ABSTRACT
Projections of interraciality have existed since the earliest days of cinema. Yet mixed-race pairings have been essentially absent from romantic comedies and their accompanying criticism. While contending that the romcom’s heavy reliance on nostalgia has skillfully inhibited the inter-raced couple’s ability to thrive inside the space of romantic comedy, this article first assesses the lingering impact of Hollywood’s thorny relationship with race and desirability. It then considers three examples of what I theorize as “post-millennial” romantic comedies. Emblematic of a new wave of rom-coms that have appeared from the late 2010s onward, the relationships at the center of The Incredible Jessica James (2017), To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018) and Someone Great (2019) both problematize and attempt to reimagine what has, until very recently, been the rom-com norm. These narratives are especially fertile ground for exploring how, as they emerge from a historical consignment to the genre’s edges, these kinds of couples may reinvent many of the rom-com’s outworn conventions and ultimately reshape its contours.
