CAPS 4- Rylee Terry

The hit comedy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, hit theaters in 2002. This hilarious film follows a woman who has very deep Greek family roots on her journey to love. Toula is content without love, but her parents are pushing her to discover a wonderful Greek man back in the old country. She spends her days working at the family business, Dancing Zorba’s. While at work one afternoon she had an encounter with Ian Miller, an American dream, in Toula’s eyes. After this encounter, Toula decides to fix herself up a bit trading in her glasses for contacts and beginning a new job. Little does she know, she is going to run into Ian again and begin a secret relationship with him. When Ian pops the question Toula has to figure out a reasonable way to let her parents know and arrange a time for them to meet Ian’s very proper and upper-class American family.

 The concepts that I have chosen to discuss are assimilation and separation. As stated assimilation is “a type of cultural adaptation in which an individual gives up his/her own cultural heritage and adopts the mainstream culture” (Martin, Nakayama 2013). Throughout this film Toula assimilates into Ian’s life, giving up her typical Greek culture to be with him. There are also changes that Ian has to make as well. Separation is as follows, “a type of cultural adaptation in which an individual retains his/her original culture while interacting minimally with other groups” (Martin, Nakayama 2013). In this instance, Toula’s parents want to remain separated.

While watching this film I typically would not think about cultural transitions. When watching this film again, assimilation and separation really stood out to me. When Toula’s family meets Ian’s there is a lot of tension in the room. Because Toula’s family is separated into their own Greek culture they believed that it is normal to hug and kiss whenever they meet somebody new where as Ian’s parents are more comfortable with a simple handshake. Another instance that really stood out to me was when Toula’s mother was planning the wedding she constantly thinking about the quantity of people instead of the quality of the wedding itself. By the end of the film both families had assimilated in way or another by giving certain things up to make the others happy.

References: 

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6^th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill