I cannot do better than ‘snowbeast’.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) revels in one of the oldest and most important themes of Western stories, the importance of blending cultures. The idea of integroup alliances, of intermarriage, and, later of accepting differences as an advantage, rather something to be loathed or disdained, is one of the pillars underlying the strength of Western culture. The idea that everyone has something to contribute, as ‘everyone’ expanded from English white males to slaves, then to females, then the Irish and the Germans, etc etc, is the bedrock of the success of Western culture. Implicit in that concept is the freedom to intermix with other cultures and explore options outside of the older, usually gender-oriented, assigned roles.
This movie recapitulates the history that moved from earlier cultures and their explicit confidence in their own superiority, and how that attitude can make for a rocky existence, and to that of today. Toula is, at age 30, the spinster daughter in a large, extended Greek family, awkward and under-confident. Becoming desperate to do something with her life, she undertakes computer courses (in the 1980s, a big deal) and, with the help of an aunt, strikes out in business in a tourist agency. Encountering success, she becomes a little more confident, but still can’t believe it when a stranger, a schoolteacher named Ian, walks into the tourist agency and starts talking to her, because, to her, he’s gorgeous.
The courtship is fast, but soon they encounter the great rock of culture chauvinism, embodied in her father, Costas. He’s a Greek immigrant who arrived with $8 in his pocket and his wife, and now owns a successful restaurant and heads up a large family – and believes the Greeks are the basis and pinnacle of civilization, with Greek being the mother language. America? It’s primary cultural contribution is Windex.
Now he finds his daughter is dating, is becoming engaged to, a non-Greek!
Needless to say, he grumps, he throws obstacles in the way, he presents alternative suitors to Toula, but Ian and Toula persist, and in the end Costas enfolds Ian, as well as Ian’s family, in his arms, grudgingly convinced that perhaps Ian is worthy of his Greek daughter, and bringing the audience to the climactic wedding and reception.
Perhaps suggesting this recounting of history through the conversion of Costas seems to be a bit much, but the echo of one man’s persuasion as an example of the larger culture’s central pillar of tolerance, unconsciously or not, reminds the audience of the large and serious issues that face cultures which incorporate many ethnicities against the instincts of the human animal – and that those issues can be resolved by good-hearted folks who work together.
Light-hearted, unafraid of poking at stereotypes and suggesting there may be something behind them, and only slightly predictable, this is a lot of fun.
