There's a pretty straight forward formula for romcoms. Two people meet. One decides that they fancy the other and then the comedic value is found in the adventure they take to either ending up together or, less frequently, going their separate ways.
But when we talk about these films that make us lol while at the same time cause us to question why our romantic lives aren’t nearly as exciting as the ones on screen, we're normally talking about one of a few different types of romance. If it’s not incidental love, the subject is unrequited love. If it’s not about one character on a profound journey to allow themselves to experience 'love' beyond the bedroom, it might be about another character running away from an initially unwanted love. But the type of love we rarely venture into is forbidden love.
Ten years ago Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American man, married Emily V Gordon, a white American woman. The beginnings of their relationship are the subject of what many (quite fairly) are tipping as the romantic-comedy of 2017. The Big Sick straddles the border between fact and fiction to recount how Kumail and Emily met. And while the nucleus of the story is the illness that suddenly finds Emily in hospital (clue's in the title) and Kumail having to play husband and give doctors permission to put her in a medically induced coma, what's special about this particular rom com, is the story that runs parallel to Kumail falling for a girl in a coma - the choice Kumail has to make between his on screen family and the girl outside of a culture in which relationships are traditionally initiated through arrange marriage.
While the love does indeed conquer all in the film (and for Kumail and Emily IRL, of course) the stress, complications and emotional turmoil that comes with cross-cultural relationships for which the price is often being 'ghosted' by your conservative Muslim mother (Kumail's on-screen brother Naveed's word choice) who spends her time presenting a series of hand chosen Pakistani women for you to marry instead, is very real. But why, then, is it not portrayed in films outside of the comfortable confines of eras beyond our time?
Not being allowed to be with someone goes against the grain of 2017. It doesn't sit right for our generation. It's a concept that unless you're privy to it, you'd have the luxury of not really condoning it as anything that exists outside of period movies like Romeo and Juliet or *A United Kingdom. *
Kumail thinks that the cross-cultural relationship is 'still a controversial thing'. He told The Guardian: 'We haven’t seen a brown guy and a white woman in any movie or TV show. I’m not saying they’re against it, but it’s something they are intrigued by. It is a little bit of a taboo. When there’s a cross-cultural relationship, people from both sides get angry sometimes. I’ve experienced it.'
Perhaps, if we set aside the wider, pertinent issue of poor diversity and representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic people on screen (can you name another film where the lead love interest has been a Pakistani man? Depressingly, I'm struggling to too), the idea of romanticising the reality that is braving a relationship that defies convention, is almost too real. To tell the story of two people who, for reasons that society, religion, race, class, and all of the other somehow pre-determined elements have previously decided, is a lot harder to broach because it reflects a reality that romantic comedies, for all we adore watching them, don’t normally condone.
We have *The Big Sick *because Kumail and Emily were willing to tell their story. They wrote the screenplay and Kumail portrayed a younger version of himself in the film. And I suppose that's the only way, for now, that we'll come to understand these stories beyond our own experiences. As with anything, there are questions - what of these women who are wheeled in front of various men they don't know, for example? But what the film did really well, that many rom coms haven't dared to do, is place the concept of an initially unaccepted cross-cultural relationship in a relatable, contemporary context.
The idea of falling in love with someone we’re ‘not meant to’ completely goes against everything we’re taught as hopeful millennials. That possibility of not being allowed to be with someone you love, of something beyond you determining how your romantic life should play out doesn't feel comfortable in 2017. But it doesn't mean that it's not a reality.
Like this? You might also be interested in…
Things You Only Know If Your Boyfriend’s Muslim And You’re Not
The Simplistic Way In Which We View Muslim Women And The Hijab is Missing The Point
Follow Jazmin on Instagram @JazKopotsha
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.