American Wedding Culture
141003247
Contributing Factors To Perfection Hysteria on the Bride's Experience in Contemporary American Wedding Culture
Amy Pierce
151764739
The impact of culture on the American wedding dress
Brittani Rossi
226563388
Interpret Cross cultural Elements in The Wedding Banquet Based on Culture Dimension and High Context and Low Context and the Theory of Time Orientation
Hofstede, a renowned Dutch scholar, puts forward a concept called "culture dimension" in Culture's Consequences. Four aspects are included in the concept: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity. American anthropologist Edward Twitchell Hall advances high context and low context to analyse cultural diversity based on the two concepts. Professor Kluckhohn from Harvard University and Strodtbeck put forward the theory of time orientation. The Wedding Banquet is directed by the famous director Li An, presenting a story about an Asian American whose name is Gao Weitong. He is a homosexual, choosing to marry a female painter who is an illegal immigrant in order to deal with his parents from Taipei to force him into marriage. The thesis will choose two aspects of "culture dimension" (power distance and uncertainty avoidance) high context and low context, and the theory of time orientation to analyse cross cultural elements in The Wedding Banquet.
Yuanyuan He
141765087
Diasporic Wedding Culture: How Wedding Rituals and Symbols Confirm the Creation of a Multicultural Gender and Ethnic Identity Among Hindu American Women
Amy Mixter
202269685
Manifestation of Chinese and American Values in The Wedding Banquet
This paper mainly focuses on various cultural values and conflicts represented in the film The Wedding Banquet. In contrast with the civil marriage ceremony of American style performed in a Registry Office, the Chinese wedding is much more luxurious, filled with lots of over elaborated formalities that are necessary in Chinese culture. The ceremony itself is considered more important than the notarization. Taking the subject of sexual orientation as a metaphor for larger cultural issues, the film is examined as identity confusion and inevitably, the pursuit of identity reconstruction. Through Wei Tung's psychological struggles between Chinese traditional values and his homosexual desires, the film explores the possibility of a re considered perception of identity for an Asian diasporic gay. Given the historical baggage brings with them, the process of the construction of identity for the immigrant is continuously dynamic and ongoing. After the implicit negotiations between ethnicity, sexuality, and patriarchy, the film story moves to reconciliation. This suggests that in such an era of multiculturalism, people had better come to realize their individual identities of diversity and complexity.
Journal of Language Teaching and Research
Jie-ae Yu
190540354
The New American Wedding: Ritual and Style in a Changing Culture
Diane Meier Delaney Donna Mehalko Ken Skalski
155233622
A Study on the View of Marriage Between Chinese and American through The Wedding Banquet
In a world of international interdependence,the ability to understand and communicate effectively with people from other cultures takes on extreme urgency.However,because of different history and culture,there are so many different views towards the same issue between Chinese and people from West World.Among them,marriage is an issue worth investigating in intercultural
216353549
Depiction of Indian Culture in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's 'Before We Visit the Goddess
Chitra Banerjee portrays her own experience of migration in most of her works. From the study of her both of the latest novels it can be assumed that her works project Indian experiences, contemporary American life style, history, myth, and the challenges of living in a multicultural world. In Before We Visit the Goddess she very cleverly depicts that how Indian society plays a role in creating an identity of a person especially of a woman and further putting her in situation where she faces her own Identity Crisis. She successfully displays Indian society which witnesses Indianness in her writing. A very meticulous description of various Indian rituals during engagement, wedding or any other routine day has been brought out in the novels. At the same time she also makes her reader well acquainted with Indian food, cities and songs as well giving a clear picture of real India in both of her books. It is observed in the novel that Divakaruni has presented the glimpses of India of her memories through her characters, description of events and even through the presentation of patriarchy mentality. Divakaruni's description of India and her recreating India and Indianness in Before We Visit the Goddess, remind the researcher of The Sister of My Heart's Anand Mulloo's words. He has mentioned: "Looking back in nostalgia to the motherland, to reconstruct imaginary homelands, in towns and villages, in Little India's or new China towns becomes an urge, a habit and a compulsion, a homeward journey, with its Imaginative geography and history, its politics, memory and desire."1 Keyword Myth, History, food, culture, customs, Intergeneration, migration, life style, society, tradition, rituals Diaspora. Divakaruni's sensibility for Indian identity and cultural bonding is revealed on every page of the book. Yet it is known that Divakaruni did not ride an elephant to school as a child, and the bind on her forehead she wears only when she dresses in traditional Indian attire which she believes has no religious significance. For her it is mostly just for embellishment, and she chooses the colour to match her sari. At the same time it is seen that she has understood Indian culture so well that she makes even her foreign readers be fainiliar with the real India. