Bend it like Beckham – Film as text
Jess struggles between her two identities throughout the film. Discuss how she overcomes this struggle and forms a new identity
In the film, Bend it like Beckham, Jess is in a struggle between her two identities but somehow overcomes this struggle and forms a new identity.
The movie is about an Indian girl named Jessminder (Jess) who loves playing football but due to her cultural expectations, her parents disapprove and they expect her to marry an Indian boy. She goes through a number of conflicts with her family, her dreams, her best friend Jules, her coach Joe and her identity.
According to the movie, a struggle is a problem that is challenging and requires hard work to get through. Jess is challenged by her identity which is a profile of the condition of being a certain person. She is baffled by the battle of her two identities but learns to overcome which means she wins the battle in the end.
The struggle starts simply when Jess receives cultural lectures from her mom. She doesn’t want to feel too trapped from her passion because of her culture so she starts sneaking out to play football. As it draws near to her sister’s (Pinky) wedding, the more she feels suffocated from her culture. After the wedding, she finally comes clean and from there see the form of her new identity.
One reason why Jess struggles so much between her new identity and her old identity is because of the numerous amount of lectures she receives from her mom. The first cultural lectures seen in the movie was after the scene that her mom caught her in the park playing football with boys. One of them chased her and caught her and her mom got the impression of him touching Jess. ‘Chi, chi, chi. He was touching you all over’, (Jess’ mom). We start to see Jess as in individual who appears to be confident and the orientation of her mom’s expectations that are overprotective, strict and old-fashioned. Her mom gets so overwhelmed with the situation that she clearly states to Jess that she is banned from playing football. ‘She shouldn’t be running around showing her bare legs to everyone’, (Jess’ mom). From hearing this we get the idea of how overprotective her mom is. We start to see the significance of the expectations and traditions of the Indian culture when her mom states a question; ‘What Indian family would want a daughter-in-law who can run around all day kicking a football all day but can’t make round chihatti?’, (Jess’ mom). Her mom is ignorant when it comes to Jess desires because she is worried about the opinion of others in their culture. This affects Jess’ behavior and challenges her to become her own individual because she doesn’t want her culture to define her.
Another factor to include Jess’ struggle between her two identities is when she’s sneaking out to play football. After being banned from playing football, she feels deeply upset and confides in her close friend, Tony. Jules spots her and she tells Jules that her parents disapprove of her playing football. Jules explains that even her own mother disapproves of her playing football and that Jess just ‘can’t take no for an answer’, (Jules). Tony encourages her to sneak out.
So Jess starts to sneak out of the house and play football. She starts to run off and lie about her whereabouts until a terrible misunderstanding occurs and blows things way out of proportion. She is exposed then stops sneaking out.
Joe is left wandering why Jess hasn’t been showing up at football training and finds out that she is restricted from playing football by her parents. However, Joe believes she has ‘tremendous potential’ (Joe) and proceeds with the lucrative idea of confronting her parents. Unfortunately, they still disapprove and he has a private conversation with Jess. Again, Jess is upset and doesn’t want these restrictions to hold her down. ‘What your parents don’t know is best for you’ (Joe). Jess keeps sneaking and doing what she wants but she finds that she is still not completely satisfied.
Her struggle starts to become nauseating when she starts to suffocate from her culture. As usual, Jess snuck off again to play football but somehow her dad shows up and watches her without her knowing. Then someone from the opposing team offends her and her dad saw the violent side of her. After the match, she got yelled at by Joe and she fights back by telling him that she got offended after being called a ‘Paki’. He comforts her and embraces her until they got caught by her dad.
After that, her dad ignored her but stated that she can’t play at the final because it is the day of Pinky’s wedding. ‘Your sister needs you’, (Jess’ dad).
This leads to the night before the wedding where there is a party at their house. After being told by Joe about the opportunity to gain a scholarship overseas, she enters her house where it’s all crowded and there are people dancing. She is invited to dance however when she starts to feel claustrophobic and suffocated with the amount of culture surrounding her.
During the celebration of the wedding, Jess feels stuck and unhappy and her dad sees that she’s suffering so he lets her go play at the finals. She smiled instantly because she knows that this time she wasn’t sneaking out.
At the finals, it was up to Jess to get the ball pass the wall to gain the winning goal. But moments before, she sees that the wall had been substituted for her relatives dressed in traditional Indian clothes. She realizes that the real goal is to play football and break free from her culture. She kicks and the goal gets in. They won and she also won her scholarship, but there is still one more problem…
She returns to the wedding, her and Pinky are at the back of the car. Pinky asks ‘Don’t you want all of this?’, and she said that she wants more. There is more to life she wants to explore.
We then start to come to the end of her struggle where Jess comes clean with her scholarship and overcomes her struggle and forms a new identity. At home after the wedding, Jess tells Tony about her scholarship but she doesn’t know how to break the news to her parents. But because Tony has always been supportive of her decisions, he confronts the relatives with Jess and announces a ‘false proposal’.
However, the condition was for her to study at any university she wants. Jess couldn’t take the lying anymore and decides to speak out. She tells them how her dad let her go to the final during the wedding and that they won and she felt good because she knows she wasn’t sneaking off. Then she breaks the news about her scholarship opportunity.
Jess’ mom had the same reaction as always but her dad starts to come clean with his views as well. He tells them about the same situation he had gone through and tells them that he suffered. ‘I don’t want Jess to make the same mistakes that I did in accepting life, accepting situations. I want her to fight… and win’ (Jess’ dad). This somehow convinces her mom and she accepted and finally approved.
Jess has finally let out all the truth and won in the end. She fights for her parents to accept her individuality and she overcomes by winning and gaining what she wants at the end.
This movie showed how Jess overcame the struggle of her two identities, her old and her new. From the start, we see that during those lectures, she was still someone who stuck with her culture but wasn’t completely satisfied. On the other hand, her dreams become an opportunity and she takes it and blends it in with her cultural obedience by sneaking out to play football. Which is a big challenge because both had the consequences of letting people down but most of all, she didn’t want to let herself down. From here, she starts to become more aware of her future and becomes honest at the end by telling the truth and announcing her scholarship offer. With the support of Tony and her dad, she finally got what she always wanted with no regrets and with nothing to hide. Then we see her new identity which is a strong, confident and intelligent girl who had the ability to turn a ‘must’ into a ‘can’. Therefore, this is how Jess overcomes her struggle between her two identities. | 
