In the new movie, Bend it like Beckham, Jess Bhamra is a British teenage girl of Indian descent who dreams of playing soccer the way her hero, David Beckham, plays it. Among other things, Beckham (who happens to be a real-life soccer player with the Manchester United team in England, and one of the game's greatest athletes) has the ability to kick a ball in such a way that it executes a dramatic, sometimes uncanny, curve through the air. The ball's curve, or "bend" in soccer jargon, can be devastatingly effective against an opposing team's defense.
Primarily, Bend it Like Beckham is about the challenges that Jess faces as she struggles with the expectations of her traditional Indian family and with the prejudices of British society. So it isn't terribly surprising that little time is devoted to explaining just what's going on when Beckham bends a ball.
"Curve balls are usually attributed to the Magnus force," says Bloomfield. "When the ball is spinning, the air tends to follow a longer path around one side than the other, because it's dragged along by the ball's turning surface." Air following the longer path bends more sharply, resulting in a dramatic drop in air pressure on that side of the ball. The ball is pushed toward the low-pressure side. A similar drop in pressure over an airplane's wing is the source of lift that supports the plane. "Although a plane's lift is upward, Bloomfield points out, "for a ball lift can be in any direction, depending on the direction the ball is spinning."
While the Magnus force usually gets all the credit when it comes to explaining curve balls, Bloomfield says that another force may be more important to a spinning ball's path-the wake deflection force. "Most moving balls have turbulent wakes behind them," says Bloomfield. "As it spins, a ball draws the air with it and deflects the wake to one side." The deflection shifts the air stream flowing around the ball and the air stream in turn pushes back on the ball. Both the Magnus force and the wake deflection force tend to push the ball in the same direction, and the two forces combine to lead to the impressive curves produced by skilled players like Beckham.
The key, of course, to bending a ball in a soccer game has less to do with understanding the physics than learning how to put a spin on the ball. Does Jess ever manage to bend it like Beckham? You'll have to watch the movie to find out.
Directed by a Punjabi Sikh woman who grew up in West London, the film centers around a British Indian Punjabi Sikh family living in Hounslow. Plenty of wonderfully specific references, but they can border on stereotypical -- immigrant parents balk at their daughter's wearing shorts, don't want her playing soccer, say things like "what greater honor is there than respecting your elders," and want her to learn to cook and get married to a nice Indian boy (but not a Muslim, they make clear). One of Jess and Jules' teammates is Black -- she and all the women on the soccer team are confident and non-stereotypical. Disability representation via the main character, who has visible leg scarring from a childhood burn (based on the actor's real history). Another main character has visible scars from knee surgeries. But LGBTQ+ aspects are outdated: When a friend comes out as gay, Jess reacts poorly, responding, "But you're Indian!" and makes her friend sweat before finally concluding that his sexuality is "OK with her." And a mother's fears that her daughter is a lesbian are played for comedy, excusing her homophobic behavior.
Parents need to know that Bend It Like Beckham is a romantic sports comedy that follows a British Indian teen, Jess (Parminder Nagra), who just wants to play soccer -- though her immigrant parents have other ideas. The movie has strong themes of friendship, teamwork, and courage, as teens learn to be honest and parents learn to support their children's interests and dreams. Expect some swearing (including a few uses of "s--t," "bitch," "hell," and slurs like "Paki," "d-key," and "lesbo") and innuendo, as well as kissing and characters who fight over the same person. Several teens have a beer or a glass of wine, but they drink responsibly and are of legal age in the United Kingdom and Germany, where the scenes take place. Jess hides her soccer-playing from her family and lies to protect her secret, but ultimately she's a driven, ambitious woman who follows her heart's desire. The film stood out for its positive portrayal of a Punjabi Sikh family, especially in 2003 when it was released, but its stereotypes about immigrant parents feel more obvious today, and the way LGBTQ+ material is handled is even more dated. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
After Jess is called a racial slur, Joe tells her, "I'm Irish -- of course I understand what that feels like." Does that seem believable? What are the differences between being an Irish man and a Punjabi Sikh woman in London? Are there similarities?
