My Big Fat Greek Wedding Film Analysis

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a film made in 2004 directed by Joel Zwick that evidently portrays several sociological concepts throughout the film. This film highly demonstrates the sociological topics of gender and culture all through the movie. The roles of gender, gender stratification as well as gender stereotyping are exemplified during the film. As for culture, the film displays subculture, counterculture, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and cultural diffusion. My Big Fat Greek Wedding focuses on a single 30-year-old Greek woman, Toula Portokalos, who works at her family’s restaurant. Toula’s life takes a turn when she unexpectedly falls in love with a man who is not Greek. The film revolves around Toula’s family as well as her boyfriend, …show more content…

It is without question that Toula’s family is a patriarchy. Since her family is a traditional Greek family, it is apparent that her father Gus holds the power and it is the head of the family. (Luton, 2015) Throughout the film, the role of women is clearly shown starting at the beginning of the movie with Toula’s voice over monologue. According to her, “Nice Greek girls are supposed to do three things in life: marry Greek boys, make Greek babies, and feed everyone until the day we die.” (Zwick, 2002) Instantly, it is evident that Toula’s family has distinctive gender roles. These particular gender roles are immediately exemplified with Toula’s sister, Athena. She made quite few appearances in the movie, is married and also has three children. (Hill, 2013) Moreover, gender roles are also showed with Toula’s mother, Maria. She has three children with Gus and is constantly cleaning and cooking throughout the film. Whenever Toula asked permission for something, she invariably approached her father, as he holds the power in the family. For example, when she wanted to sign up for computer classes she asked for her father’s permission, not her mother. Also, when asking to take computer classes, Gus instantly had the mindset that women …show more content…

Gender and culture are two concepts that were principally shown throughout the film. The film revolved around Toula’s traditional Greek family and how they exemplified gender roles, gender stereotyping as well as gender stratification. The film also epitomized on subcultures, countercultures, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism as well as cultural diffusion. It is forthrightly for a sociologist to relate trends in the film to prevailing trends occurring all around the

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