My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Assimilation

                In Joel Zwick’s 2002 romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Fotoula “Toula” Portokalos is a Greek  American woman who feels her life is stagnating (IMDB).  She works at her family’s Greek restaurant day in and day out, watching her huge extended family get bigger and bigger as more and more Greeks marry in.  Her family urges her to find a Greek man to marry and have children with.  Toula, experiencing something of a midlife crisis, suddenly begins to change her look and finds a job outside the restaurant, effectively assimilating into a more United States appearance and mindset.  She meets Ian Miller, a very non-Greek, non-religious man, and despite her family’s efforts against it, falls in love with him.  The two marry, and over the course of the film Toula comes to terms with her cultural identity as a Greek and an American.  I think this movie is appropriate for the “Cultural Transitions” unit because it shows Toula’s transitions through cultures: from being immersed in her Greek culture to taking on an American culture, and back to accepting her Greek heritage.

                I have chosen to examine the concepts of separation vs. assimilation.  Martin and Nakayama define separation as a cultural adaptation in which “an individual retains his or her original culture while interacting minimally with other groups”, and assimilation as an adaptation characterized by “[giving] up his or her own cultural heritage and [adopting] the mainstream” culture (Martin & Nakayama, 2013).  These concepts, by their definitions, are on the opposite ends of the cultural adaptation spectrum.  They are very important to the way a member of a culture deals with another culture—something at the root of intercultural communication.  Separation preserves one’s old culture but shuts one away from much communication, while assimilation opens up a lot of communication at the expense of one’s heritage.

                The dynamics of separation and assimilation are present throughout My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and are arguably a theme of the movie.  In the beginning, Toula’s family clearly practices very strict separation.  Her early narration explains that a good Greek girl is expected to “marry Greek boys, make Greek babies, and feed everyone until the day she dies” (Brooks & Zwick, 2002).  There is no room in that life plan for communicating with members of another cultural group—in the Portokalos family, it is all-Greek all the time.  When she was in grade school, Toula took Greek food to lunch, and lamented the fact that she couldn’t relate to the blond girls her age.  One of the big conflicts of the movie comes from Toula’s family being unable to accept her choice of a husband at first, pointing out that he is not Greek and very much an outsider (Brooks & Zwick, 2002).

                When Toula sees her life going nowhere, she changes her look, switching to contact lenses and opting for a more glamorous,  American hairstyle.  She enrolls in some classes at a local college and gets a job at a travel agency instead of the family restaurant—this move away from the restaurant is a clear example of assimilation at the expense of one’s own culture.  Toula even expresses some excitement at the idea of dating a non-Greek man, feeling liberated from the bleak outlook she had before (Brooks & Zwick, 2002).

                A twist in the assimilation/separation dynamic occurs when Toula’s fiancé, Ian, chooses to assimilate himself into the Greek lifestyle.  He cares enough about her to be baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church.  He also begins to learn the Greek language, much to the amusement of Toula’s mischievous brother and cousins.  In the end, Ian leaves some of his own cultural background behind in order to be accepted by Toula’s family (Brooks & Zwick).  This movie exemplified assimilation in both directions.

References

Brooks, P. (Producer), & Zwick, J. (Director).  (2002). My Big Fat Greek Wedding [DVD].  USA:  Gold Circle Films.

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill. 

My Big Fat Greek Wedding. (n.d.). IMDb. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259446/?ref_=ttspec_spec_tt