The Greekness I should caveat here that while I refer to myself throughout this essay as Greek, that isn’t strictly true. “We see no difference between hugging,” our protagonist tells us in the film’s sequel, “and suffocation.” No scenario ever feels too far-fetched, no character too implausible. In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the Greek chorus of supporting characters are perfectly pitched members of a diaspora built upon oblique eccentricity, unrelenting nosiness, and crushing love. Like any rom-com pegged to a specific ethnicity or culture, whether it’s the Jewishness of Crossing Delancey or the Italianness of Moonstruck, the comedy always needs to be somewhat rooted in an essence of reality. When I watched the film on a near-monthly basis, it was just a family reunion. They had names like Toula and Voula my family had names like Foulla and Koulla. There was a Greek woman and WASP-y man at the center-my parents, check-a loveable yet cantankerous patriarch-yep-as well as a crazy yiayia, a wisecracking aunt, bickering cousins. They were loud, ridiculous, and frighteningly involved in each other’s lives.
They looked the same their accents, mannerisms, and intonations were broadly similar. I was five when we bought the VHS I’m not entirely sure I grasped at first that the Portokalos family and my family were not the same. Whenever I wanted to hear my grandparents speak, I would watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding. A note scribbled on a script’s margins: It’s more effective for an object to say this through symbolism than for this character to spell it out.
My bappou’s English was slightly better, but he was so hard of hearing that by the time you’d gone hoarse trying to get him to hear you, it was easier to gesticulate or mime or relay a feeling through a hand squeeze. We knew it when she had a lukewarm piece of toast slathered in honey waiting for us when we got back from school, or when she would point at us with glee and say, “teacher!”-a rare English word she knew-any time we were reading a book. My yiayia didn’t speak English, but with her vice-like grip, love-filled looks, and toothless grin, we knew how much she loved us without the need for verbal communication. When a language barrier is in place between generations in a family, you have to forge a secret language to communicate with each other. Having said that, his legacy lives on with half the people in this church lucky to have a cutting from his magnificent fig tree, a symbol of his legacy.” “There is a huge void in all our lives now, which will be felt especially over the summer when we can’t see him in the garden for a bumper crop of figs. I have to assume it became detached from a nearby funeral wreath and blew over in the steady June wind, but the odds don’t seem right, especially considering the man who had been interred below 30 days prior. I stare at it and stare at it, like I’m expecting it to grow a mouth and answer me. I bend down and pick it up, its lightness betraying its artificiality, the purplish paintwork stopping just short of the base. I stare at the small, styrofoam fig sitting on top of a mound of earth at my bappou’s grave and wonder how it got there. Daniele Nunziata, Grandfather’s Potatoes At a crossroads, she must decide between revealing her sexuality to her parents, or losing the love of her life.“I’ve tried planting potatoes since you left,īut they never grow the way they did for you. After a year of dating paradise, things go awry when Jessie's parents, who are unaware that Alex is a girl, arrive to town for their anniversary. Sarcastic & complicated Jessie and her free-spirited girlfriend, Alex couldn't be any more different from each other, but cupid's arrow is blind, and it was love at first sight.
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