First it was family, now it's a feud. But even in meltdown, Brand Beckham is raking it in

The Guardian

2 days ago

What is 'Brand Beckham'? I don't mean to question the very idea of a celebrity brand – far from it. In fact, part of the reason that celeb-watching phrases like 'the brand' and 'controlling the narrative' have gone completely mainstream is because of David and Victoria Beckham. So ubiquitous is the professionalisation of celebrity these days, and so media-literate is the public, that it's hard to remember just how revolutionary the Beckhams were in British culture back in the day. Twenty-five years ago, nobody except some rarefied elite publicist wanged on about narratives. But now everyone knows how to read an influencer. Almost all celebrities are regarded primarily as people who are selling something. Furthermore, people act like mis-selling a lifestyle is worse than several major financial crimes.
Anyway, back to the brand. What is the Beckham brand? Not their many specific product brands, nor the many other ones to which they lend their images for advertising. The thing I'm talking about is more like a movie star's screen persona. The unifying characteristic, the theme that permeates all their roles, the magic that fans go back for. In the case of the Beckhams, the brand is really their family. Two became six.
In the more distant past, this meant Victoria and David selling news of their pregnancies to OK! magazine, then selling the first baby photos and so on. In the age of Instagram, as their children have grown up, it has meant constantly tending this idyllic image by posting private family moments, having everyone show up en masse for the launch of each other's football seasons/fashion shows/face primers/food lines/50th birthday marathons, and dutifully sending daily public messages of love, support and thanks to each other across social media platforms where others can see them. Whether it's family or business – and sometimes it isn't entirely clear where the dividing line is – it's all very much the family business.
As distilled in David's Netflix documentary – self-commissioned, naturally – the message is that no matter what triumph or disaster comes their way, the Beckham family are about each other. Any adversity is folded into their story and ends up being repurposed into (lucrative) triumph because this is a family that sticks together, and which draws its strength from that. It's aspirational and sometimes charming. It has worked.
So what happens when a gaping hole is blown in the idyll? In some of the most eye-popping showbiz news of the summer, it has emerged beyond all doubt that one of the family – firstborn Brooklyn – wants nothing to do with the others. If the idea of a feud was plausibly deniable back when Brooklyn and his wife, Nicola Peltz, got married three years ago, it was harder to maintain when the pair didn't show up for any of David's 50th birthday celebrations this May. It is now impossible, following Brooklyn and Nicola's decision to post to Instagram huge numbers of photos of their very recent wedding vow renewal ceremony. (Vow renewals: another part of modern celeb culture that didn't really happen before they happened in magazine buy-ups or on social media.) Details of the lavish big day? The ceremony was officiated by Nicola's billionaire father, Nelson, and she wore her mother's wedding dress. Oh, and not a single member of the Beckham family was there, and it's said they only found out about it by reading it online.
Questions abound, from various sides of the fence. To a list of occupations which already includes footballer, photographer, model, monograph author and chef, is Brooklyn adding hostage? How can the Beckhams bear the pain of rejection? Or do people really cut themselves off from highly functional families? One of Nicola's friends who attended the ceremony posted in praise of having 'the guts to walk away' from 'a toxic family'. Victoria's own self-commissioned Netflix documentary was due to come out this autumn (executive producer: David Beckham). How on earth is it going to spin this? Anything other than four hours of open-heart soul-searching is going to look a bit 'Tractor production up in Volgograd!'
The cautionary sadness is that these questions can't really be considered invasive because they relate to a show the Beckhams have eagerly invited us to watch at every possible moment. The family has so assiduously cultivated the public engagement with their internal dynamics, choosing daily to live out loud across social media. For better – but now, for worse. It feels a little much to slap the adjective 'Shakespearean' on a story which involves a guy who once included the worst picture ever taken of an elephant in a coffee-table book of his own photography (launch party held at Christie's London). But there is certainly a tragic irony that social media, which the Beckhams have hitherto controlled so masterfully – has been the place that exposed their schisms.
They were undone by omission, given that one of the other things our first family have embodied is a complete shift in showbiz journalism. So much entertainment coverage now comes from parsing who is or isn't tagged in Instagram posts, who has stopped following who, who omitted to like this or that. And anyone can do this. It's a form of mass Kremlinology.
At the peak of their tabloid fame – or the first peak, perhaps we should say now – it became commonplace to suggest that in the modern era, the Beckhams were our real royal family. They seemed a reaction against all that old blood, that nepo privilege, that public repression of private truth. But now? Well, perhaps some of the plotlines are converging. Perhaps the House of Windsor and the House of Beckham are not so different after all.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist