend it Like Beckham, most of my experiences with Indian culture came from visiting my grandparents in Delhi every few years, and wearing cheap bangles from Little India in Toronto’s East End. I didn’t watch Indian TV, or listen to Hindi music (except my mother’s homemade mix tapes of film songs). I was so worried about being mistaken for a smelly, loud, foreign alien, that my solution was to be as white as possible. And then I watched Bend it Like Beckham.
Bend it Like Beckham is British director Gurinder Chadha’s third feature film. The protagonist is Jess Bamra (Parminder Nagra), a British Indian girl who lives in a suburb of London with her family. Jess is a football (soccer) player, and is convinced to join a local team after meeting Jules Paxton (Keira Knightly), whose goal is to play professional football in the US. Jess’s parents don’t approve of her devoting all of her time to football when she has A-Level exams to study for and her sister Pinky’s (Archie Panjabi) wedding to plan, so Jess plays football in secret until she is forced to choose between attending her sister’s wedding and playing in the final match of season.
Besides Apu, I had seen a couple of film and television portrayals of “the immigrant experience” before I saw Bend it Like Beckham, but none of them had really stuck with me. Most depictions I saw about immigration were either about overcoming (or not overcoming) impossible barriers in a new country, or stereotypical portrayals of ultra-traditional parents who struggle to understand their “wild” Westernized children. I loved Lane Kim on Gilmore Girls, but she had a super negative relationship to her family’s religion and culture, and in the context of the show, American culture was clearly superior to whatever happened in the Kim household. I had also seen Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, but its plot was centered on arranged marriage, and was set in the “old country,” which didn’t really resonate with me.
In Bend it Like Beckham, I found a movie that spoke to the different parts of my identity, and portrayed Indians in a way that I had never seen before. As an awkward, football-playing child of immigrants myself, it wasn’t surprising that I gravitated immediately towards Jess. Unlike other Indians I had seen on film, Jess’s culture is part of her life, but it does not define her. Being Indian, like being a football player, or being a woman, is part of her identity, rather than her defining characteristic. Her Indian-ness also wasn’t the foundation for the movie’s jokes, which was huge for me. For once, the foreigners weren’t funny because they were foreign, but funny because they were saying funny things. Jess and her family deal with racism, feeling like they are caught in the middle of two cultures, neither one quite feeling like home. They aren’t noble, silently suffering immigrants, and they aren’t Apu—in Bend it like Beckham, the Indians are real people.
Even though Jess and I were not the same in terms of our skin colour, family background, or religion, I saw myself in her because she seemed like a normal person who just happened to be brown. In Jess and her sister Pinky, I saw people who had many of the same trials and tribulations as I did. These girls made out in the backseats of tiny cars, but they also loved their parents and had no desire to disappoint them. Sometimes this was hard, like when Pinky’s fiancé is forced to break off their engagement after his parents think that Jess is running around with a white man. Other times, it was as simple as Jess’s attempts to practice keep-ups with root vegetables while attempting to learn a full Punjabi dinner—meat and vegetarian. They were trying, in the wise words of Hannah Montana, trying to have the best of both worlds.
For barely teenaged me, this was a revelation. I had been trying to be white for so long that I was shocked to see Jess and Pinky doing things that I only saw white people do on TV and in movies. After I was shocked, I was thrilled. It was the first time I remember thinking that this might be a movie that was actually “for” me. I understood all of the jokes about making pickle and the ones about periods. Even if the movie is formulaic and stereotypical, I didn’t see it. I just saw some people who were a little bit like me. And as I watched, I felt like I really “saw” Indians for the first time, and I didn’t feel ashamed about it; I felt proud.
