Why does the white boy always get the girl in Net­flix rom-coms?

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Kiss­ing Booth are two of Netflix’s most pop­u­lar young adult fran­chis­es, hav­ing already spawned mul­ti­ple sequels (the third instal­ments are slat­ed for the near future). As with the major­i­ty of Amer­i­can high school movies, both are replete with mean girls, bad boys, mis­fit best friends, clan­des­tine romances and col­lege appli­ca­tions – and both revolve around typ­i­cal teen girls who have a crush on the school heart­throb, who hap­pens to be out of her league and also hap­pens to be white.

In both cas­es, the female pro­tag­o­nist also expe­ri­ences a hap­py end­ing with said heart­throb. When it comes to the sequels, a love tri­an­gle is intro­duced as a means to advance the sto­ry­line. In To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, Lara Jean (Lana Con­dor) finds her­self vol­un­teer­ing at the same retire­ment home as her mid­dle school flame John Ambrose (Jor­dan Fish­er), one of the boys that received a love let­ter from her in the first movie.

Since this is an adap­ta­tion, this devel­op­ment could just be the result of the screen­writ­ers being faith­ful to the source mate­r­i­al – but the same log­ic doesn’t apply to the cast­ing. In the book, John Ambrose is described as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Cau­casian with rosy cheeks, akin to a young Robert Red­ford. In the orig­i­nal film, we get a glimpse of an old­er and younger John Ambrose, played by Jor­dan Burtch­ett and anoth­er white actor, Pavel Pid­docke, respec­tive­ly. But in the sequel, it’s the mul­ti-eth­nic Jor­dan Fish­er who stars in the role.

Mean­while, The Kiss­ing Booth 2 takes it up a notch by intro­duc­ing two char­ac­ters to aug­ment the trou­bled long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship sto­ry­line. Sparks fly between Elle (Joey King) and her dance part­ner Mar­co (Tay­lor Zakhar Perez), who is help­ing her win a con­test to fund col­lege. At the same time, she wor­ries that Noah (Jacob Elor­di) is cheat­ing on her with fel­low Har­vard fresh­man Chloe (Maisie Richard­son-Sell­ers), a sophis­ti­cat­ed Black woman with a British accent.

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, both of the ​“oth­er” peo­ple in the love tri­an­gles are PoC. The rea­son behind recast­ing John Ambrose as an African-Amer­i­can is unclear, and nei­ther is Perez’s hyper­sex­u­alised char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion as Mar­co. Could it be that audi­ences are more com­fort­able watch­ing PoC in the lim­it­ed capac­i­ty of fleet­ing attrac­tions rather than poten­tial love interests?

In addi­tion to their obvi­ous attrac­tive­ness, John Ambrose and Mar­co are nice to a fault. None of this seems to mat­ter to our hero­ines, who – after one heat­ed kiss – pre­dictably go back to their boyfriends, how­ev­er prob­lem­at­ic or inse­cure their rela­tion­ships with them are. Although young love may be blind, the cast­ing for these movies wasn’t. It’s clear that these men of colour are only intro­duced as a dis­trac­tion, while the white boy inevitably gets the girl with min­i­mal effort – he just needs to show up.

For peo­ple of colour, nav­i­gat­ing pop cul­ture means encoun­ter­ing a bar­rage of microag­gres­sions and see­ing your­self rep­re­sent­ed as an exot­ic after­thought cer­tain­ly doesn’t help mat­ters. Inten­tion­al or not, Net­flix seems to have tokenised these men of colour. This trend extends to Net­flix Orig­i­nal TV shows like Nev­er Have I Ever, where Devi fan­ta­sizes about the chis­elled Pax­ton Hall-Yoshi­da whose char­ac­ter is Japan­ese-Amer­i­can. As the show pro­gress­es, she forms a deep­er con­nec­tion with her neme­sis Ben Gross (a white boy) and in the sea­son finale, ends on a cliffhang­er where she’s kiss­ing Ben.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in Sex Edu­ca­tion, Maeve (Emma Mack­ey) devel­ops feel­ings for Asa Butterfield’s Otis (a white boy) even though she’s dat­ing Black star ath­lete, Jack­son (Kedar Williams-Stir­ling). Even the show’s open­ly gay Black char­ac­ter Eric Effiong (Ncu­ti Gat­wa) breaks up with his adorable boyfriend Rahim (Sami Out­al­bali) because his feel­ings for Adam (Con­nor Swindells, anoth­er white boy) are stronger. In all these instances, the char­ac­ter of colour is usu­al­ly assigned an eye can­dy role that the main char­ac­ter gets over their fas­ci­na­tion for and ends up choos­ing a white per­son over them.

Bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion is not a good enough rea­son to jus­ti­fy these cast­ing deci­sions. Writ­ing PoC into lead­ing roles instead of using them as plot devices would be infi­nite­ly more valu­able. Espe­cial­ly with­in movies like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Kiss­ing Booth, which fol­low a set for­mu­la, there is sure­ly space to address diver­si­ty with­out result­ing in watered-down rep­re­sen­ta­tion that’s tai­lored to a spe­cif­ic audi­ence. Instead of aim­ing to pass off a spe­cious cast diver­si­ty, film­mak­ers need to realise that the roles these char­ac­ters play mat­ter just as much.