The Decline of the WASP and the Promotion of Ethnic Diversity in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' (2002)

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Film Science, grade: 1,0, , language: English, abstract: This paper aims at exploring the filmic deployment of White and Greek ethnicity in specific contexts. The central questions discussed in this paper are: How are Whiteness and Greekness depicted in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'? More importantly, which essential message does the film convey? For this purpose, the paper will first of all take a closer look at American ethnic relations from a historical perspective in order to establish important references to the following film analysis. In a second step, the paper will plunge into the analysis of 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' as such. In this regard, it initially explores how Greekness and Whiteness and their relation as a cultural clash are portrayed in the film. Subsequently, it will examine how these two divergent worlds are connected by analyzing the two main characters Toula Portokalos and Ian Miller. Thereafter, the result of connecting the White American and the Greek American culture is investigated by analyzing the wedding. Finally, the paper concludes by summarizing the main findings and giving a brief outlook. It should, however, be mentioned that this paper solely examines how social structures of American ethnic relations are represented in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'. To be more precise, it exclusively refers to the filmic level and does not aim at generalizing the main findings concerning American society as a whole.