Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Race, Ethnicity, and Women’s Choices in Something New and My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Race, Ethnicity, and Women’s Choices in Something New and My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Author(s): Anca-Luminita IancuSubject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Film / Cinema / Cinematography, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: Editura Universitatii LUCIAN BLAGA din Sibiu
Keywords: interethnic relationships; American film and culture; choice and gender; ethnic and racial identity; transcending ethnic and racial borders
Summary/Abstract: The movies My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) and Something New (2006) interrogate various ethnic and racial traditions and expectations concerning interracial and intercultural relationships from the female perspective. The two romantic comedies illustrate how the female protagonists’ decisions to date and marry men outside their ethnic and racial communities create tension and resistance among their family members and circle of friends, revealing an array of cultural and racial differences. By looking at the subtle ways in which these movies depict the challenges posed by interethnic dating/marriage in terms of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, especially in the female protagonists’ family environment, this essay sets out to explore how the protagonists’ choices to transcend cultural and racial borders may represent a new attempt to assuage the concerns regarding the complexity of interethnic relationships by including the option of individual female choice and agency.
Journal: East-West Cultural Passage
- Issue Year: 17/2017
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 50-72
- Page Count: 23
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF