Student ID 27453219
Module LANG1005 "British Life and Establishments", Essay No. 1
Essay Question No. 3: Write an assessment of the film Bend it Like Beckham (2002), reflecting in what way they may be representative of multicultural Britain.
Bend it Like Beckham: The Reflect of Multicultural Britain- Situation and Problems
It has been several ages since multicultural plans were followed by UK federal which lets Britain become an cultural melting container, in another phrase, multicultural nation. During the record of wars, colonization and immigrants, large quantities people from worldwide move to UK, having their own culture and customs. And Indian Uk, cultural minority that gets the single largest inhabitants in the united kingdom, is quite important constituent of the multicultural culture.
There is a film, Bend it like Beckham, which may be an example to show the multicultural situation, especially the Indian English in Britain. It really is a minimal budget film aimed by Indian director Gurinder Chadha. The backdrop was occur Western world London, where has one of the Britain's hugest Indian communal neighborhoods, a perfect playground showing the Indian culture. According to the Office for National Reports, Indians are London's major non-white cultural minority group, with a inhabitants of around 500, 000. [1]
It tells the story about an 18-year-old Indian girl, Jesminder, whose parents are Sikhs. She was in love with football which was up against the Indian traditional concept of women. But she finally gained the opportunity to go to America to keep her football dream.
Because India's historical development is gradual, the interpersonal custom is conservative, which may be greatly reflected by the matrimony. Although the government needed many reforms through the age colonized by UK, the relationship of Indian still has religious attribute. In India, women's cultural status is quite low. The original Indian wife should do all the household duties as the husband makes money to aid family. Jess's parents, especially her farther, is comparatively more open-minded than the Indian traditional families. They bought autos, TV, radio and other things for their daughters. They allowed Jess to experiment with basketball when she was young. But their still have quite traditional concepts in their head. Through the film, we can easily see that Jess's mom always wanted Jess to learn to cook round breads. Her elder sister, Pink's marriage is organized by the parents. And Jess had not been allowed to play football and fall deeply in love with white people. They thought the behavior go against the traditions is a shame with their family.
Indian people are only allowed to marry Indian, even if indeed they reside in the society full of white in London. Although multicultural guidelines allowed people in several races and religious beliefs beliefs to reside in together peacefully, they favor to stay in their own circles of associations. Because even nowadays, you may still find racial estrangement and prejudices existing. As well as the film shows this problems skilfully and subtly.
When Jess's sports team instructor, Joe emerged to Jess's home to persuade her parents to let her stay static in the team, Jess's father said he was a good cricket player, but he quit because of others laughing at his turban, which let him gave up. That was kind of incomprehension of culture and works lack of admiration to other religion's traditions. Those unpleasant experience let him do not need his daughter to experiment with with white. And he didn't believe things have evolved. Those pain led to more prejudices, delivering more misunderstanding.
When Jess attempted to use the example of Nasir Hussain to signify the changes, her mom said that he was female which was different. Apart from the humour, this also implied the bias between different beliefs. And from the Punjabis' complain that their neighbours were always "upset" about their noisy activities, the divergence still came out its ideas- the neighbours didn't understand why kind of custom and the Punjabis were disdained to describe, which might just take it worse.
During one sports match, one female in the opponent team offended Jess and called her "Paki", an extremely insulting expression against Indian. Plus the trainer, Joe said they can know very well what Jess thought when being called like this, because he was Irish - even today Irish was still under discrimination, pretty much.
From the plots above, we can see that as a multicultural region, Britain still have many clashes between races, a lot of that happen to be latent. It can be a bomb that can cause explosion- cultural hatred- anytime with a tiny spark. Prime Minister David Cameron shipped a speech talking about Islamist extremism at Munich Security Convention 2011, expressing that the extremists were the minority of Islamists. Nonetheless it leaded to hatred to the whole Islamist group.
But only to expose the badness of multicultural environment in Britain is not the purpose of the director - she wished to show the situation in the round.