Even though I’m not Sikh, British, or Punjabi, I was excited that I could claim some ownership over the culture presented in the movie, and even more excited that I wasn’t embarrassed by the portrayal of the Indian family onscreen. In Bend it Like Beckham, both Jess and Jules’s families are lovingly ridiculed, without either one being a target of derision for being behind the times, in contrast to my beloved Gilmore Girls or other families with immigrant parents. The Paxtons and the Bamras want their children to be “normal” because normality means ease in an unforgiving society. Jules faces her mother’s constant nagging about being “feminine” in her clothing and appearance, because Mrs. Paxton (Juliet Stevenson) is so worried about her daughter possibly being a lesbian and maybe having a difficult life. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is when Mrs. Paxton hears Jess and Jules fighting, and thinks she is hearing them break up. “It was terrible what they did to that George Michael,” she weeps into her husband’s shoulder. It would have been so amazing if the story had ended with Jules and Jess getting together (an Internet rumour that remains unproven), if only because I think the Paxtons and the Bamras would have been able to handle it.
Similarly, Jess’s parents’ are not painted as unrelenting traditionalists whose values are incompatible with those of their daughter. Jess’s father (Anupam Kher) doesn’t want her to play football because of his experiences with racism when he first immigrated to Britain. It’s not that he thinks Jess is wasting her time, but he’s afraid that she’ll experience racism from teammates and opponents (which she does). Both sets of parents are slightly out of touch, but the fact that they’re both given this treatment was something that I held onto for years afterwards.
Ten years later, Bend it Like Beckham still resonates with me. Throughout my adolescence, I used it as a kind of comfort food, watching it when I was sick, hungover, lonely, or just when I wanted to kill a couple of hours. In my early teens, devoted to people pleasing and being normal, I felt like I had to choose between the “Canadian” culture that I was immersed in, and the Indian culture that I felt cut off from. I didn’t think to argue with the idea that it was necessary for me to be Indian or Canadian (Canadian being synonymous with “white,” despite the fact that my white father is actually American).
The idea that anyone would care about the stories of girls like Jess helped me feel like I was part of a community that had previously felt inaccessible. I finally understood that I didn’t have to be a certain kind of Indian to feel a connection to a piece of pop culture. I could just be me, and use what I saw to influence my own brand of Indian-ness. Now, when I see characters like Mindy Lahiri, Hannah Simone’s Cece on New Girl, Indie Mehta from the now-cancelled How to be Indie, and Some Girls’ Saz Kaur, I get excited because they’re weird, outspoken, fun, and also South Asian. I get even more excited because this is just the beginning of my list. I hope they inspire girls the way Jess inspired me to define my own ideas about culture and belonging, and also how to make round chappatis.
Tags: bend it like beckham, formative experiences, Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite, movies, race
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I love this.
Excellent article. This movie was also integral for many gaybies, but that’s a different tale.
This was lovely. And it really is a great little movie.
(I have been trying to make time to rewatch this movie and write a post for Femslash Friday about Jess/Jules.)
(“GET YOUR LESBIAN FEET OUT OF MY SHOES!”)
“She’s not Lebanese! She’s Indian!”
The lady says “Punjabi”, not “Indian”
(I might have seen that movie too many times).
“I thought she was a Pisces?”
Yes, please!
YES
omg I have only just made the connection that Kalinda was in this movie
Me too!! I’m going to pretend this is the secret past Kalinda is running from.
YES. I was in college when this came out and am neither Indian nor Canadian, but I too loved this movie for the reasons you describe. (The other, relatively mainstream movie that comes to mind re. immigrants and being in North America is The Joy Luck Club, which I have grown to be ambivalent towards as I’ve gotten older.)
Also I am a little sad when I think about how Keira Knightley blew up and Parminder Nagra has done well, but not really as well as Knightley, and what that says about Hollywood. Alas.
Also, does anyone remember Better Luck Tomorrow? Ahahahaha, I’ll see myself out now..
ETA: fuck html
Parminder Nagra was a decade older than Keira Knightly when it was filmed, so add a heaping helping of ageism/misogyny to the racism.
My JV soccer teams was appropriately obsessed with this soon after it came out, but I lacked the experience to truly appreciate it on the level of the author, so this was great to read. Time for a re watch.
Gaaah I watched this movie to try to understand the immigrant experience of the guy I was dating at the time. I did not want to ask the annoying questions about identity and etc. It was both a thoughtful and a very silly strategy.
