My Big Fat Turkish Wedding: From Culture Clash to Romcom

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Abstract

From the destructive fantasy of a wedding that never takes place in Shirin's Wedding (1975), to the misery and tragedy of arranged marriages in April Children (1998) and Dügün: The Wedding ((1991) , weddings play a prominent role in Turkish German cinema. They function as contested sites of difference, marking the complex negotiations between tradition and modernity. Whereas in these earlier films, the Turkish tradition of arranged marriages is presented as irreconcilable with Western notions of romantic love and individual self-determination, more recent films celebrate inter-ethnic romance and culminate in weddings and unite families across ethnic divides. Such feel-good movies create popular fantasies of multicultural urban conviviality.
This chapter analyses two recent Turkish German wedding films, Evet, I Do (2010) and My Crazy Turkish Wedding (2006) with reference to the generic conventions of the romantic comedy and its multicultural inflections in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004). It asks how these diasporic wedding films negotiate hybridity on the levels of narrative, iconography and ideology.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationTurkish German Cinema in the New Millennium
Subtitle of host publicationSites, Sounds, and Screens
EditorsSabine Hake, Barbara Mennel
Place of PublicationOxford and New York
PublisherBerghahn Books
Pages19-32
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9780857457691
ISBN (Print)978085745768
Publication statusPublished - 15 Oct 2012

Keywords

  • Transnational cinema, diasporic family in cinema, hybrid genre, wedding film

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