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni seems to be very much conscious about the myth among the Indian women. She makes conscious efforts to present Indian culture and tradition in her works. Before We Visit the Goddess also witnesses the writer's attitude towards her motherland which is full of positivity and hope. The story is seen to be reflecting her reverence of Indian culture. Along with this, her pride in Indian food, folklore, Bengali language etc. have been explored. Divakaruni relates Indian culture with superstitions too. The description of magician and superstition in Assam as well as traditions and beliefs are well woven in the story of Sabitri and Bela's childhood. At the same time there is another group of people who rejects such traditions calling it Bloody superstition. When Ayah in Assam "Puts a little dot of soot on the baby's cheek. Bijan wiped the mark from the baby's face roughly with his handkerchief making him cry"2 Other than dogma and doctrines, Food is one more parameter to define one's culture. Chitra Banerjee's affiliation with Indian culture and food is clearly revealed in the story. Divakaruni makes blatant references to food and food preparation in the novel which not only expresses the Diaspora voice in America but also distinguishes individual's identity. Bela when shifts in America, "She disdained American food and took pride in preparing, from scratch, spicy fish curry or potatoes seasoned with panch phoron and whole red chillies"3
Satish Bhagwan Funne
191020112
The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture
In The Wedding Complex Elizabeth Freeman explores the significance of the wedding ceremony by asking what the wedding becomes when you separate it from the idea of marriage. Freeman finds that weddings as performances, fantasies, and rituals of transformation are sites for imagining and enacting forms of social intimacy other than monogamous heterosexuality. Looking at the history of Anglo American weddings and their depictions in American literature and popular culture from the antebellum era to the present, she reveals the cluster of queer desires at the heart of the "wedding complex" longings not for marriage necessarily but for public forms of attachment, ceremony, pageantry, and celebration. Freeman draws on queer theory and social history to focus on a range of texts where weddings do not necessarily lead to legal marriage but instead reflect yearnings for intimate arrangements other than long term, state sanctioned, domestic couplehood. Beginning with a look at the debates over gay marriage, she proceeds to consider literary works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Vladimir Nabokov, and Edgar Allan Poe, along with such Hollywood films as Father of the Bride The Graduate and The Godfather She also discusses less well known texts such as Su Friedrich's experimental film First Comes Love and the off Broadway, interactive dinner play Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding Offering bold new ways to imagine attachment and belonging, and the public performance and recognition of social intimacy, The Wedding Complex is a major contribution to American studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.
Elizabeth Freeman
142432410
The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture
The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture. Elizabeth Freeman. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2002. 288 pp. ISBN 0 822 32989 1. $19.95 (paper) What does it mean when so many people desire a wedding but not necessarily a marriage? This is what The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture examines. Using queer theory and social history, Elizabeth Freeman explores the meaning of weddings, intimacy, and long term commitment in various texts, films, and plays. In particular, she looks at texts in which "the wedding did not necessarily instantiate a legal marriage but instead tapped into fantasies that were irreducible to the wish for long term domestic couplehood recognized by the state" (p. xi) Instead of weddings being seen as the final event culminating in heterosexual marriage, they are seen as situations that provide the opportunity for showing attachments to family members, friends, religion, or even consumption. Numerous novels are examined, including Carson McCullers' (1946) The Member of the Wedding, William Faulkner's (1936) Absalom, Absalom! Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1850) The Scarlet Letter, and Vladimir Nabokov's (1955) Lolita. Several films from 1950, 1967, 1972, and 1991 are analyzed, as well as Princess Diana and Prince Charles's wedding; various White House weddings (daughters of American Presidents) and the interactive, Off Broadway play Tony n' Tina's Wedding (1994) The concept of the wedding is used to reorganize gender. Moreover, race, ethnicity, and class also are examined in Freeman's analysis. For example, her analysis of The Member of the Wedding points out that wanting a wedding does not necessarily translate into wanting a marriage. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! reveals how weddings are sites for renegotiating race. In general, Freeman's analysis illustrates how "weddings can conjure up sites other than the state within which relationships of many kinds might become visible and preserved in cultural memory" (p. 210) such as gay and lesbian relationships, nonparental relationships between adults and children, and other bonds that are considered nonnormative from a wedding standpoint. Although the premise of the book is important, I did find it difficult to follow. Because the style of writing is very dense and detailed, I found it difficult to find the main point at times. The writer is trained as a literary critic, and likely writes in a way consistent with that literature. As a result, this book may be more helpful to literary scholars than to family scholars.
Aine M Humble