Bend it like Beckhkam

 “Bend It Like Beckham” (director. Gurinder Chadha) is a film about a young Indian girl in Britain. She enjoys playing football but as she is from a religious orthodox Sikh family she has to hide it from her parents and rebel against the traditions her parents want to set upon her, such as finding a good boyfriend and learning to cook.

This film has a lot of examples of racism both overt and inferential between both cultures of Indian and British. The racism is shown not just by the way things are portrayed but by how the audience reads the different scenes and elements in the text. This will differ depending on the background of each individual.

An example of overt racism is when Mr Bharma said,  “You know how hard it is for our children here. Sometimes they misjudge and start behaving like the kids here.” - This is very overt as it shows the perspective of all Indian immigrant families especially the Bharma family in this film towards British teenagers. This film lets you have an insight on Indian immigrant families and how they interact and how they think of people from different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

Soccer Team Girl: So, you can choose, does that mean you can marry a white boy?

Jess: - White, no, black, definitely not, a Muslim, no way! – This again is overt racism showing how Indian families want you to only marry Indians they don’t believe any other culture is suitable. Especially Muslim’s as they have quite a bit of conflict each other and differences between each religion due to historical conflicts that took place.

This is film has a lot of racism which can be inferential but also can be overt to some audiences’. This text helps contrast between British and Indians and has many norms of both cultures but due to an Indian director there are ideas that can’t be picked up by european audience and is specific to the culture. Jules mum taking her to a bra store is something that is looked down upon in Indian traditions. It is portrayed to mostly only Indian audience that her mother is trying to sexualize her which is not something that a mother should do to their daughter in Indian culture.  In Indian culture females are meant to be judged by their intellect and ability of doing household jobs not sex appeal. To Indian audience this example would have made them view Jules’ mum as a bad parent and an antagonist in someway.

Mrs Paxton makes a lot of racist comments such as - ‘Oh, I made a lovely curry yesterday’ and comments about Jess’ mum partnering her with a nice handsome doctor this shows the racism towards Indians from British as well and how they mostly relate Indians to curry, arranged marriages and doctors (smart).

Throughout the film we can see inferential racism due to the stereotyping of Indian families. The accent to the way they dress and their values. The Bharma family is looked upon as a generalization of an Indian family, though some stereotyping may be right it cannot be generalized to every Indian family. Jess responds to her friend tony claiming that he’s gay by saying “..but you are Indian”, This develops the generalization that all Indians don’t like homosexuals or in that fact believe in homosexuality. Which is addressed again by a grandmother saying “Lesbian? Her birthday is in March. I thought she was a Pisces”.

The film carries a lot of overt and inferential racism which can vary between audience and individual backgrounds they bring whilst interpreting any film not just this one.

Pictures- 
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=259648&page=2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286499/
http://rebloggy.com/post/subtitles-stills-bend-it-like-beckham-non-bolly/3142880736
http://weheartit.com/entry/group/19911439