By Sydney Britt
Hollywood has long promoted the concept of a token BIPOC character, meaning a diverse actor that was added to a film to score brownie points. It is a thinly veiled attempt at looking diverse without actually trying to be diverse. And in recent years, Netflix has become one of the biggest perpetrators of this trope, specifically within the teen romance genre. The best examples can be found in the sequel films, Tall Girl 2, and The Kissing Booth 2, but these films are part of a larger history of turning men of color into objects.
The history of sexualizing men of color dates back to the earliest days of America. Specifically, black men were brought into the U.S. to be slaves and immediately viewed as sexual predators. This trend can be seen throughout cinema history, dating as far back as 1914 when the first blockbuster, Birth of a Nation, portrayed black men – played by white men in black face – as sexual criminals. And back during America’s Jim Crow days when black men were crucified for just looking at a white woman. It is the physical manifestation of the racial stereotype that deems people of color, especially men of color, are dangerous. Black American gay filmmaker, Marlon Riggs, briefly analyzed this stereotype in his iconic experimental documentary Tongues Untied, from 1989. In this film, he notes that he found himself impacted by these stereotypes and he began avoiding relationships with black men despite the fact that he himself is black. These sentiments have carried down throughout the years, and now men of color are regularly diminished, becoming nothing more than sex objects.
The minimization of men of color as sexual objects is especially evident in film, and worse yet it is regularly perpetuated in media meant for teens who are impressionable. As I mentioned earlier teen movie sequels are especially guilty of this sin. In these films it has become customary for the main couple, generally white, to enter into a love triangle with a man of color, generally black or Latino. One of the earliest examples of this can be found in New Moon, the 2009 sequel to Twilight. In this movie, the main character Bella, played by Kristen Stewart, breaks up with her white boyfriend, Edward – played by Robert Pattinson – and then flirts with her Native American friend, Jacob, played by Taylor Lautner – who is not really Native American. This culminates in her kissing him so he will not kill himself and generally leading him on throughout the whole movie. However, then she returns to the very pale white vampire she is really in love with. Netflix teen romance sequels have continued this trope, and it always features a girl, generally white, with the exception of, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, becoming attracted to a new and mysterious racially diverse male and kissing him. However, even if she has better chemistry with the second male lead, she will always return to her white boyfriend in the end.
The most recent example of this film trend can be found in Tall Girl 2, the 2022 sequel to the famously horrible 2019 movie, Tall Girl. The main plot has the main character Jodie breaking up with her white boyfriend Dunkleman – played by Griffin Gluck – and embroiled in a love triangle between him and a new, diverse love interest. This secondary male lead, Tommy, played by Jan Luis Castellanos, has better chemistry with her, but she inevitably returns to the white boy she started out with. The problem with this cliché is that it gives the sense of adding in diverse characters for brownie points without actually caring about diversity. Professional Youtuber, Kennie JD, who reviews bad movies on her channel, says that “Netflix always adds in a little diversity, but it is always the secondary love interest. It is always a racially ambiguous man added into a love triangle, but in the end, the girl will always return to the white boy.” It is a part of a larger problem in which men of color are added to movies as sexual objects. These added characters allow white female leads to flirt with the idea of a diverse man, only to choose the white boy that they actually want in the end. It creates the sense that men of color are solely sexual beings, that are inherently more sex-prone than their white counterparts and for this reason, they must always be the second option for the female lead. In this way, the girl gets to have a sexually-charged tryst with an “exotic and exciting” man but still be with the white man that represents stability, love, and commitment. Of course, this is problematic because consumers of this media then come to see men of color in the same light, as objects for sexualization but nothing serious. This only further dehumanizes men of color.
And these are films that are advertised to teenagers and young adults, extremely impressionable individuals. This almost ensures that the long-established cycle of dehumanizing and debasing men of color continues into the next generation. Film development assistant Georgie Hess believes that it things are getting better in film but without acknowledgment, this sort of shallow diversity will only continue: “You see it in a lot of scripts, even in 2022. The most minimal characters are randomly described as being black while every other character’s race is unmentioned. In these cases, white is considered the default and it is clear that the writer is just throwing in diverse characters to look better.” Hess does not consider this to be genuinely diverse, and after reading hundreds of scripts in her work she has learned to spot a character that is added in to meet a diversity quota. They are inconsequential to the ending of the movie and generally add either comedy or sex appeal. This is, of course, the standard purpose of men of color in these cheesy teen romance sequels.
Sadly, based on the current trajectory of teens’ content, this trend does not seem to be ending anytime soon. But as internet influencers and young professionals continue to clock this trope in film, then perhaps there is a chance that the upcoming generations learn to recognize these instances of diversity as the brownie point bait that it really is. And hopefully, they will learn to produce truly diverse content giving future teenagers access to genuinely diverse content.