#125 - What's Becks without Posh though really?
or: idk i kind of love the purple wedding attire
Well, hey hi hello Smoke Show readers! Coming to you once again on a Sunday because I’ve officially decided to move to a Sunday email instead of a Friday one. There are a bunch of (mostly banal) reasons for this but as I move towards living every part of my life more intentionally (which omg it turns out you have to be intentional about intentions and it’s so slow to incorporate everything into that system. You think you’re going as slow as you can without stopping only to realize you’re still going like 80mph it’s wiiiild to try and recover from spending 94% of my life in Manic Mode) it means that this substack is moving from a “just hit send” to a “are you happy to hit send on this?” publication. Because while I do stand by the work I’ve produced, I haven’t always given myself the chance to be like…proud of it. But recovery and learning new healthy habits isn’t an overnight thing, it’s apparently a “do it 124 times and then get back to me with notes for improvement” thing.
(The video comparison of Blue Ivy dancing at the first Renaissance tour stop vs. the last has lingered with me this week. Setting aside any discussions of child labor/her educational settings, dance is one of the clearest art forms to notice improvement in. Honestly, it often takes one performance review to get it. Beyond clearly having the choreo more in her body by the last day, she is hitting things bigger & sharper because as a dancer it’s hard to know how it’s reading vs. how it feels. You think you’re extending all the way but you actually have to overextend to get it to read correctly/big on camera, and to find that out you have to give that initial semi-mid performance. Anyway, I’m glad that I started this substack, I’m really glad I continued, and I’m excited to evolve!)
And with that out of the way, let’s talk about a sports documentary that’s actually not really about sports!!!!!
Okay, so, David Beckham had a doc come out on Netflix. It’s made by Fisher Stevens who you may know as Hugo from Succession but who I know as one of Michelle Pfeiffer’s ex-boyfriends because Jason Mantzoukas made a joke about it on the How Did This Get Made podcast and the line delivery of “That’s a real ex-boyfriend of hers.” stuck with me. (It’s in the Lake Placid episode, which I know for sure because Paul F. Tompkins makes a joke about the writer of the movie, David E. Kelley writing all of his scripts in longhand and calls him, “Mr. Michelle Pfeiffer himself.” if you’re ever wondering just how much useless information is stored up top. This is a podcast ep that came out in 2015 btw.) It’s a long doc, but it earns every second.
Beckham, the documentary, is ostensibly about soccer/football/footie but it’s about David Beckham so it’s actually about the nature of celebrity, his relationship with Victoria, British tabloid culture, paparazzi morality debates, the most 90s fashion of all time, men’s egos, and the cultural norms we suspend when it comes to famous people. Particularly women.
So, uh, the football/soccer bits were really more filler for me? And this documentary melted my ice-cold heart and made me believe in love again????
We don’t experience many monocultural moments these days. We’re not all tuned in to the same TV shows, it’s easier now than ever to listen to exactly the music you want to listen to, we don’t even watch the same nightly news sources. But David Beckham’s height of fame was a global monocultural moment. Similar to Michael Jordan, he simply was the most famous man in the world for a time. And what a weird/fun time to reflect on because he seems extremely willing and candid in his interviews because there’s some protection that comes with being indisputably good at the thing you’re famous for!
(We, as a culture, seem to really resent folks who are famous without discernible talent. I think it pokes at people’s “fairness” meters—we’re okay with people getting famous who we feel have earned it, who we get to glean some knowledge about inherent vs. taught skill from, but if the public doesn’t think you have a skill—or at least an easy-to-identify skill—the resentment will be there early and throughout their career.)
But the sports are the part I’m least interested in so I want to get my quick recap of thoughts re: Manchester United, et al. out of the way:
It’s wild how many people couldn’t deal with the reality of his fame and talents and sabotaged him despite his willingness to just be part of the team and contribute his talents
We gotta get a term for Sports Dad that has the equivalent disgust attached to it as “Stage Mom”
I really hate that when abuse “works” (doesn’t squash the inherent talent we’re pretending the abuse is supposedly nurturing) we don’t question the methods used
clearly, David still has a lot of love for his dad, but I would hedge that his insistence around his dad’s actions being “fine” because they got them to where he was/is informs the rest of his reactions when men in his life who are father figures were abusive in their actions towards him as well
the tragedy of seeing abuse as love endures far beyond the single relationship in which the abuse originally happened
He was a child prodigy/star and was removed from school early on to go to Man U and be part of the club so all of the public commentary on how smart/dumb he is really extra unfair because he literally was denied the opportunity to learn by the adults in his life who wanted him to solely focus on football
and of course, no child is going to be like “No I want to be in school and not playing the sport I love.” Like, c’mon.
