It’s Normal in NY
Why ‘The Big Sick’ resonates in the Big Apple
HE’S a struggling stand-up comic, Pakistani-American, Muslim. She’s a graduate student, a white American from the South.
They meet in Chicago and fall in love.
That’s the plot of “The Big Sick,” a hit movie this summer, a theme as old as Romeo and Juliet and as contemporary as “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding.”
The film raises the question: How realistic is such cross-cultural love?
In New York — where the film’s plot eventually takes the characters — very.
In the film, Kumail Nanjiani (who plays himself ) and Emily, played by a winsome Zoe Kazan, fall for each other. A serious illness brings them closer. In the end, their worlds collide, and they are forced to make choices.
To New Yorkers, the story sounds familiar.
“I have siblings who married outside the culture and my parents didn’t like it,” said Noushaba, 29, a Bangladeshi-American Muslim woman who turned out for a packed showing in Union Square. “My family expects me to marry a Bangladeshi Muslim man, but they also want me to be happy. So [the conflict] expressed in the film is universal.”
Some filmgoers said big cities like Chicago and New York are fertile environments for romantic cross-cultural pollination.
“The city provides context for culturally diverse relationships,” said Todd Conatser, 55, a writer from the Upper East Side. “If people from different backgrounds met and fell in love here, the environment would support that.” But he speculated that “if they had to move, maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t.”
“When it comes to being in a relationship with someone of a different culture, New York is an especially good place,” said Rendy Jones, 19, a production assistant, film reviewer, and student at Brooklyn College who saw the film downtown. “I know black Italians and West Indian Asians whose parents met in the city, so even before our time, many relationships bloomed here between people of different backgrounds.”
“The traditional way is to date someone from your hometown, and there will always be people for whom that’s their comfort zone,” said Alex, 45, of the Upper West Side, who watched the film in the East Village. “But New Yorkers have the inclination to explore, in terms of dating but also hobbies, music, and dining . . . I’d be worried if someone came to the city and wanted steak and potatoes every day.”
Jimmy Bae, 24, a high-school teacher who lives in Flushing and is in a relationship with a woman who, like him, is KoreanAmerican, said while differences can add spice to life, his parents “would be angry, like they were in the movie” if he brought home a woman who wasn’t Korean.
But times change: “I’d be open to my kids marrying someone of a different nationality,” he added.
Some moviegoers pointed out that intermarried couples need to learn to navigate differences from the start, in order to head off conflicts that may develop well down the road.
“When you come from different places, it’s important to go the extra step to understand where [your partner is] coming from,” said Cosette Rinabi, 18, a student at the University of Southern California who is studying filmmaking at Tribeca Film Institute. Her father is of German Protestant ancestry; her mother, Spanish Catholic.
For some, the idea of a culturecrossing romantic relationship is attractive.
“I haven’t had the experience [of a cross-cultural romance] yet,” said Chris King, 47, an actor from a Christian-American background, “but I would like to. It’s exciting because it’s exotic.”
Todd Conatser called New York the perfect petri dish for such relationships. “In the rest of the country we are starting to Balkanize,” he said. “But in New York we still have a sense of community. The other day I was on the subway and saw a woman in a hijab sitting alongside a transvestite and a Hasidic Jew.”
With the country deeply divided over complex issues that have ruptured many a relationship, it’s a welcome relief to watch two young characters strive to overcome divisions with the simple, pure desire for love. Especially in New York.