About my Big Fat Greek Wedding

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a movie about a Greek woman named Toula Portokalos. Toula is a 30-year old woman who is struggling to find love and meaning in her life. She is in what some might call, "a midlife crisis." Greek Culture is extremely specific and family is everything to them. The basis to life is to marry another Greek and reproduce as many of them as you can. Toula does not choose to go against the traditional Greek values in this film but it simply happens by chance and "love at first sight." After she meets and falls in love with Ian Miller, a white, non-Greek, Protestant man, they begin to discover that they are going to have to face numerous amounts of cultural and interpersonal communication struggles. All of this is happening while attempting to plan a wedding amongst two families, with one being extremely religious and cultural. It couldn't get any more chaotic than that. Throughout this essay, I will unveil three different communication concepts – ethnocentrism, stereotyping, and compromising, and attempt to apply and connect them to the film in order to depict the different ways that these two families attempt to deal with their communication differences and while doing so, try my best to advise Toula in her pursuit of happiness.

There are many cultural and interpersonal communication concepts that occur during this film, but the first concept that stood out to me is ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism involves the judging of another culture solely based on the values and standards of one's own culture. In shorter words, it is the belief that one's own cultural group is better than all other cultural groups. This is depicted specifically in the eyes of Toula's father, Gus, along with a few more members of the Portokalos family. Throughout the entire film, Gus continually shows his strong belief of Greeks and emphasizes indirectly that the Greek culture is superior to all other cultures. The first prime example of this is whenever Gus talks about how the root of any word comes from the Greeks no matter if it is right or wrong. To him, if it is not Greek, it is not right. The second example is a direct quote from Gus. He states that "there are two types of people, Greeks, and everybody else who wishes that they were Greek." Gus's ethnocentrism is not because he hates all other cultures and people but it is because he has so much pride and truly loves being of Greek culture. It was how he was raised and it is the only thing he knows. However, Toula would always feel extremely uncomfortable when she was around her father in public or around friends. It is a really hard spot to be in but, the advice I would give to her would be to let her father be the way he is. Listening empathetically is an extremely important aspect here because both sides need to be able to listen carefully and try their best to understand and be empathetic to what each other has to say and how they feel about it. Gus was born and raised into the ethnocentrism of Greek culture and that is all he has ever known. He is not going to change no matter how hard you try, so embrace his love and live your life happily knowing that he is living his happily and sooner rather than later he is going to accept you for what you are doing and for who you are.

The second concept that I thought was spot on with the movie was stereotyping. Stereotyping is any thought widely adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals as a whole. In the film, this concept directly correlates to Rodney and Harriet, otherwise known as Ian Miller's parents. Ian invites Toula over for dinner so she can meet his parents. They are very boring people. Soon enough, they ask her what nationality she is, and she tells them that she is Greek. Rodney and Harriet then have a bit of a side conversation and think back to a former colleague of Rodney's. They initially recall this colleague being Greek based on her facial features and looks being similar to Toula's. They soon come to the conclusion that this colleague was actually Guatemalan and Toula seemed to be a bit upset with that conversation but she showed no outbreak or visible emotion towards Ian's parents. It is shown in this scene, that because of the similarities in the skin color between Rodney's former colleague and Toula, that this colleague must have been Greek. At least that is what was going through Rodney and Harriet's minds. I give Toula a lot of credit here for not clapping back at Ian's parents. For some people, this may have offended them, but Toula loved Ian so much, she was doing whatever she could to act normal while attempting to impress his parents. That being said, I think she handled it extremely well and have no advice to give her on this one. She handled it a lot better than I would have.

The final concept chosen that I thought directly correlated with the movie is the conflict resolution concept of compromising. Compromising is when one gives something up in order to reach a happy medium with another. Ian compromises just about everything in this movie. He loves Toula so much and would literally do anything for her. Ian knew that in order to be accepted by Toula's family and be able to marry her, he was going to have to compromise a whole lot. The first thing he did was get baptized into the Greek Church. He realized that he wasn't very religious anyway so he gives up all of his past beliefs and what he was raised to believe in in order to become Greek and have approval from Toula's family. Another time that he compromised was when wedding planning came around. He took a step back and even though he may have wanted to add a bit of his own touch to the wedding, he knew how much this meant to Toula and her family so he allowed the entire wedding to be Greek themed and never complained for a second. While Ian compromised everything, Toula did not really compromise anything. That being said, my advice to Toula would be to love and cherish this man because what he has done for you is incomparable. Then, down the road, begin to compromise a little bit yourself. It does not need to be as big as Ian's was but a little bit would go a long way and would show Ian how much he means to you.

After watching this film, I realized that there were a lot more communication concepts involved with it than I did when I was in the middle of watching it. In it, we got to experience three different concepts. Ethnocentrism, stereotyping and compromising. These three concepts shaped the entire film and sent out a pretty happy message when it all came to an end. Even with a little bit of stereotyping and bias (ethnocentrism), love can still be found and life can still be enjoyed. All it takes is a little bit of compromise. In this case, different cultures were able to come together and learn to love and enjoy each other.

Cite this page