He really would have happily stayed at Manchester United his entire career but because Sir Alex Ferguson has 0 emotional communication skills, Beckham moved clubs in ways that changed the Premier League forever
The fact that the man couldn’t even pick up David’s call after he secretly traded him ooooo it’s the most cowardly shit in a documentary FULL of cowardly men who resent that their place in the lexicon is being overtaken by Beckham and instead of supporting him they all try to “take him down a peg” and it’s bullshit and it’s petty and I wish we would frame emotional constipation as pathetic because I honestly can’t deal with it being classed as some Manly Stoicism when it’s just a complete lack of empathy/ability to express feelings
This may have been the last moments of Football that weren’t completely tainted by FIFA corruption (not that it wasn’t always there) and the injection of billions by Russian Oligarchs who sought Western approval
We should bring back tiny sport shorts. Esp in soccer—why hide those thighs??
The thing about sports that really got driven home for me in this documentary, is that we actually already know/acknowledge what it takes for humans to feel accomplished. We don’t question the want/need to have thousands of people cheer for you when you put a ball in the net, so why would we doubt that people want/need validation for their actions all the time? In mundane, everyday settings!
As talented as he is at kicking a ball, there are data wranglers out there who are that good at making comprehensive spreadsheets. Only one of those people gets to raise their arms in glee and demand attention for…doing their job.
Oh, the other thing that caught me totally by surprise was ROY KEANE popping up in this documentary! Roy Feckin’ Keane!!!!
When I read Mindy Kaling’s first book of essays in college I got fixated on trying to remember who my first-ever crush was after her description of falling for Pierce Brosnan in Mrs. Doubtfire and this week I finally got my answer.
It was Roy Keane! And honestly? Still would, no question, he’s still hot, great job/taste young me.
There’s something incredible about the Irish allegiance to the one Irish person in any situation but particularly when they’re surrounded by Englishmen. It spurs something deep.
One of the most ~oh right, I really am Irish~ moments I’ve had recently was when they were describing the aftermath of the Red Card during the England vs. Argentina game and they said it was a “national disgrace” for England. Like they’re going on and on about the ~shame brought to their country and I’m like…are we talking about the same England? Because like, The Good Friday Agreement was signed two months before that game took place. England believed that David Beckham getting a red card was one of the worst things that had ever happened to their country’s reputation. Again, England. Like, THEE colonizers. They’ve been the direct cause of…how many famines? But THIS, a red card during a football game that was clearly an overreaction by the ref, that is what they feel brought their country a bad reputation?
Idk guys the centuries-long occupation and mass slaughter of indigenous people around the globe might be…worse? Idk idk idk!!!
ANYWAY onto the MAIN DISCUSSION TOPIC: POSH & BECKS BABEEEEY!
Obviously, the entire timeline of their relationship is heavily tinged with the fact that they are still together and seem very happy and content in their marriage so there’s no “well the public was right to question—” discourse getting anywhere near them. But! WOW! What a cultural juggernaut to see the other side of!!
First of all, I just want to point out the amount of times they say “I had repressed all of this until this interview and now I’m getting upset about it.” re: treatment by the media, invasion by the paparazzi, death threats, kidnapping threats against Brooklyn, Victoria being “blamed” for his performance on the pitch, feeling like they weren’t welcome in the countries they had to call home, etc.
Do I think they gloss over the ~affairs in Spain~ portion really quick? Yes! But like, idk I think that cheating is one of those things that is up to the people in the relationship to decide how to deal with. It happened 20 years ago and they’ve had three more kids since then like, I think they squashed it and I don’t mind that they focused on the press reaction more than their personal issues with each other’s actions at that time.
But seeing two of the most famous people in the world discuss what it’s like to be in the center of that media storm? All I’ve ever wanted sign me the fuck up I was SEATED during this documentary because ultimately: the documentary about David Beckham is always going to be at least 75% about his relationship with Victoria because, without Posh, there is no Becks.
