My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a movie focusing on the cultural disparities between white Americans and Greek immigrants. The movie is a comedy often exaggerating and caricaturing different aspects of Greek culture.
The movie starts with the protagonist, a Greek woman named Toula Portokalos, falling in love with a white American teacher Ian Miller. She starts to date him soon after but after her big, noisy family finds out about the relationship her father, Gus, is enraged since he cannot accept a non-Greek as part of the family. He tries to make Toula fall in love with a Greek man, but failing that begrudgingly accepts Ian after he gets baptized to marry his daughter. At the wedding ceremony Gus makes a speech: “Portokalos, means orange in Greek. And the root of the word Miller is Greek and means apple in Greek. In the end, we’re all fruit”. That denotes his full acceptance of the Miller family and his daughter’s choice.
The movie is unsurprisingly focused on the Greek culture and its differences from the American culture. For the most part, the Greeks are presented in a light-hearted, humorous way. The film focuses on the aspects of Greek culture that can be exploited for comedic effect. For example, Gus keeps talking about every word, including the Japanese “kimono”, having Greek roots. He also uses widespread Greek saying: “When we invented democracy, you were hanging from the trees”. That treatment of the culture has been seen as derogatory by some Greek-Americans. Professor Agathi Glezakos has called the movie “degrading” and accused it of treating Greeks as animals. The worst example of such treatment is the depiction of Toula’s grandmother who only communicates through body language and occasional short phrases. The movie also shows Toula’s family drinking a lot of ouzo – a traditional anise-flavored alcoholic drink. Overall, the treatment of the Greek culture in the movie is inelegant. All of the aspects and peculiarities are exaggerated and overplayed, resulting in a crude depiction of the foreign people.
The approach changes towards the end of the movie. While the comedic treatment of the Greek culture can be seen throughout, in the end, the film emphasizes the accepting and hospitable aspects of the Greeks. Gus’s remark about apples and oranges underlines the main idea, no matter what society you belong to you should accept the others and embrace the differences. It also emphasizes strong family values. Despite seeing Ian as an outsider, a “Xeno,” Gus cannot abandon his daughter just because of that. And even his views of a true Greek woman do not stand in the way of him supporting his family. The film ends on a high note, showing everybody reconciled and happy with their situation.
Overall, while the movie depicts the Greeks crudely and in a somewhat bad light, it manages to depict a clash of cultures well within the context of the genre. For a light-hearted comedy movie, it is necessary to overplay the characters to produce jokes and comedic situations. My Big Fat Greek Wedding manages to balance that need, by giving the exaggerated characters some redeeming qualities. That allows the movie to be funny, and at the same time avoid presenting the foreign culture in an entirely unfavorable fashion.