All that is dark can become white: the rules of the game in Bend it Like Beckham

The “light” and uplifting film, Bend it Like Beckham (2002), is deconstructed to expose its passive ideologies that equate physical darkness with regressive cultural and social outlooks and practices. While Bend it Like Beckham constructs itself as a modern fairy tale of a girl achieving her dream of athletic opportunity and success (with a nice side-dish of romance), the film’s privileging of whiteness is both a cultural and a gendered norm that must be desired and achieved before that dream may come true.