Lesbian? I thought she was a Pices!
I will love Bend It Like Beckham forever. Even with as-yet-unformed, fey, unsettling Jonathan Rhys Myers’ involvement. Thanks for a great read!
My favorite line and my favorite Rhys Myers.
GOD I loved (and probably still love) this movie, even if my appreciation was more on the baller-ladies-playing-sports-and-being-kinda-gay level. I liked this post a whole lot! I’m glad this movie was so good for you! Eee!
FYI, the original script called for Jules & Jess to actually be lesbians: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286499/trivia?ref_=t…
I think my favorite line from the movie is when the mom says “Hussein’s a Muslim name. Their families are different.” It was the moment I realized that a lot of Desi moms think that religion matters more than culture in a way that’s not necessarily true. My family’s Muslim and the mom in the movie is almost exactly like mine in so many ways I thought were just her but really are a Desi thing.
I loved this movie despite the awful casting of Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
There’s no was a dude who ran like he did in the airport scene could be a believable footballer.
Excuse me, but you’re not allowed to use “awful” in conjunction with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I was in love with his brooding Irish Joe-self for about 5 years.
AND MAYBE HE DOESN’T RUN RIGHT BECAUSE OF HIS KNEE OKAY.
OKAY.
*Despite*? I think that was a very strong *because of* for me. But then again, I had seen Velvet Goldmine approximately 8 billion times before seeing Bend it like Beckham.
VELVET GOLDMINE. Were we livejournal friends? I gotta go watch that movie.
VELVET GOLDMINE. Such great music. So many amazing men wearing makeup and getting naked.
I watched this movie half because of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, as I was (AM) a Velvet Goldmine devotee, and half because I was expecting Jess and Jules to fall madly in love. It was my introduction to the fact that JRM is utterly worthless in any role where he’s not doing either drugs or murders.
(Stay away from him Jess, look into his crazy eyes, he wants to wear your pelt)
My introduction to JRM was as Steerpike in the BBC Gormenghast. That boy made evil look good.
I can’t get down with his current facial hair, though. Nope nope nope.
Okay, at some point, we gotta talk all about Gormenghast, I’m putting an open call out.
Yeah, I’m here for any and all Gormenghast AND Velvet Goldmine pieces. Although really, everyone should just read vardathemessage (on lj) when it comes to Velvet Goldmine, because there’s nothing to add to that, it’s perfect.
jffdngdjkfn!!!!
I know that looks like spam, but its actually excitement!
YES. But especially if we can talk about Gormenghast and sexxxxxxy Rhys-Meyers. Did you lot (transatlantics) get the BBC adaptation? It’s a belter.
Oh my god okay, seriously, this Dracula thing he’s in is a Victorian period piece. WHAT is with his facial hair. You have some magnificent facial hair options in Victorian England, any of which I would be delighted to see on JRM’s face. No facial hair at all is also an option. Who okayed his little douche goatee? I am positive that douche goatees are not period accurate AT ALL.
I have very strong feelings about this.
LIKING ALL THE VELVET GOLDMINE COMMENTS. Can someone do a Velvet Goldmine piece?!
That would be awesome. I watched it for Christian Bale and JRM and because I wasnt in to Bowie and Iggy I felt like I was missing something huge and it would be great to have an enthusiast explain exactly what.
It’s about how glam rock as a genre was about the performance of identity, and thereby reinvention of your identity outside the norms of society. The main parts of the main characters’ lives are based on big performers from the genre (Bolan, Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry), but there are many minor bands/artists and events in it too that tie it to the genre as a whole (though Southern European/American glamrock is a little bit different, but has the same basic idea so). Then they tie it into a bigger tradition of testing or crossing the boundaries and ideas of identity.
IDK, I’d be seriously up for writing it but it depends what angle they’re looking for.
wait, Christian Bale is in it? I only really remember Eddie Izzard and Rhys. I will have to go back to it. Shame.
I was confused but ultimately pleased with that casting choice when I was young. But yeah, I loved this movie, and this piece was absolutely fantastic.
