"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was based about a woman named Toula Portokalos who came from a Greek Orthodox family. In this film, she fell in love with a man, Ian Miller, who came from non-Orthodox white family. There are many interesting sociology concept or theory in this film. The concepts that I 'll talk about in the essay are of Patriarchy, power in the marriage, individualistic and collectivist culture. There is a clear division between women 's and men 's position in the movie. At the beginning of the film, Toula talks about three things that a nice Greek girl are supposed to do: "marry Greek boys, make Greek babies and feed everyone until the day we die". Those goals are accomplished by Toula 's older sister, Athena, who "married young and became a Greek baby-breeding machine". At the same time, Gus does not want his …show more content…
Patriarchy is society system in which the power is controlled by men. In this film, Toula 's father, Gus, manages everything in the family. As he said, "I am the head of the family". He dominates all decision making in the family. At the same time, Gus may represent the voice of first generation of Greek immigration as he tries to pass the norm to the next generation. Gus, father of Toula, motioned serval times that he is the head of the family and owns the power in the family relationship. However, Toula 's mother, Maria owns the convert power in the family. However, female 's covert power is still existing in the patriarchy family. Gus rejected Toula 's request to go to college and learn more about computer at first. Maria changed Gus 's decision and Toula get the chance to college. As Maria told to Toula, "Man is the head, but woman is the neck, she can turn the neck to anywhere she wants." Later in the film, Maria and aunt Voula set in place a plan that makes Gus think that Toula working in the travel agency was his idea. Although Gus think that he absolutely controls the power in the family, Maria can cleverly manipulate the situation in
According to the family tradition, which you were breaking” (Esquivel 213). Despite Rosaura being conscious of the emotional turmoil her marriage caused the entire family, she was too prideful to admit, even after the death of Mama Elena, that it was a mistake. This accusation came from a place of jealousy, with her being well aware that Pedro never felt loyalty towards her, and simply married her to stay near Tita. When John's young son jokingly told Alex’s parents he wanted to marry her someday, Rosaura immediately shut him down. “They all laughed at that, but when Rosaura explained to Alex that he couldn’t because this little girl was destined to take care of her until the day she died, Tita felt her hair stand on end” (Esquivel 150).
Similarly, in the novel we see this with Talia and her relationship with her grandmother Perla. At first, Elena sent Talia to live with Perla in Colombia for her first couple of years. This later led to Talia having to take care of Perla as she became sick and could not leave her alone in this difficult time. Engel writes, “When her grandmother lost control of her body, forgetting how to speak, to eat, and everything else, Talia was the one who changed the liners of her underpants and washed her clothes when she soiled them. It didn’t bother Talia.
The patriarchy is a chain of value. Aristotle describes the patriarchy as a pyramid. God or gods are at the top, men are in the middle, and women/ slaves/ donkeys are at the bottom. Ideally, as you go down the pyramid, power decreases. The patriarchy is organic just as a tree in nature.
Mama Elena is known for abusing her authority by telling Pedro's father instead of marrying Tita he should marry Rosaura. For example, "But if you really want Pedro to get married, allow me to suggest my daughter Rosaura, who's just two years older than Tita"(13). She shows that as being the head of the house, she can do anything in her way. Her power is also showing that she can make somebody suffer. Another way she shows her strength is by beating Tita.
However, all three of them provide a shining example of how patriarchy should be done and why a father’s role is so important. In our broken and sinful world, it is far too easy to become a parent, and negligence and horrible acts leave millions of children in broken homes. These characters, even though they are fictional, perform their roles tenfold that of many “fathers” across the world. A mother is incredibly important to a family, but in the household, a father serves equal importance by raising them in the way that is best for them, advising them on any issues they may have, and passing on their own knowledge of fatherhood. God made man and woman to raise a family together, not by themselves, and more men need to take a lesson from these characters and step up to responsibility, no matter how hard it
The Greek gods and goddesses are the ultimate representation how Greek culture. Since the gods and goddesses did not mention Odysseus’ lack of sexual fidelity, this shows that the values for men in Greek culture were not infringed upon. Sexual fidelity and how it is dealt with by the story’s most important characters in The Odyssey show the morals of Greek
, this quote gives an example of just how much dominance the men have. Girls acquire how to act from their mother. The girls also learne how to act from their grandparents, even though grandparents are not very common in this era. The women simply clean, take care of the children, cook, and serve as spiritual leaders of their household. It is their responsibility to see that their family attends church every week.
This patriarchal system that oppresses women for their actions, including shunning them for being deceptive, reveals the double standard in society, but also reveals the social statuses in this time period that oppressed women and bound them from being able to change the overall epic. The approval of the gods and their succor was all the Greeks wanted at the time;
In a family there are many different roles; there's the role of the mother, the father, the child, the grandparents, then there’s the brothers and sisters. Every single one of those roles has different responsibilities. The father, according to most of society, is supposed to be the breadwinner for the family. However, nowadays the mother is actually quite capable of being the breadwinner just as much of as the father. As they work to show their children what it is to be an adult they are teaching them as well on how to be an active member of society.
A patriarchy is a system where men dominate, and women are marginalized. The patriarchy can be traced to Aristotle’s writings in Ancient Greece, where he spoke of women as subordinates of men. Aristotle was also dependent on dualism (dividing reality into different spheres). In the case of men and women, men were seen as the rational and women, the emotional. These labels lead to sexist behavior and thus oppression of women, because they were seen as less than men.
The definition of patriarchy is a male-centered society, in which women are marginalized politically, economically, and psychologically. Patriarchy is present throughout the story of Rumpelstiltskin. When the poor miller boasts to the King about his beautiful daughter to look like a person of importance, the daughter couldn’t object. The miller is willing to give away his daughter, as though she is an object, to a greedy king. The wishes of the daughter are unheard by her father, and he seems to care more about his status than his daughter’s well-being.
They decided to marry but faced to the disapproval of Toula’s family about the cultural differences. Firstly, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” illustrates the conflict between members of two different cultural groups in terms of communication style: low context culture and high context culture. In theory, a low context culture tends to “uses language primarily to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas as clearly and logically as possible... The meaning of a statement is in the words spoken”; in contrast, a high context culture “relies heavily on subtle, often nonverbal cues to convey meaning, save face, and maintaining social harmony.
Patriarchy is the typical system in a society where the male holds the most power over a female. Multiple civilizations have been this way for centuries. There are many aspects that caused this division between the two genders. The causes in the development of patriarchy from the Paleolithic Eras to the Neolithic Eras are the creation of civilizations, home environments ,and agriculture. Each one of these causes lead to one another because they have a “chain reaction.”
In the 16th century, not only in England but also almost in all the countries, all the families were “under” the patriarchal society. A patriarchy, from the ancient Greek patriarches, was a society where power was held by and passed down through the elder males. When modern historians and sociologists describe a "patriarchal society," they mean that men hold the positions of power: head of the family unit, leaders of social groups, boss in the workplace and heads of government. Unfortunately, this fact still exists, even today in the 21st century in many countries, especially in the Muslim countries where women have restricted rights. Patriarchal society, manhood, and the sense of masculinity, in my opinion, raise two main issues: the issue
Marriage is an important institution in a society and although there have been changes in the trend of marriage pattern, it is still very clear that marriage still matters. Marriage exists and its main aim is to bring two people together to form a union, where a man and a woman leave their families and join together to become one where they often start their own family. Sociologists are mostly interested in the relationship between marriage and family as they form the key structures in a society. The key interest on the correlation between marriage and family is because marriages are historically regarded as the institutions that create a family while families are on the other hand the very basic unit upon which our societies are founded on.