This paper is part of the Polarization and Conflict Project CIT-2-CT-2004-506084 funded by the European Commission-DG Research Sixth Framework Programme. A different paper by the same authors circulated under the same title. We liked the title better than the paper; so we scrapped the second and kept the first. Thanks to Alberto Alesina, Bill Easterly and other participants to the Political Economy Summer Meetings of the NBER. We are also thankful to Antonella Cuteri and Alessio Farcomeni for valuable research assistance on R programming language. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The defending team will set up a wall of players at the requisite 10 yards from the ball (closer if they can get away with it) to block a direct shot at their goal. The attacking team may well have a prized player like David Beckham, who can bend the ball around or over this defensive wall so that the initial trajectory of the ball heads past the edge, or over the top of the wall of defenders, only for it to swing back in, or down, and end up in the goal. Alas, the poor goalkeeper finds that his wall of defenders does nothing more than block his view of the ball until it is too late to respond. How is this done and why is it possible?
As bending free-kicks becomes the norm in modern day soccer, implications for goalkeepers have largely been ignored. Although it has been reported that poor sensitivity to visual acceleration makes it harder for expert goalkeepers to perceptually judge where the curved free-kicks will cross the goal line, it is unknown how this affects the goalkeeper's actual movements.
In the game of soccer, the free-kicks scenario has become an increasingly important opportunity to score a goal. Although helped by innovations in shoe and soccer ball design, it can also be attributed to the free-kick specialists (e.g., David Beckham, Juninho, and Keisuke Honda), who skilfully apply spin to the ball at shoe-ball contact causing the resulting ball trajectory to bend. Why do players do this? Do spin-induced deviations from a standard parabolic trajectory make it more difficult for a goalkeeper to intercept the ball? Is the spin fooling the goalkeeper, much like curved pitches fool baseball batters [1]? While the perceptual effects of ball spin have been documented before [2], [3], here we directly examine and explain the type of movements goalkeepers make as they attempt to stop curved and standard parabolic free-kicks.
ExP1 did not confirm this prediction, showing movement biases and movement initiation times that were very similar in direction and magnitude to that found for the novices (Figures 4 and 5). This may be related to the fact that this expert has yet to experience competitive soccer at an adult national league level, having played for his country only at junior level (Under 16s). ExP2 - the more experienced goalkeeper - on the other hand indeed showed substantially smaller movement biases (Figures 4 and 5). This suggests that ExP2 accounted better for the spin-induced curve than the novices did. Most likely, his additional years of experience playing top-level soccer, meant that he had learned to extract acceleration signals from velocity changes over time [20], [21]. Alternatively, he may have become better at predicting the curved shape of the trajectory [22], which would not specifically require the use of acceleration signals. In particular, ExP2 was found to wait significantly longer before initiating movement for CS trajectories passing on the left and CCS trajectories passing on the right, exactly those conditions for which the novices and ExP1 showed large initial movement biases. Thus, the later initiation may have contributed to the reduced initial movement biases ExP2 displayed in these conditions (as explained above). Nevertheless, while ExP2's movement biases were smaller than those of the novices, they varied with respect to spin direction and passing distance in a similar way. This confirms that even our most experienced participant could not fully account for spin-induced curve in controlling his movements online. The statistical analyses of the movement biases of both experts are presented in Text S1.
For years, I carried Bend It Like Beckham and its buoyant optimism around as a kind of society-levelling talisman. It felt like we had finally entered a post-racial society, focused on what brought us together.
Regardless of ethnic background, all teenagers have run-ins with their parents. And, like Jess in the film, if they can't talk to their elders, they'll discuss their dreams with the posters on their bedroom walls. Perhaps Chadha shows more confidence handling the domestic comedy-drama and Bollywood-lite music, dance and colour of the wedding scene than the football footage, but she marshals together the many elements of her film and sustains an infectiously buoyant mood.
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