Essay 3
Jess (Parminder Nagia) is a British born teenage girl whose goal in life is to play soccer. Her dream is to be on the soccer field with David Beckham, the world famous soccer player. The only thing standing in her way is her Indian parents. Allowing Jess, as a young girl to play soccer, was never a problem for her parents. Now she must put away "childish things" (the soccer ball) and do what good Indian girls do-learn to cook, wear saris, prepare for marriage and go to university. Jess is faced with quite a conflict. THINK ABOUT IT: How can Jess be both the obedient daughter and follow her passion for soccer? While Jess knows her parents disapprove of her playing soccer, it is no excuse for disobedience. When Jess finally honors her parents through truthfulness, her parents help her reach her dreams. I appreciated how the movie dealt with the themes of betrayal, deceit, acceptance, peer pressure, parents and traditions and showed the consequences of bad choices. I especially embraced the way the compassion in the family was portrayed. No matter what one's cultural differences are, family dynamics are easy to relate to because family is universal. Jess' family adheres to strict beliefs, which are not popular. She has to lea
Essay 4
The main purpose of feature film is to entertain. Making audiences laugh is more important than making them think. Discuss this with detailed reference to Bend it like Beckham. A comedy about bending the rules to reach your goal, ‘Bend It like Beckham’ explores the world of women's football, from kick-abouts in the park to free kicks in the Final. Heart-stopping talent doesn't seem to be enough when your parents want you to hang up your football boots, find a nice boyfriend and learn to cook the perfect chapatti. As viewers of ‘Bend it like Beckham’ we tend to get immersed in the humour and overlook the main issues and themes being communicated. In the film, Gurinder Chadha has included a serious tone although sometimes overriding it, with over zealous characters and manufactured events. Before you can decide whether humour overrides the film purpose, we have to understand why we laugh and what makes a film or line ‘comical.’ Human behaviour leads us to understand that we make fun at others expense. We tend to find humour mainly in issues that we have little information on or preconceived ideas about. To coincide this idea we tend to find humour when people who do not fully understand what is being communicated. For example,
Essay 5
In "Bend it like Beckham" it differs Jess" parents don't find who she marries but he must be Asian and of the same religion. Also in this film Jess has to lie to go to Germany with the football team because her parents think Western differences will influence her. A difference between the two films are in "East is East" the children have to worship this maybe as it was set in 1971 whereas in "Bend it like Beckham" we don't see them worship this maybe as it's a more modem film. There are many representations of women both Asian and White. A representation of women as a whole is to be more feminine. A good example of this is Jules' mum in "Bend it like Beckham" tells her to buy push-up bras and not a sports bra, also her mum thinks she should get a boyfriend and stop playing football A representation of Asian women is they need to be able to cook traditional Indian dishes. Jess' mum thinks she should stop playing football and learn to cook Indian food. "Bend it like Beckham" also deals with lesbianism. Jules' mum finds this a horrific fact to deal with "get your lesbian feet out of my shoes" even though Jules isn't a lesbian. Jess' mum tells her not to play football as her skin will become darker and the darker her skin the less attractive she will be "look how dark you are." Both the films provoke the idea women should marry and have children. Also in "East is East" white women are represented as gossips and always smoking.
Essay 6
Lowe included a misrepresentation of cultural history made by narratives of multiculturalism, "which do not make these connections between historically differentiated forms of disempowerment or which do not make space for oppositional critiques risk denuding racial and ethic groups of their specificity"(Lowe 537). She stresses the importance of our cultural history as part of multiculturalism. There are many representations of multiculturalism, but being able to embrace one's cultural history is one of the most distinguished.
Chadha does a good job drawing how these problems "are not just an Indian thing" as Jules says. Jules' mother is similarly against her daughter playing football, and stereotyped that Jules must be a lesbian since she favors sports bras, has short hair and wears boyish clothes. Jules' mother wants her to be more cultural, she asked Jess to teach Jules a thing or two about her Sikh culture. Jules met Jess at the perfect time, a time when Jess' family is getting ready for her sister's wedding. Much of the cultures and traditions are shown in the stages leading to the wedding and the actual wedding itself. Because they instantly became close friends, Jules had no problem in learning about Jess' culture.
Bend it Like Beckham stresses the importance of friendship and diversity. Both Jules and Jess are from two different worlds, yet they are able to come together and shared their differences and achieved their dreams. This is an example of how multiculturalism had made an impact on one's lives and touches them personally. It showed Jules' willingness to appreciate and respect Jess' culture and she is committed to learn about it. The implication of multiculturalism is the willingness to engage and embrace the concept of otherness. Media representations in the multicultural context also encouraged the study of concepts of nation and nationhood (Fiske 71). This means that the public can learn about multicultural representations through the media, which shows the importance of diversity from parts of the world that are distant from them, either geographically or culturally. It can also mean that multiculturalism is intending to bring people together to recognize, analyze and contribute to what has been called 'unity in diversity' (Carson and Lester 23).
The film gives a glimpse of a London we rarely seen in the movies.
