Beckham

The rise and fall of celebrity in the Netflix docu-series

Abstract

In the mid-1990s, young David Beckham was already a football star thanks to his performances on the pitch. He quickly became a true celebrity, a status he “achieved” (Rojek, 2001; Ricci 2013), thanks to the public recognition he gained for his sporting abilities. In a short time, Beckham's fame transcended the boundaries of sport to influence other areas, such as fashion and entertainment, connoting the footballer as famous by “attribution”: his constant presence in the media, his marriage to Victoria Adams and the popularity he gradually gained from the public only served to increase his fame. His ageing, his retirement from football in 2013, and the difficulties he has experienced over the years, both professionally and personally, are all part of the narrative fabric of the docu-series Beckham (Netflix, 2023). The title of the television product features only the athlete's surname, condensing into a single word the reference to a person-character, to “Golden Balls” on and off the pitch, to the personification of a real brand (Edwards, 2011). David Beckham thus appears as the protagonist of a story that moves along multiple perspectives. Through multiple angles – and interventions – that call into question his media and public image (including archive footage), together with his private image (through interviews and actual confessions made by members of his inner circle), and using a sort of truth-telling narrative, the football champion is presented on screen as a complex narrative character (Mittell, 2015). The articulation between “front region” and “back region” (Goffman, 1959) works on a directorial level as a dynamic capable of reinforcing the celebrity device, around which the entire narrative revolves (Mascio, 2023). Through this analysis, we will try to understand the turning points in the docu-series that mark the highlights of the different phases of Beckham's fluid and changing celebrity, together with his “spreadable” capacity for dissemination (Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013). The docu-series presents a series of innovative interventions in telling the rise, fall and consolidation of celebrity. The possibility of structuring the narrative using the typical structure of fiction, together with the use of archive footage - as is the case in many docu-series - allows for the elicitation and revival of “authentic” emotions in the various subjects interviewed, starting with Beckham himself. All this contributes to defining the former athlete's celebrity status, which also reverberates on his entire family, consequently encouraging the formation of that form of second-level celebrity that Rojek (2001) defines as “ascribed”.