Film Review of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ #4

Hello my followers! This blog post will be the last film review of this movie. Although I didn’t finish the whole movie yet, I am going to write what I learned, and felt about this movie. 

From the movie, I could see huge contrast between Jess and her sister Pinky. Although both of them are Sikh girl, they have totally different personalities. Pinky used to go shopping for her Indian traditional clothes that she would wear during her wedding ceremony, while Jess went to buy her sports shoes (soccer boots) for her training. This money was given from her mom to buy pretty shoes for Pinky’s wedding ceremony. Pinky has some international perspective, as we can see from her appearance, she likes to wear shorts, unlike Jess. 

Also, the movie emphasized cultural difference by showing different situation Jess and Juliette had. When Jess was on the wedding ceremony for her sister, wearing colorful traditional clothes and dancing with her families, Juliette was wearing training clothes, kicking soccer balls. The most emphasized contrast was soccer player David Beckham’s photo on Jess’s wall, and Sikhism guru’s photo on the living room. 

After I watched this movie, I learned that there are still cultural differences people have. I needed to be open minded to other cultures. Thank you for reading my reviews, my followers!

Film Review of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ #3

Thank you for checking my blog posts. I watched more parts of the movie and I learned more about Sikh family. 

Jess’s sister told her mom that Jess was still playing on the local soccer team because Jess ruined Pinky’s marriage. Jess’s parents now firmly decided their mind not to allow their girl to go out to play soccer. However, Jess’s soccer team coach, Joe visited Jess’s parents to persuade them that Jess has great potential to play soccer. However, Jess’s father, Mr. Bhamra told racial discrimination he experienced as an immigrant kid during his high school. This is one of reasons Mr. Bhamra didn’t like her daughter’ idea of becoming soccer players. Mr. Bhamra was rejected to play as a cricket player because of his race, but his daughter would be discriminated even more because of her gender and race. 

This scene was emotional and bitter part that Jess’s dad was aware of reality of immigrants. Of course, Mr. Bhamra wants her to get a good husband as Sikh family, but I could feel he wanted to respect her dream. Knowing the situation of minority, he couldn’t accept it. 

I wanna know what do you think about this. Please write a comment below.

Film Review of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ #2

How are you doing my followers? I watched more parts of the movie and I would like to continue my book review. 

I wanna talk about specific scene that I watched on the movie today, which was the first time Jess practiced on the local girls’ soccer team. Last time, Juliette asked Jess to join her soccer team. Juliette introduced Jess to the team coach, Joe. Jess showed her skills that she had when she was playing with her friends in the park. While other players in the team including Juliette wore short T-shirt and short pants for soccer, Jess wore long-sleeves with long pants that covered whole legs of Jess. After Jess was officially accepted to the team, Jess felt uncomfortable changing with other team members. Even Jess had international background, she still felt awkward exposing herself publicly. Furthermore, Jess wanted to cover her scars on her leg when training. 

I felt something unusual while I was watching this scene. As I live in tropical country, wearing shorts became part of my life, because I can’t cope with the temperature of Singapore. Even Jess was playing soccer, which means she would sweat a lot, she preferred wearing long pants. I could feel cultural difference in this scene. 

What do you think about this scene? Please leave a comment below. 

Film Review of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ #1

Hello my followers! Recently I started to watch a movie called ‘Bend It Like Bechkam’, a movie directed by Gurinder Chadha. This British comedy-drama showed cultural tension that the main character, Jess Bhamra faced for playing football. 

Jess, as a daughter of fervent Sikhism parents, couldn’t play football, which was considered as a boys’ sports in her culture. Although Jess deliberately wanted to become a soccer player, and soccer was the only thing she was interested in, her parents didn’t allow her playing. Unlike Jess, her British friend, Juliette played on the local girl’s soccer team, and supported by her father at least. Soon, Juliette and Jess became best friend, by playing on the local soccer team together. Even Jess was scouted to the team, which was fortunate event that should be celebrated, Jess had to hide from her parents. 

Compare to my country, Sikh families are more conservative and traditional that they still have distinctive difference in gender roles and jobs. My parents would encourage me what I want to do, while Jess’s parents want her to stay home and behave like a girl. 

I will write another film review as I watch the movie more. Thank you! 

Throwaway Daughter Voicethread Conversation

https://voicethread.com/share/5155413/

The second part of this file is our group's conversation. Thank you. 

Book Review of Throwaway Daughter by Ting- Xing Ye

I recently finished reading ‘Throwaway Daughter’ by Ting-Xing Ye. This book was about Chinese girl named ‘Dong-mei’ adopted to Canadian family and live as ‘Grace’ for many years. Grace had confusion in her cultural identity between Chinese and Canadian. The writer of this book showed how Grace looked for her own identity and accepted it.

Grace was a girl from happy, small Canadian family. She had one older sister named Megan but Grace’s physical appearance was different from her family, because she was adopted girl from China. Grace’s mother, Jane wanted Grace to know about her biological mom. When Grace was young, she refused to know about her culture and hated it. However, when she was graduating from high school, she wanted to visit China, and look for her real mother. The author expressed every characters feeling specifically And this made me to feel as if I became Grace and looking forward to meet her mom.

In this book, Grace was protagonist, and there wasn’t any antagonist who distracted Grace, but there was internal conflict in Grace that whether she should learn about her original culture. This book showed how Grace felt about confusing two identities she had. Around her, she had good family who gave positive effects to her. Both her parents encouraged her to explore about Chinese culture and her family root. The main theme of this book is finding Grace’s real cultural identity, which was rejected to learn about it at first. As she learned about China through their language and such events like tianmen massacre, she found out her culture was interesting to know.

After reading this book, I felt lots of warm feeling and caring from Chun-mei to her precious and only one daughter, Dong-mei. Nowadays, the situation is different from the story. Although people have enough condition to take care of their baby, but many babies are abandoned just because their parents don’t want them. This made people to feel adoption as negative thing, but if you read this book, you wouldn’t say things like that. Adopting by kind family who can respect a girl’s own culture and encourage her to meet biological mom gave warm-hearted story. 

Reviewd by Juhee Park 14/11/13

Diary Entry "Throw Away Daughter"

October 20 1980

Dear Diary, 

Today is the strangest day I have ever had!

Me and my parents went to see Old Revolutionary Chen and his son. Everyone from our village knew I was going to marry the Loyal, and congratulated me. Before I got to meet the Old Chen and the Loyal, we met Mr.Wang who introduced about them. I was shocked that Mr. Wang was the first guy my dad showed respect to. 

After talking with Mr. Wang, my family finally met my "future husband" and "future father-in-law". When I first saw him, I thought he looked better than what I imagined. He had a broad face with round eyes, which made him look sharper. I kept my eyes to him, but he tried to avoid my eyes. 

After having short tea time with both of our parents, Loyal brought me to somewhere in the building with another strange guy. Later, they tried to put needle on my abdomen to figure out the gender of my baby. I was totally shocked they were willing to know the baby's gender so early, even before getting married. What a relief that the needle turned right, which meant the baby would be a boy. If it didn't turn to right, I might not get married and my parents would be shameful. 

I can't believe anything happened since the matchmaker came to our house and told I would be married to such important person in the Party. Before I was used to be called "the landlord's daughter", but from now on, I might be called as "the secretary Chen's daughter-in-law".

I am both worried and excited about it. 

Love,

Chun mei