Analysis Of The Movie ' Bend It Like Beckham '

Family Roles and Organization. Indian families are considered to be a close knit family unit. The man (the father and/or husband) is always considered the head of household. There is also a significant value placed on higher education and success for their children.

Mike Lupica, ESPN commentator and well-known sports writer for young adults, wrote Summer Ball. Summer Ball is primarily set at Right Way Basketball Camp. The main character, Danny Walker, and his friends, Ty Ross, Will Stoddard, and Tarik Meminger go to Right Way along with boys from all over the country to improve their basketball skills. They also hope to make new friends and possibly catch the eye of college scouts over the length of summer camp. Right Way helps Danny learn how to prove himself against outside expectations and self-doubts. Danny experiences his troubles when his Right Way coach, Edward Powers, doesn 't believe in Danny and tries to break him down any way he can. Coach Powers represents all of Danny 's fears around basketball and his place as a basketball player. At Right Way Camp, Danny and his friends work hard and struggle through tough games in order to prove themselves as basketball players.

When choosing a film for this assignment, my original choice was Bend It Like Beckham because I had heard of it and I had a general idea what it was about. I then decided that I wanted to take on a more challenging film, one that I had never heard of, and one that I would really have to study to understand its full meaning. After looking into a few of the listed movies, I ended up choosing Whale Rider, a drama filmed in New Zealand in 2002. After watching the movie two times, I feel that I now understand some of the more drastic cultural and gender based problems that are occurring today.

Thesis: Soccer is a sport like no other, and it has a very unique culture with in the game itself.

Upper caste women may undergo dramatically different experiences than lower caste women. For example, lower caste women do not practice sati, because it is mostly prevalent among upper caste women. Thus, they may not comprehend how sati may function as a tool of control of female sexuality. On the other hand, upper caste women may not comprehend the experiences of widow-remarriage as practiced by lower caste women. Granted that, Mohanty makes a great point by asserting that it is impossible to analyze and treat Indian women as an ahistorical and monolithic group of people. Indian women are heterogeneous, and significant attention must be given to the components of race, class, imperialism. Furthermore, given their background, many of Western feminists in India were supporters of the colonial government and saw themselves as agents of the civilizing mission. They believed that Indian women were incapable of speaking for themselves, and thus were also incapable of liberating themselves. They disregarded that Indian women were victims of both British imperialism and the patriarchal Indian society, and thus the oppression they faced greatly differed from that of Western women. If anything, western women participated in their

Yet in America, it is quite different. As stated by Paul Hockings, the Indian culture believes that a woman must obey the men in their lives in a certain order. For instance, a woman should obey her father first, next her husband, and finally her son. The head male of the family, whether it is the father, husband, or son is in charge of the entire family. The head male is also important in arranging marriages. The head male of the family, has to compensate or receive compensation at the time of a child’s marriage. In the Indian culture, the primary purpose of a marriage is to bring families together. It is usually not done out of love or romance. If a marriage is not approved or arranged by the parents involved, then the act is frowned upon. In America, marriages are not typically arranged and people do not receive compensation during a

In this film gender is put across by using sex and religion, but it is

Overall, ‘Bend it like Beckham’ was an inspiring and comical film of the conflicts that arise in the clash of culture versus family/culture. Many themes were presented within the film such as wanting is will. This theme is explained with the constant perseverance of Jess, where she set a dream for herself and never gave up, in the end accomplishing what she dreamed for; her goal. Another theme explored was that of, your parents don’t always know what’s best for you. Times

Conflict of Cultures in the film Bend It Like Beckham Gurinder Chada creates conflict of cultures in various different ways in the film Bend It Like Beckham. Gurinder Chada uses techniques such as accents in the voice, contrasts, stereotypes, sarcasm, characterization and juxtaposition of British and Indian cultures which creates humour. This creates a film that attracts the attention of the audience and keeps them interested in the storyline. In the film Bend It Like Beckham a young female Indian footballer hopes that one day she will be able to become a professional footballer and play for her country.

Hank’s physician assistant Divya Katdare, is of Indian decent, who’s parents to do not approve of her working in the medical field. Instead, her family sticks to the traditional Indian cultural roles of arranged marriage, which eventually falls apart and becomes shunned by her parents for a time for not obeying their wishes. In this instance, we can see the cultural values of the United States beginning to shine through. Freedom to choose and marry whomever a person wants is a cultural norm and something that is prided upon by Americans. As a culture, we tend to look down on cultural traditions where individuals are forced into arranged marriages. This also goes along with stereotypical views of Indian culture. If their children do not obey the parents, they suffer from being shunned by their

This joint family, like any social organization, must face problems such as acceptable division of work, relationships and specific family roles. These familial relationships are managed on the basis of a secular hierarchical principle. In fact, all Indians owe respect and obedience to the head of the family, who usually is the father or the oldest man of the family community. In The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder by Nanda and Gregg, it is explained that, “females [are] placed under the perpetual guardianship of first their fathers and elder brothers, then their husbands.” (Nanda & Gregg 22) Thus, all the spending decisions, studies and profession, or marriage, are exclusively the responsibility of the father after the possible discussions with the other men of the family. Age and sex are the basic principles of this hierarchical system. The eldest sons enjoy greater unchallenged authority than their cadets. Of course men have more authority than women, but older married women have an important role within the family. In fact, the authority of a woman depends on the rank of her husband inside the group. Traditionally, the wife of the patriarch rules over domestic affairs and has considerable power over the other women in the community, especially her daughters- in-law.

In ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ the Indian culture is reconnoitered through conventional Sikh pious principles. For instance the importance of cultural rituals, cookery, clothing, the traditional role of a woman, and the particular importance given to elders (A. Ratna). The Indian Sikh culture integrates prayers into their daily life. For example, the Bhamra family hung a portrait of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism and Jess's mother is regularly praying and talking to the portrait. Unlike her mother, Jess has a portrait David Beckham, above her bed, and she is seen talking to the image about issues present on in her life. This portrait has a comparable part in Jess's life as that to the portrait of Guru Nanek.

Bend it like Beckham is a film that was written, directed, and produced by Gurinder Chadha, a British film maker who was grew up in India. The film focuses on the main character's desire to play football and the conflict she faces due to her obligations to her traditional Sikh family. The character, Jess Bhamra, must make the decision to pursue football or follow her parent's wishes and complete school and marry and Indian man. As Jess struggles to find her own identity without losing her family, she befriends a British footballer Jules. Jules' parents offer an interesting parallel to Jess' family, showing that although cultures may be very different in some ways, they are actually very similar in others. Director Chadha explains that

Traditionally, an Indian woman had only four roles and those were; Her role as a daughter, wife, sister, and lastly, a mother. The women in today’s time however are experiencing far reaching changes and are entering into new fields that were unknown to them. They are actively participating in social, economic and political activities. Unlike the older times, women today have received higher education.

An analysis of example can be derived from the aforementioned discriminatory sexist roles in India that prior to globalization highly favored the male population verses the female population. The female population in India has previously been less than second class citizens. Indian women's cultural roles have been previously defined by traditional customs that are centuries old and no longer apply in this day and age. Previous to globalization, Indian women were to take total domestic responsibility. They were not allowed formal education as the majority of teachers and pupils were male, and the chances of a female remaining chaste was slim in those settings, and related to tradition, females