Jchen

           The movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" portrays the difference between American and Greek culture by showing us two characters of each side. Toula Portokalos, a 30 year old Greek woman, and Ian Miller, an WASP American high school teacher, falls in love with each other. Unfortunately, Toula's cultural father would not accept Ian because he is non-Greek. While Ian's family has no difficulties accepting Toula, Toula struggles to break some "rules" of her tradition so that she could marry Ian. In fact, she wants more things in her life. She wants to go to college, have new experiences, and marry her own love. Again, her father goes in her way of these things. He expects his daughter to do three things in life, marry a Greek person, have Greek babies, and feed the baby till death. However, Toula gets her wishes later on by making her father think that it was his ideas. At the end of the movie, Toula finally gets to marry Ian in one condition. Ian was to baptize in the Greek Orthodox Church. There were also many events where American and Greek cultures were compared to such as family reunions, role of extended families, food, and personalities between the two people in the culture.

         Toula's life story is related to my life in many ways. Greek culture and Chinese culture are almost the same except in family reunions and wedding ceremonies. We may have different beliefs but they are somehow connected. My parents believe that Chinese women should be educated until they graduate high school. After that, they are supposed to marry to a Chinese man that their parents chose, have babies, and become housewives. Toula's life is also similar to mine. Not only do we want more in our lives, we are "rule breakers" in the family. Toula also falls in love with a person that is a different race. Similarly, I am dating a person that is outside of my race and culture. My parents disagree with this relationship and treat my boyfriend badly. In addition, they also discriminate him and took him as, in their words, a "dirty Mexican," while is an Ecuadorian. My parents are a lot like Toula's parents because they both believe that their race and culture is the dominant one. Luckily, Toula and my wishes both came true. My family allowed me to go to college, date my Ecuadorian boyfriend, and curved some "rules" in the tradition. This movie was also exciting and fun to watch because it made me think about the different cultures in this world. There are a lot of cultures out there that makes people different from us. At first, I thought that Greek people are disgusting because they were actually spitting on the bride. However, my Greek friend told me that spitting at a person represented good luck. It made me realize that I know very little of other cultures and that I should not judge a culture before having an explanation.