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Bend It Like Beckham Essay

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Bend It Like Beckham Essay
In the film Bend It Like Beckham, several characters go through both internal and external conflicts. Their minds are pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling desires, ambitions, obligations, and influences. In Jess’s case, she is conflicted with her desire to play football and her obligation to her family to follow cultural traditions (Bend It Like Beckham). She is torn between doing what makes her happy and her responsibility to her family (Bend It Like Beckham). Because of this, Jess is forced to lie to her family to continue playing football (Bend It Like Beckham). In Bend It Like Beckham, Jess plays for an all girls football team without her parents knowing. When they find out and tell her that she is not allowed to play anymore, she lies about having a job so that she can continue going to the practices and games (Bend It Like Beckham). Her parents want her to go to Uni and live her life based on traditional Indian culture so that she grows up to be a proper Indian woman and marry a nice Indian man and to Jess’s dismay, football goes against what her parents want for her (Bend It Like Beckham). Jess has little to no interest in what her parents have in mind for her future; she dreams of someday playing football professionally and going to school in the States with a scholarship to play football (Bend It Like Beckham). Her obligation to her family puts her in a situation that forces her to lie to continue doing what she wants; she does not want this (Bend It Like Beckham). She just wants to play football with her parents’ approval and acceptance of who she is, not how they want her to be (Bend It Like Beckham). As Jess says in the film Bend It Like Beckham, her playing football goes against everything that her parents know. Jess’ father was a talented cricket player but when he moved to England the team that he was a part of did not permit him to play at all; they made fun of his turban, which was very offensive to him and his culture (Bend It


Cited: Bend It Like Beckham. Dir. Gurinder Chadha. Perf. Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightly, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Kintop Pictures. 2002. Film.
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