Director: Joel Zwick; Writer: Nia Vardalos; Filmed: Toronto and Ontario;
Cultural Influence: Provides a new outlook on love through the separation based on cultural differences in the Romance genre
Cultural Influence: Provides a new outlook on love through the separation based on cultural differences in the Romance genre
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a movie that centers around the traditions of a family and their religious views on marriage and love. One anthropological perspective that came to mind when watching the movie this time was kinship; the affinal relatives are very involved in the couple’s relationship and have an input on almost everything that they have to say about life and raising a family. When the wedding comes into focus in the movie, the discussion of voluntary association at the wedding reception even though a lot of the guests were family members, there were a lot of people who were friends of the parents who came to support the union. There was a particular function of the lifestyle in which the children lived, at the wedding, the father gave the newlyweds a gift, the keys to a house in which he had paid for. This was a great representation of security for the beginning of the couple’s life together.
The gender roles in this film are mentioned throughout with the examples of the jobs in which the women hold such as waitressing while the men work as travel agents or with the families dry cleaning business. These all tie into the family along with gender roles. The family is the key structure in how the movie expresses one culture combining with another. When Ian proposes to Toula without her fathers permission, Ian did not abide by the families rules. The males take on the role of asking for the daughters hand in marriage to the parents before proposing, this was testing the limits for the views that the family has of Ian along with him not being Greek. The anthropological perspective could go on forever but these were the main topics that I found to be strong throughout the film.
The format of the movie contains both humor and sweet intimate moments throughout and it is by far one of my favorite movies because of the acceptance of love and how it does not have barriers when two people truly love each other. The way the family is structured does not resemble the same way that my family is however, it is a great representation of change in society today. I have seen this movie over 50 times and I have never looked at it from a anthropological perspective before but I do find it strange in the way that their relationship is critiqued based on beliefs and also how he changes to be part of their family. This movie is a great representation of how marriage does not have boundaries; it just has bumpy roads occasionally.
The gender roles in this film are mentioned throughout with the examples of the jobs in which the women hold such as waitressing while the men work as travel agents or with the families dry cleaning business. These all tie into the family along with gender roles. The family is the key structure in how the movie expresses one culture combining with another. When Ian proposes to Toula without her fathers permission, Ian did not abide by the families rules. The males take on the role of asking for the daughters hand in marriage to the parents before proposing, this was testing the limits for the views that the family has of Ian along with him not being Greek. The anthropological perspective could go on forever but these were the main topics that I found to be strong throughout the film.
The format of the movie contains both humor and sweet intimate moments throughout and it is by far one of my favorite movies because of the acceptance of love and how it does not have barriers when two people truly love each other. The way the family is structured does not resemble the same way that my family is however, it is a great representation of change in society today. I have seen this movie over 50 times and I have never looked at it from a anthropological perspective before but I do find it strange in the way that their relationship is critiqued based on beliefs and also how he changes to be part of their family. This movie is a great representation of how marriage does not have boundaries; it just has bumpy roads occasionally.