Oh my god, I loved this movie because I grew up on the lip of Scarborough and it looked like what I actually thought large parts of Canada looked like and it was reassuring about the experience all my friends/and I seemed to be sharing.
“The Paxtons and the Bamras want their children to be “normal” because normality means ease in an unforgiving society.” This is amazing!
Thank you so much for this article. I loved this movie so much when I was an adolescent (Not Indian, not British, but yes soccer!) and still own it on VHS (despite not having a VHS player?). And I went to see it in theaters with my immigrant pa and my white ma and there’s just something about this movie that hits on … just everything you said. Also I love all the women being awesome on a soccer team and remember when Kiera wasn’t super skinny just awesome?
Also Archie Panjabi forever!
Naw man she is prettly fucking bony in this I think like maybe it’s her actual body and not something to gripe about?
This is the best fucking movie, and this piece was fantastic.
I just really want a sequel with Jess and Jules being together and then winning the World Cup for England and then making out.
Hear hear!
I will watch this movie on TV every time it is on without fail because it is just that goddamn great. Has anyone seen East is East? It’s one of my favourite films that tackles the experience of being an “other” while growing up in a predominantly white, urban centre, but with comedy that doesn’t feel forced and is instead heartfelt and legit hysterical. Also starring a super-young Archie Panjabi, who is fucking great in it.
this piece got even better!
Wonderful piece! I, too, loved that this movie portrayed Indians realistically. It’s a movie I often cite as an example of something to watch if you want to know what my life is like.
This was great.
I don’t think it really occurred to me (because I was young when this came out and therefore self-centered and also kinda oblivious) that one of the reasons my cousins loved this movie so much was because it was about soccer and Indian people and immigrants, etc. I’ve never really thought much about the fact that my uncle is Indian (he was born in the US, but his parents and I think all his older siblings were born in India; I’ve never met any of them that I can remember.) It’s not that I didn’t know, I just never thought about it at all. He was just my Uncle Sri, who was kind of scary when I was younger but now it turns out is super awesome and will encourage me to drink more red wine. Anyway, it just didn’t occur to me at that age that I was liking the movie when we watched it because it was a pretty good movie, and my cousin also liked it because it was a pretty good movie but also because it was closer to her life than most of the movies I watched.
tl, dr: adults are better at thinking about how other people experience the world than children are; also, do you ever get those weird realizations like a decade later?
All the time in the most embarassing ways, I was basically a blinkered idiot as a kid. The income/privilege disparities in my (all-white) primary school only really clicked for me when I learned how to make Yorkshire Puddings (in my mid-twenties) for which you have to get lard really hot. I suddenly realised that’s what some of the kids in my class smelt like which meant that a) they didn’t have clean ones every day (for what could be a whole range of reasons) and b) their families cooked with lard a lot. For some reason that domestic detail made apparent to me what 8 years of schooling hadn’t, at least fifteen years after I left the school :-/
Wonderful piece, and the movie was so huge-hearted and sweet, plus on the DVD extras the director teaches you how to make aloo ghobi, which I’m praying I’ve spelled correctly. You could smell the deliciousness through the TV screen.
Showed this movie to my class of high school girl students in Korea – none of them had seen it before and they were confused, and then they loved it. YESSSS.
I read your piece and was so excited, because even though I am not Indian, I am an immigrant from Peru and I watched Bend it Like Beckham about two years into my time in the US, when I was so confused as to what was happening (adjusting to the US, my English was getting good enough that whenever I said I was from Peru people were like, “You have no accent whatsoever! Do you feel Peruvian?” and shit like that), was playing soccer but because I was Latin American people assumed I would be great (when in Peru people were confused as to why I would play), and just general immigrant angst and the only other Latin Americans being portrayed in media were Mexican with the same kind of demeaning jokes on their culture and people lumped us all together. So, watching Bend it like Beckham made me realize how so many of the same feelings and cultural identity crises were happening regardless of what the cultures involved were — plus it inspired me to practice soccer every day for a summer to try out for a club team, and lead to a lifelong fandom of JRM– I’m all about awkward JRM.