How To: Pick Apart A Film

A sense of belonging is like an onion. There is not just one thing that gives you a sense of belonging or makes you feel like an outcast. There are layers, and some are deeper than others. Some of these layers include cultural, racial, and gender belonging. Each of these layers are important, and they were all prominently demonstrated in the film Bend It Like Beckham. The most defining layer of what it means to be an outsider is the setting. Being an outsider truly depends on where you are at the time. An outsider in one group or area of the world is the one making a person feel like an outsider in another.

Nobody is a universal outsider and everybody fits in somewhere. Each of the protagonists from the film had the chance to play both the insider and the outsider. The main female character Jes was constantly changing from insider to outsider, depending on where she was and who she was with. Within her own family she didn’t feel like she belonged, yet she felt like part of the group with her teammates from the football team. Even though she shared no cultural or racial similarities with these girls, their love of football brought them together and made them a group. The same principle applied to Joe, the football coach. He was cocky, confident, and demanding on the football pitch because he belonged there. When he went around to Jes’ house to convince her parents to let her play on the team, it was apparent that he was not welcome, so he was meek and respectful. Although each of these characters was obviously outsiders at some point, they were an integrated part of the group at other times.

My cultural understanding of what an outsider is was challenged throughout this film. I had previously believed that a person chooses whether or not they wanted to be an outsider. I believed that the factors of belonging included confidence, and motivation, rather than circumstance. When defining an outsider, the film brought out very little regarding whether or not you choose to belong. In the film Jules is portrayed as an energetic, feisty, determined athlete, yet even she got to know what it was like to be an outsider at times. On the soccer pitch she was a star, but felt out of place and awkward at home with her mother.

Just as a river is constantly changing, a sense of belonging is never stagnant. Nobody gets to be an insider permanently, just as nobody has to be an outsider permanently. Being an outcast has very little to do with choice, but has more to do with where you are and who you are with at the time. Cultural, racial, and gender belonging were all brought out in this film, but they were not the defining attributes on whether or not the characters were outcasts. Jes didn’t completely fit in with the people from her own culture, but because of their mutual love for football she felt comfortable in the company of her English friend Jules.