From the Sidelines
Americans know what they're missing
By
Alaa Abdel-Ghani
I have not seen Bend it Like Beckham but if the reviews are true, then perhaps I should. A British comedy about soccer-playing girls and cultural manners should be appealing. Interesting, too, is whether the film will do what the American soccer federation wants it to -- promote the sport in the United States.
Jess (Parminder Nagra) is a tricky forward who would like nothing better than to play alongside her hero David Beckham, the real-life Manchester United star and England's captain. But opposition from her family -- Sikh Punjabis residing in west London -- blocks her path to soccer stardom. "What's the good of playing soccer all day if you can't cook chapattis," rails Jess' mother who wants her rebellious daughter to instead find a good Indian husband like her older sister.
To the uninitiated, the name of the film needs some explaining. "Bend it", refers to Beckham's signature curling free kicks from which he has scored sensational goals as have his teammates when they have latched on to them. It is also a metaphor for bending the rules.
Bend it began as a sleeper but has burgeoned into a smash that wowed festival audiences at Sundance and Toronto. It became the first British film by a non-white Briton (it's directed and co- written by Gurinder Chadha) to reach No 1 at the UK box office after its April 2002 release. It eventually became the top grossing home-grown film with earnings of about $17 million. For a film that might have gone nowhere, it has collected a decent worldwide total of about $50 million.
Last month it opened in the US where it has been heavily hyped by its distributor Fox Searchlight. The American soccer federation is gung-ho about it, promoting the film as if it were its own. The American soccer league is the promised land in the film which brings us back to the question: can Bend it sell soccer in the United States?
The short answer is not really. Not because the film is about a people and a culture Americans are not familiar with. The $241 million success of last year's My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a similar low-budget comedy with ethnic and family themes, apparently made the general US movie- going public more appreciative of films of international make-up.
The problem is the movie's central theme. Even though the United States is currently a very respectable 10th in the world, even though it hosted the 1994 World Cup and invented the term "soccer moms", it has never been soccer country. The sport has forever had to compete with established grass roots pastimes -- baseball, American football, basketball -- and has perennially come up short. The American soccer league, which boasts a modest 10 teams, was launched only seven years ago. And the relatively small number of commercials which can be slotted into a game whose halves run 45 minutes at a stretch has never made soccer American TV-friendly.
The film's name, for example, would not be a problem if Americans really knew their soccer. But one of the movie's biggest marketing challenges has been explaining the title. Initially, Fox Searchlight wanted to change the title but executives decided it could help generate curiosity. Fox was, after all, the distributor of The Full Monty and nobody knew what that meant. Still, in order to clarify as much as possible, one TV commercial has had to resort to comparing Beckham to skateboarder Tony Hawk and tennis star Serena Williams with phrases like "Hang it like Hawk" and "Smash it like Serena".
Beckham's status across the Atlantic also speaks volumes about how little Americans know about soccer and those who play it. Outside the US Beckham has iconic status on a par with Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, but in America he's just one more pretty face in the crowd. If Beckham is known for anything inside the United States, it's being the husband of former Spice girl Victoria Adams.
The American public will have the opportunity to see Beckham up close, first in the film where he makes brief appearances, and when United tour the US in July but the 27-year-old does not believe convincing them to like soccer will be easy. "It will be hard," Beckham said recently. "The American people love basketball, baseball, ice hockey and American football. Football isn't one of their major sports. I'm surprised because the facilities over in America are amazing and their women's team does really well."
But Beckham did not see why in the future "it can't change". I doubt it can; certainly Bend it will not do the trick. (Incidentally, sub plots dealing with sexism and racism have given Bend it a PG rating, meaning a slice of the junior audience whom the federation wants exposed to soccer and to the film will probably not see it).
Going by its history thus far, I suspect Bend it Like Beckham will meet with varying degrees of success in the US market, but not because of its soccer. That is a sport most Americans know next to nothing about and can live without.
