Let me preface this whole thing by saying that I love movies. Any movie will do. Movies are such an integral part of my life, they are the key element to sibling bonding time with my sister, which is watching the most ridiculous romantic comedies and critiquing them. A night in with the family has always been Thai food and a movie. And growing up with an older sister, I generally lost the fight over which movie we would watch on family night. As a result, I was that guy that has watched pretty much every sappy romance movie from Casablanca to She’s the Man. But the greatest romance movie of all time will always be Roman Holiday. Star crossed lovers, Rome, the nostalgia of filming in black and white, and the brilliant acting of Gregory Peck and an unknown actress that went by the name of Audrey Hepburn. The classic tale of two individuals from different worlds trying to create something built on the unbelievable connection they have between each other.

I related to it. Hard. As a first generation American, I felt like I was stuck straddling two worlds. I was raised in both Indian and American cultures, meaning my childhood was a hodgepodge of my family background and my surrounding environment. But no matter what, through whatever identity crisis I was in the throes of, one thing remained the same, love stories. No matter what, despite whatever background the hero and heroine came from, they always had to end up together and happy. So if I see it all the time, and its reinforced by not just one, but two cultures, it has to be a natural occurring phenomena, right?

The thing is, it’s not. It rarely ever happens. Movies that follow this trope, and there are plenty, fail to make one clear distinction: your loving couple may be from different backgrounds but they aren’t actually that different. Why? Because they haven’t had to deal with one important factor; 95% of the time, they are the same race.

What these movies fail to account for, is that being a different race than someone you are attracted to makes the whole idea of being different than your love interest a hell of a lot more complicated. Now your difference is not rooted in the fact that you are a hard-working girl trying to get into Sarah Lawrence and he is a delinquent with an Aussie accent and penchant for smoking (10 things I hate about you). It’s not that she was a street-smart prostitute and you are a reserved businessman who is doing something completely out of character (Pretty Woman). It certainly isn’t the fact that she is a princess and you are a journalist who is supposed to be covering her. It’s not your occupation or social status or attitude or even your personality that sets you apart. It’s the fact that the color of your skin means you have experienced the world in a completely different lens than they have, and it changes everything. As a non-white man in America, I am constantly reminded of my race every time the professor calling role or the server calling out my order in a coffee shop massacres my name. It means that I cannot find a single representation in the media that accurately presents my daily life. It is difficult to find a way to try and relate to what I see when I am not being accurately represented in the kind of genre I’d like myself to be in.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been movies about interracial couples, the most famous being Guess Who’s coming to dinner? Starring Sidney Poitier and Spencer Tracy. But the number of films like that is limited and certainly unlike what one is likely to see today. Hollywood has become more aware of the issues with Race and its representation in the industry, meaning the #OscarsSoWhite movement has actually allowed for there to be some conversation. But it still isn’t all it can do. Where are the stories about the all-American child that meets someone who is the child of immigrants and wants to hold on to their culture rather than shed it for becoming more American? Where are the stories where the more American of the couple learns about the difficulties of immigrant children balancing two different cultures without fetishizing the less Western one?

When I start to see these stories projected on the silver screen on a regular basis, I’ll retract my entire article. I will not complain about this any longer, but until then I’ll be waiting. I love Roman Holiday, but I don’t want to be like Gregory Peck by the end of the movie, accepting the fact that even though I love this woman, we are just too different to be together. I may sound entitled, but I think I deserve to be with someone when the credits role, regardless of whether we have the same skin color or not.

Signed,
Sree Sarma