KMC Forums - A Big Fat Greek Lie

A Big Fat Greek Lie
By Mark Ames ([email protected])

When I read that a film called MY BIG, FAT GREEK WEDDING was an indy hit in the US, I was deeply suspicious. It was supposed to be an indy film, sure, but the title had all the cute, harmless irony of a high school play.

I knew I�d hate it. That was the easy part. But I was scared, really. I don�t need another chick flick to throw oil on my misogyny peat bog fires, turning them into a serial murder inferno.

So I decided that the best thing to do would be to review an American woman watching the movie. Rather than the movie itself. That seemed safer and easier, like grabbing a bystander and using her as a shield during a shoot-out.

So on Sunday morning, hungover, I posted this message on the Expat List:

Subject: Movie Date with the eXile!

For the film review in this issue of the eXile, I would like to conduct an experiment which will require the participation of a female American subject. I will be attending the 9:30 p.m. showing of �My Big Fat Greek Wedding� at the America Cinema, and I would like to take with me an American woman as my �date� in order to record her reactions to the film. I will pay for her ticket and snacks. Any female Americans interested please email me today at [email protected]

Mark Ames

I got this message on Monday afternoon:

Mark Ames-

I just saw your post on the expat. You may have already found a date, but I figured I�d send you an email anyway. My numbers in Moscow are [...].

Paige

I figured that Paige must either be an ironic alterno-grrl or frighteningly desperate. And duty demanded that I find out which.

I called Paige and arranged to meet on Tuesday for the 5 o�clock showing. To Paige�s credit, she didn�t lie when she described herself as looking �Russian.� She didn�t look all that Russian, but she definitely didn�t look American: pale, lithe, with bright red lipstick and bright gold eye shadow. I thought, �Uh-oh, I can�t be mean to her.�

When Paige told me that she is a ballet dancer and a gymnast, I thought, �Uh-oh, I really, really can�t be mean to her.�

Now I felt really, really bad. Because a) I couldn�t be mean to her, and b) my experiment was ruined.

On our way in, Paige told me that she�d wanted to see the film because she�d heard that �Tom Hanks had something to do with it.�

Now normally, I would be inclined to mace anyone who said the name �Tom Hanks� and didn�t include the words �stalk,� �duct tape,� and �power drill� in the same breath. But for Paige, movies weren�t that important.

It was clear from the very beginning that Wedding was going to be an appalling movie � the only question was the degree of eye-toxin. It was like a sitcom. In fact, it is a sitcom � Nia Vardolas, the writer and star, has already signed a massive contract with CBS to turn it into a weekly sitcom.

The sitcom-mainstream-independent movie unfolded according to formula. The jokes were awful and cliched. Describing her quasi-eccentric Greek family, the narrator, Toula (Nia Vardalos) says, �If nagging was an Olympic sport, my Aunt Vuola would win a gold medal.� A gullible outsider asks how to say something in Greek, and winds up getting tricked into saying wacky phrases like, �I like your boobs� or �I have three testicles.�

Poor Aristophanes! He must be screaming from Hades, �Don�t blame me!�

The plot, characters and tension were so formulaic that there was absolutely no mystery as to how this movie would end.

The Greeks come off as total scum. They�re bigoted, whiny, obsessive, fat, ugly, stupid, riddled with complexes, and neither funny nor fun to be around. The Greek grandmother calls everyone a �bloodthirsty Turk.� The father always tries to tell people that Greek language is the root of all English. He tells his daughter�s WASP-y boyfriend, Ian, �When my people were writing philosophy, your people were still swinging from trees.� Translation: �Someone please take my ethnicity seriously!�

I don�t get why small, insignificant races cling to these legends about the superiority of their ancient culture. Being ancient hasn�t done much for the Iraqis or Syrians, why should it for the Greeks? Someone should explain to former-somebodies the concept of the present tense.

They say this movie is a hit because it's the first ethnic movie about those wacky Greeks. Ethnic family movies about Jews and Italians have a much higher success rate. The only thing �warm� the Greeks do is yell �Hoo-pah!� and dance like Turks. In fact, the vicious hunchbacked old grandma, who crawls around their American suburb in her black wimple and cloak, accusing all the WASPs in their neighborhood of being �bloodthirsty Turks,� looks to me an awful lot like what I imagine a Turk looks like.

