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What role does food play in the film ?<\/b><\/p>\n
In this film, there were multiple scenes that showed how food played a huge role in this film. In the movie, food showed how family and culture are important to the Greek religion. It showed where you come from and how you were raised based on the Greek ethnic background can relate to food. Also, food presented in the film showed how different gender roles and class can represent food.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gender<\/b><\/p>\n My Big Fat Greek Wedding focuses on a 30 year old Greek woman, Toula Portokalos, who is single and works at her family\u2019s Greek restaurant. The film outlines the topic of gender as Toula\u2019s father aggressively pinpoints gender differences throughout the film. In the film, Toula\u2019s mother Maria gets mad at her husband Gus for not letting Toula go out and adventure and take computer classes because she needs to work in the family restaurant. Maria says something that represents gender roles and that is:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI cook, I clean, I wash for you, and I raise three kids, and I teach Sunday school, it\u2019s lucky for me I have you to tie my shoes\u201c (18:55)<\/span><\/p>\n This quote from the movie represents gender roles especially in the Greek culture because in different religions and backgrounds, there are always different gender roles that are followed. The movie showed me that women are prized to be very hard workers for their family\u2019s and should strive to marry Greek and make Greek babies, this was heavily stressed throughout the movie by Toula\u2019s father. In a specific scene, Toula\u2019s father explains to Toula that she is thirty and if she doesn’t get married soon then she will be working in the family restaurant forever. This specific event stresses how important gender roles were forced upon the women in this movie, especially Toula because the father wants Toula to get married so they can keep on reproducing Greek babies and keep the Greek culture alive.<\/span><\/p>\n (Zwick, 2002)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ethnic<\/b><\/p>\n Ethnic is huge in this film because you have two totally different sides of backgrounds. Toula and her family are huge Greeks and are super religious. They all gather for special occasions whether it\u2019s a party, wedding, or a family gathering, it\u2019s always a special event because it\u2019s part of their culture. On the other side, Ian (Toula\u2019s lover) and his family and not as religious, matter a fact they aren\u2019t religious at all. There is a scene in the movie that represents how food can bring two different ethnic backgrounds together. In the scene, Toula\u2019s family invites Ian and his mom and dad over for a Lamb roast. In this scene you could tell Ian\u2019s family felt awkward because they were not used to the big family gatherings and the religious traditions they were doing at the party. After the party Toula\u2019s father was very upset and said:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey are different people, so dry. They family is like a piece of toast\u201d (1: 12:01)<\/span><\/p>\n This represents ethnicity because it shows how if you bring two different ethnic backgrounds of families together how hard it can be sometimes because of different culture practices that families have.<\/span><\/p>\n (Zwick, 2002)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Class<\/b><\/p>\n Social class is very much so linked to this movie. Toula and her Greek family are part of the working class. They have their own Greek restaurant called Dancing Zorba\u2019s which they have had for years and Toula is a host there. On the other hand, Ian and his family are a part of the middle class, Ian is a teacher at Lincoln Park and his dad and grandfather are lawyers. In one of the scenes of the movie, Ian takes Toula out for dinner at this fancy restaurant and during the dinner he explains\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cActually I wasn\u2019t in education first I was in pre-law, my dad\u2019s a lawyer, my grandfather is a lawyer \u2026 and now I am a highschool vegetarian teacher \u201c (29:09)<\/span><\/p>\n This example relates to class because it shows where Ian comes from and they bonded over social class at dinner because then Toula told Ian that she worked at Dancing Zorbas where Ian first met her and he remembered her. Throughout the film social class is brought up again because I got to see how the different families held dinners for Ian and Toula and they were the complete opposite. Ian\u2019s family held a very classy dinner. It was nice, neat and super clean. Toula\u2019s family\u2019s dinner was held at the restaurant and was like a party. It was a very loud, kaotic, and fun party type environment. We talk about in class how we view different social environments based upon the social class and this film does a great job of viewing different environments of different social classes between the two families.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Opinion on the Film<\/b><\/p>\n My overall opinion of the film was very good. I thought the film got the right themes across of what they were trying to get across to the audience. The themes of this film were gender, class, and ethnicity and I thought there were some great examples on how these themes were represented in the movie. One downside I noticed in the film was how they focused the film all on Toula\u2019s family but never really spent much time viewing Ian\u2019s family. I think because of this it could mess up the theme of the movie because you don\u2019t get to see the different gender roles, social class environments, and ethnicity backgrounds between the two families but overall it was a great movie and I learned a lot about it.<\/span><\/p>\n (NA, 2019)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/b><\/p>\n Top Recipes: Vegetarian Moussaka for My Big Fat Greek Wedding * FOOD and the MOVIES. (2019, October 03). Retrieved from http:\/\/foodandthemovies.com\/food\/top-recipes-vegetarian-moussaka-big-fat-greek-wedding\/<\/span><\/p>\n Wilson, R. (Producer), Hanks, T. (Producer), Goetzman, G. (Producer) & Zwick, J. (Director). (2002). <\/span>My Big Fat Greek Wedding <\/span><\/i>[Motion Picture]. United States: Ryerson University and Greektown neighborhood<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/image.tmdb.org\/t\/p\/w1280\/nSFc3wuokUjwjXjfb16VNIVFE5u.jpg\")
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