Monday, September 27, 2010

Our Family Wedding

Watching Our Family Wedding brought a few interesting points about gender and race intersections. First the obvious difference of race between the bride and groom, but more to that is the reactions of both families when meeting each other. In the trailer it is shown how the grandma is excited to meet her future new grandson and once she sees he is African American she faints. This is a representation of the limited acceptance there is for interracial marriage in these societies. In her family marriage is seen as a very sacred commitment, when in contrast the groom's dad is a "player" and does not believe in marriage. Both families clash due to the difference in culture and values.
Genders cross when the groom's father's lawyer becomes involved with him and takes part in helping plan the wedding. For her, she believes in marriage and how it should be a special bound between to people and helps plan out based on that, however the groom's fathers disagrees because he has different values than her. Overall, the movie symbolizes marriage as its meaning in two different cultures and how each culture deals with interracial marriages.

2 comments:

  1. I liked this movie. It's definitely interesting how the two families view marriage differently. It's ideal how at the end both families end up being accepting of each other. Sadly that's not always the case. In a personal experience the same thing occurred with a family member and a Muslim man, but it didn't turn out to have the happy ending the movie did.

    There are so many things to consider in cases like this, culture, language, religion, and it's sad that even in the 20th century families won't be accepting of a union between two people from different backgrounds.

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  2. I enjoyed this movie as well. The differences in tradition and culture are teased out and eased upon. Though some of the stereotypes were offensive in the film, the use of comedy to reduce the volatility and discomfort that comes from of it was necessary. Comedy has been used to introduce and validate interracial relationships for a longtime and it has not always been playing off sterotypes. In the popular sitcom I Love Lucy of 1951, the use of comdedy was used to depict and validate Lucy and Ricky's interracial relationship. Prior to this segment, the episode opens with Ricky and Lucy on the plane to Cuba. Lucy is so nervous as she has never met Ricky's family and fears that they will not accept her because she is not Cuban. Ricky, jokingly re affirms by accidently saying that they wished he married a Cuban girl. In the link below we see Lucy meetig Ricky's family in Cuba for the first time and though the characterization of Ricky's family is stereotyped, that is not the root of comedic approach to trying to accept Lucy into the family. The clip depicts her famous screw ups in trying to impress the family with her Spanish and etiquette. Hilarious but not offensive. In the end, Lucy was accepted in the family despite her diffferences and comical mess ups. So comdey and interracial relationships do not have to this mean but necessary interaction.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82VK2Dp97yE

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