Beckham the avatar

Almost every celebrity ghostwriter, on almost every project (I’ve written several), has the same terrifying moment of “Oh my gosh, this person actually has nothing to say,” which is often accompanied by an awareness that “this just isn’t a terribly thoughtful person.” And then the writer has to sort of find a story to tell. This is now true of the famous-person-is-involved-financially Celebrity Documentary, which is the “new” autobiography.

What made Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance so interesting is that he actually was that interesting, because he was fully conscious of the fact that he had gained the whole world but lost his soul. It was etched all over his face and was apparent in his bloodshot eyes. Jordan was the star of his own lonesome tragedy, which made for incredible television.

The Tom Brady docuseries, Man in the Arena, should have been really interesting ... save for the fact that despite being a magnificent athlete and 99th-percentile handsome, Brady himself might just be a really boring person.

The Beckham documentary sits somewhere in the middle. Cinematography and editing-wise, it is Last Dance-ish. The musical choices are great (shoutout to Blur and Oasis). All of the ’90s footage is super fun, and David Beckham is basically my age, so he is cool. Around the same time he was establishing early-internet Looking-Hot-in-Public-as-a-White-Guy paradigms and wooing a Spice Girl, I was wooing my wife. Back then I had a vague sense that a) he existed, and b) I should probably try to make my hair look more like his.

Decades later Beckham, like Brady, has sort of become a middle-aged avatar of a Good Looking Person. Both of their faces—perhaps as a function of plastic surgery and aggressive dental work—are almost permanently fixed in a rictus of vacant magazine-readiness. A lazy read on David Beckham is that there’s not much there, like when he says “I like nice things,” in reference to some of his purchases, and the fact that he is incredibly Freudian about the cleanliness of his own house, right down to the trimming of candle-wicks each night and the scrubbing of the range-top in his kitchen.

In reality, there are two really interesting moments in David Beckham’s life, which the documentary presents very well. The first was when he kicked a goal in from the middle of the field, early in his career with Manchester United. This is a soccer oddity. So much so that nobody has ever really done it. Not even Pelé. This, coupled with Beckham’s prodigious good looks (and hall-of-fame-level ’90s-hair), contributed to him meeting and subsequently marrying Posh Spice, who happened to be another really attractive and not-terribly-thoughtful person in a short-lived pop group. All of which led to a whole bunch of people essentially worshipping David Beckham.

But perhaps the more interesting thing happened a few years later when he was playing for England in a World Cup that he is singled-out and blamed for losing, due to a red card he incurred and about which World Cup fans and media alike used language like “tragedy” and “distraught” and “like a death run” and “he’ll regret this terribly.” Also, add “disgrace” and “he’ll have to learn to live with it.” Because he helped lose a soccer game. Due to my age, I don’t use the word “toxic,” but the abuse that Beckham and his family endured was nothing short of it. It was “total depravity of man” writ large. There are probably several million people in Europe who need to repent of how they treated and thought about David Beckham in the late 1990s.

These things are interesting, of course, because they say some things about us in addition to some things about Beckham. Namely, why do we routinely lose our collective minds over something as trivial as a soccer game? And why do we continue to “platform” people who are prodigious in one or two areas but clearly have nothing to say?

It made me wonder what the whole thing would have looked like, had Beckham known Christ. Would he have been as willing a participant in the idolatry? Would he have pursued both soccer and fame as fervently?

While watching, I’m reminded of the simple joy of having a small group at my church, whom I can ask for prayer and perspective. I’m reminded of the grounding/convicting effect of hearing the whole counsel of scripture preached. These are things that over time, thankfully, reset our paradigms of what “a good life” looks like. A good life is a life saturated with the Word, the church, and the aroma of Christ.

The writers definitely “found” the story in Beckham, and it is a story of disordered worship as old as time itself. Sadly, at age 22 if you had offered me David Beckham’s life I would have greedily taken it. Now I wouldn’t take it for the world.