An Asian teen turns herself white to win prom queen in Amy Wang's wild satire
Growing up, Amy Wang's father lovingly packed her lunch for school. And each day, she'd throw that lunch in the bin.
Throughout her primary years, and even into high school, she remembers being embarrassed by the intricate Chinese meals.
"I'd get teased," the now 34-year-old says.
"I would beg for like, white bread, ham, cheese, Vegemite, just simple ingredients — like, give me spam!
"It sounds so weird but it was what I wanted because every other white kid had that."
The memory serves as the jumping-off point for her feature film debut, Slanted, which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival this week after winning the Narrative Jury Award at South by South West (SXSW) in Austin earlier this year.
Wang's now based in LA after moving to the States at 19, and is behind a string of projects, including the upcoming Crazy Rich Asians 2. But while she's set her satirical body horror in the US — with a notable cast of up-and-comers to boot — it's rooted in the racism and the struggle to belong that plagued her throughout her childhood in Sydney.
"In my early teens, I would think a lot about: 'Wouldn't life just be easier if I was white?'
"So, the concept [for the film] came from, 'OK, what if she gets what she wants? Then what happens?'"
Slanted sees Wang's morbid teenage dream come true, as aspiring prom queen Joan Huang (Shirley Chen) signs up for a radical surgery to change her race.
Like her protagonist, Wang moved to the West from China at seven years old, without speaking a word of English.
She moved primary schools five times, forced to make friends and fit in at each new school.
Shifting these experiences to an all-American setting was "very entertaining", and puts her debut in the realm of Hollywood classics like Mean Girls.
"It was fascinating as an outsider. I didn't know about [how US students] say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. It's like: 'Are you guys in a cult?'"
Part body horror, part teen comedy, Slanted takes its satire to sci-fi extremes.
Pre-surgery, Joan tries everything to fit into the beauty standards of blonde idols like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter — using race-altering Instagram filters (which really do exist) and pegging her nose in an attempt to look less Chinese.
"The peg on the nose — I used to do it when I was in high school, trying to make it smaller and pointier, like a white person's nose," Wang says.
"I've had Asian girls or even African-American girls come up to me [after screenings] being like: 'I used to do that too!'"
Joan gets the nose she's always dreamed of post-surgery when she transforms into another (white) person entirely: Jo Hunt. This new Joan is played by the increasingly noteworthy McKenna Grace, who spent months on Duolingo to nail the tonal intricacies of Mandarin.
As Jo distances herself from her old life, she soon discovers all the privileges of no longer being a minority: "I don't have to be Asian-American, I can just be American."
Wang didn't actually meet her dad, who emigrated ahead of her and her mum, until she moved to Australia at seven.
But the paternal role is central in the film as Joan is spoiled by her sweet, gentle father and showers him with affection in return, but pushes back against her mother's attempts to connect, in a show of peak teen angst.
"I feel like there are a lot of media portrayals of Asian men who are toxic gamblers and drunks," Wang says, adding that Asian women are often stereotyped as tiger mums.
And it's this familial bond that makes Joan's transformation — which her parents take as a rejection — all the more heartbreaking.
As technology, plastic surgery, social media and AI move well beyond the nose peg of Wang's own teen years, she's fascinated by the way attitudes towards race are changing.
"Nowadays, more than ever, a lot of Western beauty standards are actually imitating Asian beauty standards; cat-eye make-up, tanning and all of those things.
"It's really interesting to think about what that means, when you're rejecting the actual person of a Chinese Australian girl, but you're white and you're trying to emulate pieces of what she represents, getting the best of both worlds."
While Slanted's transformative "ethnic-modification surgery" is hopefully still a long way off, TikTok is full of Asian influencers getting nose jobs, opting for a more Western look.
"When I was growing up, you had people like Britney Spears, but none of them had much work done, compared to today's role models," Wang says.
"There are so many more ways for girls to compare themselves to each other now."
Slanted will screen on June 15 as part of the Sydney Film Festival, with an Australia-wide cinematic release yet to be confirmed.
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