Catfished by Rom-Coms

A culture article by Kimia Faroughi

The 80s had Pretty in Pink, the 90s had 10 Things I Hate About You. Now, Netflix is bringing back the very same genre that had since faded away from mainstream culture over the last few years to its platform: teen romantic comedies. Over the timespan of just a few months, Netflix released three different teen romantic comedies that have quickly gained popularity amongst our generation: The Kissing Booth (May 2018), To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (August 2018), and Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (August 2018).

I don’t think a day went by over the summer that I didn’t hear the name of at least one of these movies, whether it be on social media or in real life. You can imagine how much of an annoyance this came to someone like me who thinks that teen rom-coms are mind-numbingly boring, galling, superficial, and unrealistic. This is not to say that I haven’t enjoyed a single teen rom-com in my life. I liked Clueless! But still, it was irritating hearing just how much people wanted their lives to be like the characters in these movies–movies that, I knew before watching them, would be awful. This is why I specifically avoided watching these three movies at all, despite how much people my age became obsessed with them.  Until now.

I’m sad to announce that everything I predicted about these movies was true. They were bad. No, not just bad; they were terrible. My bias could be clouding my judgement, but I honestly felt that gouging my eyes out would be the best alternative to sitting there and watching them. But instead of discussing how awful these movies were, I am going to talk about their value strictly as romantic comedies, specifically teenage romantic comedies.

Despite my limited knowledge of the rom-com genre, I know for a fact that romantic comedies are supposed to be romantic and comedic. It’s literally what it’s called. Why don’t we go through each of these movies and see if they are A) romantic and B) comedic:

The Kissing Booth – A) romantic: No. B) comedic: If comedy was the entire planet Earth, then The Kissing Booth would be Pluto.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before – A) romantic: I guess, at least more than The Kissing Booth. B) comedic: Surprisingly, some parts were funny, nothing amazing though.

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser – A) romantic: I don’t know if there is a powerful enough word to describe just how much of a no this is. B) comedic: Not really, but it was still better comedy-wise than The Kissing Booth. 

I’ll define what I mean by romantic and comedic. By romantic, I mean it makes me root for the couple, and by comedic, I mean it makes me laugh. None of the films did either of these things, except maybe, but only barely, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Rather than make me laugh or feel happy, the movies were cheesy, cringe worthy, and boring. I wanted them to be over much more than I wanted the couple to get together. None of them were enjoyable or refreshing to the point where I would want to watch them again, mainly because they all played into the same romantic comedy formula where the guy and the girl meet, the guy and the girl have problems, and then the guy and the girl get back together. Additionally, the same old teenage stereotypes were played out in each of the movies: the mean girl antagonist, the quirky shy girl protagonist, the heroic unattainable male lead, and the comedic and otherwise one dimensional best friend.

All of them just annoyed me. I mean, why is it so incredibly shocking to Netflix producers that a girl and a guy with opposite personalities or social statuses fall in love–to the point that they made not one, not two, but three movies about it? Admittedly, there are some aspects of the movies that made them different from each other, such as the different messages each one gave to the people watching them. However, these differences do not strengthen the quality of these romantic comedies; if anything, they make them worse. Let me explain.

I’ll start with The Kissing Booth. This movie is essentially about a girl, Elle, who falls in love with her best friend’s older brother, Noah, because she came up with the idea of doing a kissing booth at her school’s carnival and ended up kissing him. Looking past the fact that it is an awful movie (if you can’t tell already from the plot), it does not make you root for the couple at all, and might be the most unfunny thing I’ve ever seen. On top of all of that, the kinds of messages it sends to the teenagers watching were absolutely insane. 

Elle was a questionable protagonist, with her character constantly objectifying herself in order to get back at Noah for treating her like a little sister. Noah is overprotective and possessive–with violent tendencies–and at one point when Elle mistakenly stumbles into the boy’s locker room, he tells her to leave, only for her to lash out and do a weird striptease. Oh, and get this: a guy grabs her butt at the beginning of the movie and she soon after, within the same day I think, agrees to go out on a date with him.

But later in the movie, she is apprehensive to go out with Noah because she is afraid that he is going to treat her like he treats all other girls, i.e. objectify her. Something does not sound right here. What kind of message does this send to the massive number of teenagers inevitably watching a movie to which they are the target audience? That the only way to be confident or to get the guy of your dreams is to play into the very objectifications of women that are so destructive to our society? Maybe I am reading too much into this, but the fact that The Kissing Booth was one of the most streamed movies of the summer, and the fact that almost everyone I knew was talking about it, is kind of alarming.

This isn’t even the half of it. In Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, a girl named Sierra falls in love with a guy named Jamey while catfishing him by pretending to be an extremely mean girl at her school named Veronica. In the movie, Veronica and Sierra form an unlikely friendship while catfishing Jamey in exchange for Sierra tutoring Veronica. They make this agreement so that Sierra can have her romance story and Veronica can become smarter to get back with her ex-boyfriend, who broke up with her for being too dumb.

Apart from the fact that this movie is supposed to be a progressive romantic comedy, yet plays into so many teen stereotypes, sends some questionable messages. For one, throughout almost the entire movie, Sierra lies and tricks Jamey into believing she is an entirely different person and even involves Veronica in her whole scheme, only to become extremely vindictive when Veronica, who was doing exactly what she was told to do (play along with the story), does not completely reject Jamey when he kisses her. Sierra breaks into Veronica’s Instagram account and posts a humiliating picture of her, which subsequently gets displayed on the giant scoreboard at the school’s football game so that everyone can see.

And by the end of the movie, Sierra is forgiven by both Jamey and Veronica in a heartbeat without facing any consequences or punishment for her actions other than maybe sitting alone for lunch for a couple of days. The message I got from this movie was that lying and tricking someone into believing you are someone else, and then lashing out and cyberbullying your friend who truly did not mean to harm you, will result in a happy ending. And the most aggravating part: she got into Stanford. Just, wow. 

Compared to these two movies, To All the Boys I’ve Ever Loved was not too bad. Like I said, I would never watch it again because there was nothing new and interesting in it for me, but that does not mean that I did not enjoy it. It made me laugh occasionally and I was happy that the couple got together at the end, so it was a successful romantic comedy in that respect. Even though it was slightly cheesy and clichéd, nothing problematic occurred in terms of the messages it sent to teens. I would not recommend it and I certainly would not want to see it again, but that may just be my personal preference. At the end of the day, there was nothing wrong with it like there was with the other two. 

So, I guess the only question remaining is if Netflix is, in fact, bringing back teenage romantic comedies. My answer to this is another question: how can they bring something back that is neither romantic nor comedic? I suppose the real question should be, is Netflix bringing back cheesy teen movies that reuse every single stereotype and cliché known to humankind? In case you could not tell by now, the answer is a definitive yes. But because of the massive popularity of these three movies, especially among people in our generation, Netflix will most likely be cranking out teen rom-coms with the same tired plots and problematic messages over the next year or two. Fun!