And the director place the hope on the younger generation. In the film, Jules didn't look down on Jess because she was Indian. Instead, she excavated Jess's expertise in football and built good a friendly relationship. And Jess dedicated the most detrimental sin for an Indian young lady- falling deeply in love with a white man, which made her almost lost her camaraderie. The quarrel between two friends actually showed the equality that everyone, whatever their skin shades, genders and interpersonal status has the same right to win over love. And Jess's Indian friend, Tony recognized Jess to travel for her dream and love. At exactly the same time, Jess thought there is nothing serious to be always a homosexual as Indian.
From the compare of two decades, we can see the concept is changing by enough time. The younger generation is more open-minded they can admit the ideas that aren't allow by their parents. However when the two varieties of thoughts crash, it'll bring about conflicts- that was why Jess experienced so many troubles when she wanted to play football instead of operating as traditional Indian women and land deeply in love with white. So how could the young keep running after their dream whatever the racial and social problems?
The film has already given us the solution at the beginning of the film- through the name. Bend it Like Beckham, outwardly it praises the wonderful banana shot skill of Beckham. But it has a metaphor meaning that if you want to kick the ball into the goal - realize your ambition, you have to struggle, to flex the guideline and communal paradigms, not taking life and situation.
So at the end of the film, Jess acquired the chance to go to America by exhibiting her father her instinct and ability and Jess Jules made it up. Even the love with Joe, may be spoken to Jess's father and mother later.
It is quite representative to utilize this story to mirror the modern day multicultural Britain. The director Gurinder did not go too deep in to the ethnic issues, yet we can still start to see the problems. The cultural prejudice and discrimination before has greatly reduced but nonetheless exists. As well as the historical pain brought on by this becomes the obstruction that prevents the further improvement of interactions between races. No matter what work have been made to ease the strain, the problem can go worse easily by very small provocation.
The young era wants to change it, though coming across many difficulties. And the idea is changed with the braveness of preventing with the old restrictions. They are really more ready to make friends with different races compared to their parents. They will be the fresh blood vessels to dilute the old stereotypes and driving force for sociable advance.
There is another interesting sizing. In multicultural environment, the sports activities and music are always the simplest way to let the several races to put apart the prejudice and trust one another. Jess, Jules and Joe built true companionship by sports. And Olympic Video games is another representations of the multiculturalism. For example, Mo Farah, who's Somali-born British, received two silver medals for UK in 2012 London Olympic Games. You might not exactly be native British isles, nevertheless, you can still get glories for Britain by competing with folks from other countries. No matter if you are Indian or Muslin, British or Irish, dark or white. And music is the most sincere and global terms, letting people around the globe enjoy this great art work. The soundtrack of the film has a alluring Indian style, which makes the Indian culture better assimilate into the English society. By the end of the film, the British isles actors singing Indian music and Indian women participating in football can be the best information.
Bibliography
Chen Fengjun, Indian Population and Culture, Beijing, Pecking School Press, 2013
Chitra Mahesh, Bend It Like Beckham, India's Country wide Newspapers, 19 July 2002, Available from: http://www. thehindu. com
Hong Xia, Between Binary Options: On Contemporary British Cultural Structure, Journal of Nanjing University or college (Beliefs, Humanities and Sociable Knowledge), 30 Oct 2009
Jamie Russell, Bend it Like Beckham, BBC UK, 11 April 2002, Available from: http://www. bbc. co. uk
Ron Ahluwalia, Review: Flex it like Beckham is like curry, Planet Bollywood review, 27 June 2003, Available from: http://www. planetbollywood. com
Times of India review, Review: Bend it like Beckham is like curry, Wayback Machine, 10 July 2002.
Xie Donghui, "About Change and Development of India Relationship System", Hebei Legislation Technology, March 2009, 171-176.
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[1] cf. Office for Country wide Statistics. (2011) Citizen Population Estimates by Cultural Group, All People - London - Neighbourhood Reports. Available from: http://neighbourhood. information. gov. uk [Accessed 1 November 2014]