As Greek Wedding dragged on, I noticed something: Paige regularly laughed. Not deep, hearty laughs, but soft, harmless nostril laughs. I decided to mark chicken scratches to log the number of times she laughed.

When Toula meets her Prince Charming, Paige�s laugh-periodicity increased. It wasn�t Paige�s laugh that bothered me � it was Prince Charming. In his character the movie crossed from harmless sitcom formula into outright Goebbels lies. Tuolo�s man, �Ian,� is tall, with long dark swept-back hair, a pronounced chin, long face and sensitive Travolta-like eyes. He�s a junior high school teacher and a vegetarian, yet he comes from a wealthy family of lawyers and country club members. That is, sensitive yet aristocratic, every woman�s dream.

At one point, Toula is forced, for the plot�s sake, to ask him why he loves her. Because it makes no sense at all - guys who look like that are usually ****ing the cheerleader squad and all the under-30 social workers. So why is he with Toula, a fat, self-loathing Greek pig? �Because I came alive when I met you,� he says.

Alive? He behaves like her servant! He never has any conflicts within himself. All he does is hug her and comfort her. Do women really want that? I mean, I know American women say they do, but when confronted with the choice, they always reject it, even when desperate and alone.

Ah! The lies! That�s the part I can�t handle! Here's the reality: to American women, a man who teaches in a public middle school is a L-O-S-E-R. Plain and simple! That must be why the movie makers had Ian driving Toula around in a brand new silver Jeep Grand Cherokee with a big manly un-vegetarian front grill. Because if Ian drove what a public school teacher in America really drives � a beat-up Hyundai with broken tail light � and if he had the cringing, apologetic mannerisms of all male public school teachers � this movie wouldn�t have been the hit that it was. It might actually have been interesting, but not a hit.

Other problems. The Greek accents sounded exactly like Steve Martin�s wild and crazy Czech swingers.

Toula�s beauty transformation from dumpy, creased spinster into someone you�d mercy **** on a drunken Wednesday evening was accomplished with far too much ease � all she did was perm her hair, apply blush and upgrade her clothes... and the next thing you know, a table full of sorority girls happily invites her to sit with them. Is that the lonely American woman's dream? To be invited to sit at a table of shallow, mean sorority girls for lunch, who accept you just because you look better? (This is where I start reaching for the rope, butcher knife and briefcase...the spirit of Ted Bundy echoing in my ear like OB-1... "Maaaark, use the kniiiiiife...use the kniiiiiife...")

Not Another Teen Movie, one of the great unheralded films of the year, already parodied the effortless Pygmalion transformation by having its heroine transformed from ugly weirdo into raging beauty by simply undoing her ponytail and pulling off her glasses. The students in Teen Movie gawk at the heroine, going, "How did she undo her ponytail?" "And take off her glasses!" "She's sooo beautiful now!"

There should be a law against ignoring successful parodies. Punishable by burning all prints.

It gets worse. The father, that bigoted ass, does his best to keep his thirty-year-old daughter from getting a life, trying to bar her first from going to college, and then from marrying the man of her dreams. In my notes, I wrote: �He�s old. Why doesn�t she take meat cleaver and club his head? Or poison him? Hell, hire Turk to bump him � would do it for free!� Instead of poisoning the father, however, the mother explains to Toula how easy it is for a woman to manipulate the man of the house. All you have to do is let him think he�s in charge and that he makes the decisions on his own, which you can easily manipulate, and voila, the sucker does your bidding. It was painful to watch, pure slave humor. But the crowd liked it.

By the end of the film, I�d tallied 28 laughs for Paige and five for me. She also cried once.

After the film, I asked Paige how she liked it. �I liked it, it was pretty good,� she said. �It was funny.�

�But what about the boyfriend? No woman in America likes public school teachers. That�s why they had to make him from a rich family.�

�I thought he was okay � my mother�s a teacher. He was nice, he loved her.�

�Yeah but he had no personality, he was grotesquely sensitive. Women always go for the jerks, it just wasn�t true.� The fact that I got three bites from American women for this date only confirmed it.

�I guess that�s true. What about you, did you like it?�

I went on what I�d call a controlled rant.

Paige took it pretty well.

I�m not sure if I should watch movies with her again. In fact, I won't.

RATING: I�m giving this film 2 scimitars, a special icon, meaning that it pushes the male viewer to throw his support completely behind the Turks in their conflict with Greece. Were it 3 scimitars, we would support the total Turkish conquest of Cyprus.