Sure, he would have been a famous footballer, but he says himself in this doc that he only got the brand ambassadorships because of her. They were a power couple the most famous (non-sports) photos of him are of them and wow did they capture the late 90s/early 00’s oeuvre better than anyone!
I’m like, not really kidding when I say they made me believe in love again! She was an international pop star at the top of her game (with the best nickname in her group—also it’s been a TOUGH WEEK to be on the internet if you’re someone who is aware that the Spice Girls did not name themselves, it was spawned by a random reporter and caught on she didn’t name herself Posh!) and he was an international football star at the top of his. Complementative fame vs. competitive!
Facts I find very sweet because their whole relationship now has a “huh those two crazy kids really made it” vibe:
- He saw her performing on TV (aka ‘the telly’) and said to a bunch of his mates that he was going to “marry the Posh one”
- The first time they met she loved that he was a bit shy and sitting with his family at the afterparty instead of being the center of attention & thought they’d get on well because she’s also close with her family
She asked him if he was going to ask her on a date and wrote her phone number on a plane ticket that he still has
- (he called immediately and did not play it cool at all)
- Early in their relationship when they were keeping it very quiet they would meetup in a car park and just make out in his car
It’s so sweet when he talks about being obsessed with her, I love when men are able to be openly loving about the women in their lives, but particularly the fact that he was completely unbothered about the ~ response from the public ~ about the fact he was dating a woman who was very much a lightning rod of criticism in the era of “Not Like Other Girls”. (We don’t have time to get into the actual impacts on Feminism that the Spice Girls really did have or the fact that Girl Power was a thing they brought to public consciousness (fun fact: the term was invented by Bikini Kill in 1991 for the title of their second ‘Zine) and how Posh being the “girly girl” was framed as being less than in terms of her feminist message vs. her bandmates but just know that I know!)
He just wanted to talk to her all the time and they would be on the phone at 3 in the morning and he would charter flights just to spend two hours with her and like effort might just be the most romantic thing there is in the world. Unabashed effort.
Meanwhile, Victoria doesn’t give a shit about football. Then or now! But her saying, “I love watching HIM play football because I’d love watching whatever he does.” is so sweet because I believe her! She has some of the best lines throughout the documentary tbh. “What did Posh think? Posh was pissed!” made me cackle.
Him asking her to do his hair before going out to announce the birth of Brooklyn and saying, “She had just given birth, probably wasn’t too happy to be asked that.” cut to her saying, “Always gotta do the hair.” IS why they’re soulmates.
They cared! And they were allowed to care about their public image with each other! Which they both very much cared about but couldn’t talk about with the outside world because our relationship to celebrities as a public rests upon the false fact that they’re somehow being demure about the attention!! Authenticity is the bedrock of relationships aaaahhh!!
And they initially didn’t hate the paparazzi because there is a mutual benefit happening in the beginning of the media storm. These are two people who wanted fame and actively sought more of it. But then it got bigger than they could have ever imagined and it stopped being fun. Because once you can no longer opt out of the public eye, you’re trapped. And no one likes being trapped. And once they had a baby, it wasn’t just about them and their decision to be famous because now the Paps are screaming at Brooklyn to try and make him upset so they can get a picture of Posh looking pissed so they can form a misleading headline and sell more newspapers.
Once again, another documentary takes aim at Rupert Murdoch’s evil British Tabloid empire from a different angle, and yet the empire stands unquestioned somehow!
I know it’s not nearly the most egregious example but the fact that she was required to have a C-Section but the headlines read “Too Posh To Push” is eeeeeevil. So plainly evil. (Also LOL at the “let them eat cake” of the Spanish tabloids reporting that she said “The whole country smells like garlic.” as if that’s a sentence anyone would ever say in proximity to a reporter. But the vitriol received because of it? Very real! Still impactful!)
One of the absolute wildest moments was when Beckham is reflecting on the year he spent post-Red Card, being booed across England, having bottles thrown at the bus, getting spat on in public—and he calmly reveals that he still blames himself, that he’s never gotten over making that mistake of kicking his leg up. Even when the public makes its triumphant heel-face-turn of chanting “There’s only one David Beckham!” and even though he’s had decades of a career since, the public shaming he went through is unrecoverable. He’ll never be able to get over it fully. No professional accomplishment, acknowledgment, or public accolade will ever undo the damage of what he went through. When he was 23. (I know we over-infantalize people in their 20s now but TWENTY THREE and going through that on the world stage while your girlfriend is pregnant with your first child who you will then get kidnapping threats about regularly??? YOINK!)
