My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is set in present day Chicago. It is centered around the Portokalos family, particularly Toula Portokalos. Toula is the middle child of Gus and Maria Portokalos. She has an older sister named Athena, and a younger brother named Nick. She also has a rather large and very Greek extended family. Toula is a 30-year-old, Greek woman who is living with her parents, grandmother, and brother. Toula's life has become placid and boring. She feels a sense of longing for something more in life than the marriage and children expected of her. Her family's Greek heritage allows that all good Greek young women are supposed to wish to get married and raise a family of Greek children. Since Toula is 30 and still unmarried she decides to take come college computer classes, much to her father's dismay and reluctant agreement. This is the beginning of Toula's path to self-improvement and self-discovery. She is choosing to pursue a chance at her dreams of working somewhere other than the family's restaurant and seeing what life may hold for her.
When Toula finishes her courses at college, with her mother Maria's help, she goes to work for her Aunt Voula's travel agency. While employed
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The families do learn to work together. While they grow as individuals, they also learn that the love they have for their families can help them overcome any beliefs, prejudices, or obstacles they find in their path. During the reception following Ian and Toula's beautiful wedding, Gus explains the Greek roots of the two families last names. Portokalos means "orange", and Miller means "apple". He then finds a way to bring both families together with the analogy: "We are all different, but in the end, we all fruit." This is a huge growth for Gus. Overcoming his feelings of ethnocentrism and embracing that his daughter is not dishonoring him or the family. She is in love and pursuing what makes her
I thought that the theme of Growing Up by Gary Soto was to appreciate what you have. Maria's father said "When I was a kid, we didn't have money for vacations. I would have been happy to go with my father." It shows how her father is working hard to make Maria's life better. He is trying to make his whole family happy and make her childhood better than his. It shows later in the story, when Maria thinks that her family is dead. It shows her second thoughts to her
Is High School football a sport, or is it more than that to some people? Recent newspaper headlines include such items as coaches abusing student athletes; fathers of athletes murdering coaches, and mother’s disabilitating cheerleading candidates to assure their daughters make the cheerleading team. In Odessa, Texas high school football is a major contributor to the society of a small town in Texas society. Every Friday night, 50,000 people fill the stadium to see high school students put their lives on the line to win a football game. H. G. Bissinger writes a novel called Friday Night Lights, about a year in 1988 where High School players prepare and play on the High School team, and what an impact they have on a small city in Texas.
The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding is about a 30-year old and single woman named Toula Portokalos who although has lived a very Greek life-style up to this point, decides to pursue a relationship with a non-Greek man. This, of course, is disturbing to her family since they are so proud about their culture, and do not really know anything different. Her whole life, Toula has been instilled with a very traditional Greek outlook on life. She has been expected to do three things: Marry a Greek boy, make Greek babies, and feed everyone until the day they die. Throughout the movie, Toula overcomes inner struggles to find her own identity, and she overcomes struggles with her family.
Generations of family, living in the same community can leave an identity for themselves, making them live with it for generations to generations. The Finches, The Ewells and Dill's family are three families who are all criticized and sometimes applauded for their way of living.
It was a cool, crisp November evening, while five teenagers were hustling and bustling around my house excitedly getting ready for their very first showing of the live version of their all time favorite movie. They knew it would be the best night of their lives. The night of my 15th birthday party, my friends and I all piled into my parents car around 11:00 PM and headed off down the road to the Heights Theater. The movie we are about to see is an all time classic. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the best cult film of all time. The movie has all the three basic elements it should have. It has funny audience participation, wonderful acting, and a great story line.
And choose wrong?” (P.98). From reading this, I feel that the community was able to control problems such as divorce, rape, teen pregnancy, and AIDS. They all are given a life that is predictable, orderly and painless. Mostly, they have no memory or experience. In reality, we learn from our mistakes to be better each day. Experience is the best teacher in the world; unless one goes through sorrow, he or she will never know how it feels. “Warmth, Jonas replied and happiness. And let me think. Family, that it was a celebration of some sort, a holiday. And something else I can’t get the word for it. Jonas hesitated; I certainly liked the memory, though. I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, The Giver told him the feeling that was so strong in the room is love” (P.125). Family in the novel is described as a group of people that have a unit or bond that they share each day together.
