Beckham, Football, and the Wild West

By Valentina Borodina, Bianca Steffen, & Henna Räsänen

Our artifact is a video clip that we found on youtube. It is a commercial for the soft drink brand Pepsi. The spot is created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and the English football player David Beckham is the star of the clip. He rides into town with four of his Manchester United teammates for a showdown with Real Madrid, so it is a battle between two of the most successful football teams in Europe. Both teams have a sponsorship deal with Pepsi.

The commercial came out in 2003 and was directed by Tarsem Singh, who has also, for example, directed the Jennifer Lopez film 'The Cell' or the video for REM's 'Losing My Religion'.  There are also other Manchester United players like Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Juan Veron, as well as Real Madrid’s players such as Roberto Carlos, Guti, Raul, the former captain, and Iker Casillas, the goalkeeper as well as the present captain of Real Madrid and Spain’s National Team. The reason why we picked this ad is because it was made in Almeira, Spain, the location of many spaghetti westerns. It is produced in Europe but supposed to look like it was made in the American West. Despite the fact that Pepsi is actually an American brand this video still has many western stereotypes in it, which will be analyzed in the next paragraph.

The commercial starts with a group riding into a western town. The setting is copied from all the famous western movies: two storey wooden houses with porches, dry sand roads that blow clouds of dust when trampled by horse hoofs and a saloon with typical revolving doors and customers playing cards around round tables. The surrounding area is almost completely treeless, making it look barren, with mountains rising from the horizon.

As the group enters the saloon they are immediately noticed by the others as rivals. The atmosphere in the establishment gets brooding with the anticipation of a conflict. The leader of the new group orders a drink; here it is a bottle of Pepsi instead of a glass of whisky or other hard liquor. He gets challenged when a man from the other group catches his bottle and arrogantly drinks from it. This results in a command to step outside the saloon for a shootout. As the two men are facing each other on the sandy main road of the village they take off their capes and hats revealing the typical football outfits in their teams colors. They stand in a shootout position with their hands eager to grab their imaginary revolvers. The shootout position parallels that of a penalty shot making the comparison between these two situations distinct.

The setting is a mixture of the stereotypical portrayal of American West and European sport culture. Instead of cowboy boots the men are wearing football boots, and on the backs of their capes they have their player numbers. However, they are still recognizable as western heroes with their cowboy hats and leather capes. Furthermore, the teams can be divided into a “good” and a “bad” group, the good group being the one riding into town. They are identified as an English football team, and the bad group consisting of players of the Spanish team. This division has its reasons, since in many western movies Spanish-speaking cowboys, i.e. often Mexicans, are depicted as the ones creating mayhem: robbing banks and trains etc. This is played upon the fact that most players from the Real Madrid are either Spanish or South American making them the perfect villains for the commercial. Moreover, the good guys are English-speaking players from an English team, referred to as gringos, i.e. foreigners or whites, at the end of the film. In addition, the main character, David Beckham, has the same facial expression as many of the heroes in western movies, e.g. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, as he squints his blue eyes when looking at his opponent.

The commercial is not without a bit of humor. Right before the kick a man appears right next to a sign “Wanted Rivaldo”, it is Rivaldo himself, a former player FC Barcelona, the biggest rival of FC Real Madrid. The kick happens, David Beckham became the victor of the shootout but not without cheating. As Roberto Carlos emerges from the house with a ball, a sense of revenge is in the air, leaving the whole good versus bad debate in the open. Just like in the real American West, there are no clear good or bad guys, the strangers often are not welcomed but can earn the respect of others and one victory doesn’t mean there would be no more battles.