Was Joe From ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ Actually Problematic The Whole Time?
"That's okay now. I'm not your coach anymore, we can do what we want.”
In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Bend It Like Beckham, Junkee is spending the week digging into the impact and legacy of the iconic film.
It’s been two decades since Bend It Like Beckham hit the silver screen, but one glaring retrospective is how the relationship between protagonist Jess (Parminder Nagra) and love interest Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) — the film’s romantic lynchpin — simply wouldn’t fly in 2022.
Let’s get something straight: We’re not about to cancel the beloved film that lives rent-free in the minds of millennials worldwide, but it’s time to admit that aspects of it are a little icky to watch back.
Joe, the film’s chiselled, blue-eyed heartthrob — while not actively pursuing Jess from the start — still leans into their growing sexual tension, despite a clear power imbalance existing between the two. After all, he is her soccer coach, and her older soccer coach at that.
How Old Are Jess And Joe?
Age gaps and relationship dynamics have been placed under the microscope in a post-MeToo era after dissections of titles like Lolita, American Beauty, and Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
Coach-athlete infatuations are also pretty common tropes, explored in Yellowjackets, My Mad Fat Diary, as well as the first season of The Sopranos, when Tony makes the hard decision not to pop a cap at his daughter’s soccer coach after discovering he sexually assaulted another player on the team.
So, we know that Jess is around 18 in Bend It Like Beckham based on her receiving A-Level test results for university entry. Joe’s age is never mentioned, but he works as a bartender, and he’s been coaching male and female soccer teams for a while, so it’s implied he’s been out of the school system for a while.
Thankfully, unlike other films with similar plotlines, the actors were of similar age at the time of production, with Nagra being 26, and Meyers 24.
The Red Card Moments
Their unfolding relationship is marked by a pocket full of moments in the film that really scream WTF — the first being the pair’s very first interaction, with him negging her with the weird racialised comment: “I’ve never seen an Indian girl into football”.
Later on, in an attempt to not play favourites, Joe punishes Jess for chit-chatting during practice by making her do five laps around the field, which leads Jess to further injure a twisted ankle. Joe then proceeds to give her an intimate foot rub while assessing the damage — a gesture that felt equal parts responsible and creepy.
“Jess, I am your coach,” he said in a second assertion of power, after yelling at her for shoving a racist on an opposing team who baits her during a match. “I have to treat you the same as everyone else.”
The infamous club scene when the team goes to Germany for a competition sees the gang head to a club after they loose. In the film’s equivalent of a makeover scene, Joe does a double-take at Jess’ new look, fully checking her out, and not hiding his attraction to her.
On the DF, he proceeds to bump and grind with a bunch of teenagers, before reciprocally leaning in for a kiss with Jess who is visibly intoxicated at the time.
Then, after her sister’s wedding, Jess runs onto the field and embraces Joe, to a soundscape of his teammate’s mocking heckles. “That’s okay now. I’m not your coach anymore, we can do what we want,” he says, before going in for round two. Jess says no, and he rebuts with “I thought that’s what you wanted”.
Not One, But Two
The conflict in Jess and Joe’s relationship also stems from their love triangle with fellow teammate Jules (Keira Knightley) as well. Two teenagers spinning in his orbit! Jules obviously has a fat crush on her coach and doesn’t try and hide it, but has clearly been led on by the man for years.
A chummy photo of Jules and Joe sits proudly on her bedroom wall, but when Jess canvasses her new best friend about their coach, Jules simply replies that he’s “off-limits”. “He’d get sacked if he got caught shagging one of his players,” said Jules, off the back of Jess claiming that he’d been acting “so professional” the entire season.
After feeling heartbroken by Jess nearly kissing Joe at the German club, she later confronts him and puts him in his place. “You never think about anyone but yourself!” she yells. Rock on, Jules!
In all fairness, it takes nearly two hours for Jess and Joe to share their first kiss — right before she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime playing for Santa Clara in the US — but the implied romanticism of their story arc still needs to be examined.
Of course, the power imbalance between the two is subtle, but when it comes to exploitative relationships, subtlety is often the point. Joe’s power hovers over Jess throughout the entirety of the film, and you get the feeling that if BILB were made today, this storyline would not make the final cut.
Normalisation
Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Memphis may normalise — or even romanticise — relationships between teenagers and adults”.
“And that may make it harder for teenagers to realise when they’re being exploited,” she wrote in The Conversation last month. In Bend It Like Beckham, Jess is a young woman finding her feet in the world — but she’s also still a teenager.
With a target audience of young people lapping up the charms of the Irish hottie at the centre of Bend It Like Beckham, their fictional age difference from hindsight drifts into predator territory.
Millie Roberts is Junkee’s social justice, and pop culture, reporter. Follow her on Twitter.