My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
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Director: Joel Zwick
Country: Canada, USA Toula is a thirty year old single woman living at her parent’s house. She’s originally from Greece, but she grew up in the United States. When she finally meets a man she falls in love with, her father has a crisis, as Ian, the boyfriend, is not Greek. He has no way of knowing, he says, if this American man is honest and will treat her daughter with respect. |
In this film food is central: not only does Toula’s family own a Greek restaurant, but traditional Greek food is part of their group identity. When Toula’s parents invite Ian’s parents to their house, they prepare a traditional Greek banquet and serve them Ouzo: in fact, they are asking their guests to share their cultural identity, of which the food is the most tangible form, and to become part of their family.
In this occasion, Ian’s parents bring their hosts a typically American Bundt cake, as a way to thank them for their hospitality. However, they make the mistake of thinking that this is a universally recognisable gift. Toula’s mother, on the other side, believing that this is actually a faulty gift (it has a hole in the middle!), tries to avoid creating embarrassment in the guests by covering the hole with a vase of flowers. This critical incident leaves both sides feeling completely puzzled and a little annoyed towards the other family.
In this occasion, Ian’s parents bring their hosts a typically American Bundt cake, as a way to thank them for their hospitality. However, they make the mistake of thinking that this is a universally recognisable gift. Toula’s mother, on the other side, believing that this is actually a faulty gift (it has a hole in the middle!), tries to avoid creating embarrassment in the guests by covering the hole with a vase of flowers. This critical incident leaves both sides feeling completely puzzled and a little annoyed towards the other family.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a film about the progressive integration of a Greek community with the rest of the American community. The difficulties in this process are given by the stereotypes that go in both directions. The distance between the two families, however, is eventually filled at the end of the film, as we can see when Toula’s father announces that, after all, they are “all fruit”. In fact, he says, Ian’s surname, Miller, comes from the Greek word ‘mílo’, which means ‘apple’. On the other hand, their family name is Portokalos, which comes from ‘portokali’, the Greek word for ‘orange’: “we all different but, in the end, we all fruit”.
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«The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story […]. I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of a single story is this: it robs people of dignity. It make our recognition or our equal humanity difficult. It emphasises how we are different, rather than how we are similar». |