A Chinese-American high school student undergoes a hypothetical race-changing procedure that allows her to experience life as a white girl in Amy Wang’s SXSW-winning comedy.
If high school is a popularity contest—the premise of misplaced priorities driving screenwriter-director Amy Wang’s SXSW-winning satire on assimilation, titled *Slanted*—then Chinese-American senior Joan Huang (Shirley Chen) might be justified in renouncing her cultural heritage for a shot at being crowned prom queen. That is the Faustian bargain Wang posits in a provocative comedy—which doubles as a thought experiment—that veers squarely into *The Substance* territory when Joan agrees to a racial transformation so radical and thorough that Wang replaces the original actress with another (Mckenna Grace) to embody her new identity for the remainder of the film.
Director: Amy Wang
Writer: Amy Wang
Stars: Shirley Chen, Mckenna Grace, Amelie Zilber
Tackling complex questions of identity head-on, *Slanted* draws on Wang’s own upbringing to pinpoint the societal pressures that might lead Joan down the path of Michael Jackson. The pop star is never explicitly named, but he remains, by far, the most visible example of someone who remade himself to conform to prevailing beauty standards.
From the moment Joan arrives in the United States at age eight (played at that stage by Kristen Cui), she is confronted with signals of what the locals deem desirable: billboards featuring blonde models in bikinis; Norman Rockwell-style propaganda art on classroom walls; and a freckled bully who mocks her eyes.
Nine years later—following a time jump—Joan (now played by an actress of college age) bleaches her hair and retouches her selfies using the app Ethnos (designed to make people of color look white). It is a bold move to call out such self-denial and approval-seeking behavior in an era where practices of altering one's appearance are so widespread; and it may prove potentially controversial to suggest that what Joan desires most is to be white.
Come to think of it, this premise is practically the inverse of the one Jordan Peele posited in *Get Out*, wherein wealthy white individuals coveting the excellence of the Black community implanted their brains into Black bodies. However, Wang—who also penned the screenplay for the upcoming *Crazy Rich Asians* sequel—lacks Peele’s gift for narrative complexity. Her script for *Slanted* is genuinely funny at times, though it ultimately errs on the side of caution when addressing—ironically enough—the question of whether being white is better, or at least easier.
When Olivia (Amelie Zilber) decides not to run for prom queen, Joan embarks on her aesthetic transformation with single-minded determination. Yet, *Slanted* doesn't truly break away from the typical *Mean Girls*-style comedy mold until representatives from Ethnos contact Joan, offering her a way to make these "enhancements" permanent. As the Ethnos sales pitch goes: "If you can't beat 'em, become 'em."
Before reaching that point, *Slanted* merely reiterates the usual tropes: the frustration of being on the outside of the "in crowd," and the futile attempts to fit in. In Joan’s case, the situation is hardly helped by the fact that her mother (Vivian Wu) packs her lunches consisting of pungent home-cooked meals—such as chicken feet—which Joan ends up selling to her best friend, Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), who remains fiercely loyal to her. Even so, Joan’s change of hair color seems to earn her points in Olivia’s eyes, who invites her to get a manicure and pedicure at a beauty salon run by Asians, in the hope that Joan—who speaks Mandarin at home—will manage to secure them the “local customer” discount.
Such details—which likely wouldn't have occurred to a white screenwriter—possess the punch of genuine, experience-based stand-up comedy; they feel relatable, regardless of one's upbringing, yet are specific enough to foster empathy. The script’s major twist occurs the moment Joan emerges from the Ethnos procedure, looking like... well, like Mckenna Grace. Wang could have opted for the *White Chicks* route, using makeup to convey (and potentially even parody) the transformation. Instead, the joke here lies in the fact that she emerges as a completely different person, posing as a new student named Jo Hunt.
It is a risky gamble, walking a tonal tightrope not unlike that of last year’s *Emilia Pérez*, as the audience waits to see what Wang intends to do with this development. Conveniently, there are no bandages, nor is any recovery time required. Joan walks out of the clinic, and her life changes instantly: strangers smile at her and strike up conversations on the street, while young men turn to look at her with interest.
Even funnier is the scene where Joan returns home and her parents fail to recognize her. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Hollywood operated as a veritable factory for "be careful what you wish for" farces—from *Something Special* to *Big*, along with countless body-swap movies. However cringey those films may seem today, the genre remains an ideal vehicle for exploring prejudice and other issues related to identity.
The problem with *Slanted* is that the downside of this irreversible procedure has nothing to do with learning that self-acceptance is more important than peer approval. Rather, an unpleasant side effect emerges: her beautiful new face begins to peel, and eventually, it crumbles away completely. This constitutes a condemnation of plastic surgery itself, rather than of the erasure of identity to which she subjects herself.
Racism is not the sole factor hindering Joan’s cultural assimilation, although Wang’s approach—geared toward avoiding offense—downplays other aspects such as social class and gender. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Joan’s father (Fang Du) works as a janitor at Clarksville High School, in addition to cleaning houses for members of the community—sources of potential shame for someone who feels impoverished compared to her classmates. It comes as no surprise, then, that Jo’s grand stunt to gain popularity following her surgery involves claiming a wealthy acquaintance’s mansion as her own and throwing a massive party there.
Here, Grace takes on the most challenging role: allowing the audience to glimpse the insecure soul peeking out from within this new body. As the film builds toward its grand finale at the prom, Wang delivers a few clever surprises on the way to a rather predictable—though far from simplistic—conclusion. However reductive the ending may ultimately feel, the screenwriter-director remains undeniably bold, mining comedy from an inferiority complex and succeeding admirably in the attempt.
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