Each person in the family starts to develop a job or rule that that play in the family that others can’t really fill. For example Jeannette and Brain’s relationship with each other are almost stronger than anyone in the family. The role that Brain plays is the one that is extremely quiet unless with his family and even though he is a younger sibling he sees it as his goal to protect Jeannette, even if it evolves fighting older bigger girls but if it’s for his family he will do it. Lori is always lost in a book but he is like the mother of the family even though their real mother is around. Their father is bright man that the kids get to see from time to time but then there alcoholic father appears and that’s when problems arise. When it comes to functioning at younger ages they were almost completely dependent on their parents like all kids are, as they started to reach teenage they started to rely less on their parents and more on each other. They started to get their own jobs, when they needed resources they would rather depend on each other or themselves. The communication was free for the kids if they had a question or a problem they would voice their concerns but the only time they didn’t was when they saw that their father was drinking or was drunk. They left the
Eventually, David and Carolyn are able to relinquish the triadic relationship with their daughter, Claudia. This restructuring in the family essentially alleviates many of the problems that were the cause for the family to seek therapy in the first place. Claudia is able to break free from the well worn routines of arguing with her mother and her unwanted behaviors diminish. After removing the pressure placed on Claudia to be their source of intense emotion, David and Carolyn are left to face the daunting task of exploring and eventually reorganizing their relationship with one
Taylor and Lou Ann demonstrate a symbiotic relationship between the roles and characteristics in a family. Edna Poppy and Virgie Mae replaces the missing physical and emotional traits in a stable household. The examples tie into the fact that not all families in this book match “the norms” and expectations, but are equally valued, blood or
...tionship has completely evolved and the narrator somewhat comes into her own a natural and inevitable process.
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
Theoretical perspectives on families come in many forms. These perspectives help to provide a basis of understanding of the dynamic relationships found within families. Lamanna, Riedmann, and Stewart (2015) define the Interactionalist perspective as the communication and face to face encounters between to individuals and their ability to be aware of one another. This family view best applies to the father-daughter relationship between Gus and Toula Portokalos from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Gus, the dominant rule setting father, has made it his goal to embrace their Greek Heritage to its fullest extent all while maintaining certain roles for each member of his immediate family. While Gus strives to protect the family’s roles and community
One day when Holly and the narrator go for a walk through Fifth Avenue on a beautiful Autumn day Holly seems interested in the narrator's childhood without really telling him about her own, even though talking about herself is something she does quite often. "...it was elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital, though the impression received was contrary to what one expected, for she gave an almost voluptuous account of swimming in summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties: in short, happy in a way she was not, and never, certainly, the background of a child who had run away" (54). Holly's character has such a dramatic flair that the reader nor the narrator never really know what to expect from her. On some occasions she will openly talk about outrageous taboos with perfect strangers and on others she will claw like a cat anyone who gets too close to her: "I asked her how and why she left home so young. She looked at me blankly, and rubbed her nose, as though it tickled: a gesture, seeing often repeated, I came to recognize as a signal that one was trespassing" (20). Holly is not only a physical paradox of a girl and a woman, but so is her personality, she has an odd mixture of child-like innocence and street smart sexuality.
The characters of the book reside in present day Indiana. The main characters Hazel and Augustus are two teenagers who both live in Indianapolis in average homes with their families. Hazel spends a lot of time in the hospital and her house due to her cancer. She meets Augustus at a support group in her church and they start spending a lot of time together. Hazel shared her favorite book with Augustus and this book stops mid-sentence with no ending. They both love the book and contacted the author who lives in Amsterdam for answers about how the story ends. The author of this book, Peter Van Houten denies giving them any information because he does not trust that Hazel and Augustus wouldn’t just share it on the internet or record the telephone call. Peter Van Houten says he would only tell them in person. It becomes Hazel’s dream to go Amsterdam which is where Van Houten lives. Augustus uses his one “wish”, from the Genie foundation (which grants wishes to kids with cancer) for him and Hazel to go to Amsterdam. On the plane to Amsterdam, Augustus tells Hazel that he is in love with her. Amsterdam is described as being picture perfect and the opposite of their hometown. I think that the characters felt confined and limited in Indiana but were set free in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam they finally speak to Van Houten, who was an extreme disappointment to them, visit tourist sites and have dinner by the canal. The major climax occurs in Amsterdam when Augustus reveals to Hazel that his cancer has returned and is going to kill him.
“Year after year, twenty-something women come to New York City in search of the two L's: labels and love” is the very catchy line that opens the film with Fergie’s ‘Labels or Love’ as the soundtrack and The Big Apple as its introductory shot. The scaling deduced from the bird’s eye-view-point of New York City, showing its Metropolitan atmosphere with skyscrapers and the famous Brooklyn Bridge; to the urbanites of the City; then to the lead actors of the film. A fifteen year-old girl watches the film, mesmerizing the ecstatic city while admiring the skinny white bodies of the ladies. And last but never forgotten, she gets carried away with the funky upbeat rhythm of the song emphasizing “Gucci, Fendi, [and] Prada . . .” That is the introduction of Sex and the City and the focus of its cinematography. With its elements, the movie can honestly influence teenage girls. Yet as much as critics such as Maya Gordon of Psychology of Women Quarterly say how media contributes to the sexual objectification and values women “based on their appearance,” this film should be an exemption.