When there is a hole in the bucket, compliments slip right through.
Anyway! I love that despite multiple instances where the public “blamed” her for something, he never does. He never questions in the doc if she “should” have waited to tell him she was pregnant until after the England vs. Argentina game. He never felt shame around his decision to date her—if anything the public disdain pushed him into loving her even more publicly.
It is violence and intimidation when an entire stadium begins to chant about whether or not someone engages in anal sex. Also, I LOVED the way the documentary gave her that line to say. I’m so glad they didn’t show David or a reporter or another person repeating the, “Does Posh take it up the arse?” chant because it is disgusting and weird and I’m glad she got the agency to say so very definitively and to talk about the very real danger she felt she was in when it happened.
Also, we should probably acknowledge how much Victoria Beckham continues to shape celebrity trends/culture even today. She was so far ahead of the game in terms of her outfits, her matching Birkins, and her Disney Adult tendencies. Like, not all of it is cool/good, but the part I resent the most—her general obsession around thinness—is the product of societal institutions and I reject the idea that we should blame women who suffer under impossible standards for “creating” those standards. (Thin supremacy isn’t new and it wasn’t invented by Posh, y’know?)
I’ve been trying to parse my penchant re: celebrity for quite some time now. And Posh & Becks are kind of this wonderful encapsulation of a lot of it—also one of the last (if not THE last) major celeb couples to have a non-portmanteau couple name. The documentary never bothers to question what the public was so enraptured by, never pauses to consider the ramifications of how much attention and energy is spent tracking the Sports Abilities of one man, and moves through the public’s obsession with him/them unflinchingly. And that’s just not true of any documentary made about a cultural fixation that predominantly appeals to women. (Even The Beatles documentaries all feel the need to reject the notion that the band was discovered/fame nurtured by the teenage girls who saw the talent well before the male music critics. And if you think you get their later work without their earlier “fluff” then I’ve GOT NEWS about how creativity evolves over time!)
It’s a good move by the documentary to do that btw—that’s not a criticism of the piece but more of a call to ~awareness about how little the public is asked to question the obsession/overimportance of celebrity. What are we gleaning from them/their stories being shoved in our faces so frequently? Looking back, celebrity monoculture was at its height in the early 2000s and that was the culture I was raised in. I’ve said for a long time that I think the early 00s were some of the cruelest times in history—the headlines of The New York Post alone will back me up there—and seeing the naked cruelty recaptured in this documentary only affirmed it.
Let them wear matching purple outfits at their wedding who caaaares they’re in love and they’re having fun!
Ultimately, because they’ve stayed together and have a fucking lovely mansion with their bees and grill hut out back, every criticism lobbed at him that he was “taking too much time away to see her” back then just feels like a shortsighted response. It’s also a very succinct capture of “a job will always hire a replacement but family will be there for you”. (Like even when you’re definitively the best in the world at your job they can and will fire you, actually.)
At the end of it, he’s just some guy. And I mean that in the best way! He’s just a little soccer guy. He just wanted to play for Man U for the rest of his life and when he couldn’t do that, he figured it out from there. But he doesn’t seem to have any lingering resentment towards the coaches or managers who went out of their way to make his life hell, because at the end of it—he’s got a family he’s thrilled with, bees making DB’s Sticky Stuff, and a closet full of perfectly lined-up clothes because he’s a neat freak with a lot of money and time on his hands.
They seem really happy and if we’re going to continue unquestionably giving athletes attention, he seems like a good one to have poured so much notoriety into. His haircuts reverberated around the world in ways we could not replicate today! Their particular flavor of fame is lost to time, but much like the bananas that gave banana flavoring to candy, we did manage to capture it in some form for posterity.
Smoke Show Rating: 😶🌫️😶🌫️😶🌫️😶🌫️😶🌫️/5
I had no intention of powering my way through this in one sitting, but it’s a compelling doc and I like the timeline and narrative. There is definitely a lionization of his past happening, but it’s a documentary about him starring him, so I can’t fault it for being exactly what it said on the tin. Need a fashion-focused doc about their best looks though!!!
From the vault:
Last year: #13 - A case for fun tech
Two years ago: #64 - A case for fun tech: one year later
Other sports docs thoughts: