00:00I've decided I'm gonna endorse one girl for prom queen.
00:03Irregardless of prejudice,
00:05I can see your black roots.
00:08Ew.
00:10Joan is a girl who was very insecure,
00:14was made to grow up in an environment
00:17that looked very different to how she looked.
00:20It made her question her culture and her family
00:24and she decides to do something about it
00:28and change who she is.
00:30Welcome to Ethnic Modification.
00:38How are you feeling?
00:40It's good to be white.
00:42The project itself, the story that it tells, I love
00:46because it's honing in on a very important reality
00:49of how no matter where you grow up,
00:51you can still feel like you don't belong.
00:53Americans don't clean.
00:55Immigrants clean.
00:57I don't want to be a stereotype.
00:59I grew up in a really small town in Washington State
01:01with very few Asian people or Chinese people.
01:05I thought when I was a kid,
01:06I would wake up when I was 16 years old
01:08and magically become blonde.
01:10Like I literally thought that that's like how
01:12growing up and becoming pretty
01:14and becoming a teenager worked.
01:16For Asian Americans,
01:17your face alone tells the rest of America
01:20that you don't belong.
01:22There were times when I would wake up as a teenager
01:25and I'd think to myself, wouldn't it be great if I was white,
01:28if I was able to live life as a white person.
01:30This movie is kind of really taking that and satirizing it.
01:35Excuse me, is that you?
01:38No, thank you.
01:39For Joan, she's thinking,
01:41well, what if loving myself is changing everything about who I am?
01:45Isn't it better to give myself a better life if I can?
01:48That is just so, so sad.
01:51All Joan really wants is to be loved and to be chosen.
01:56I'm still Joan.
01:57I just gave myself an upgrade.
02:02Often when it comes to minority communities
02:03and Asian communities, especially in the West,
02:06there's this expectation that you have to like embrace your culture
02:08or you don't embrace your culture.
02:10And what I love is that here's this girl
02:12who is around people who can accept her culture,
02:14but for her, that's just not her case.
02:16Both realities can exist at the same spot and I love that.
02:19Also, it's like dark and it's satirical and it's funny.
02:27Because there is a wealth of people that are daughters,
02:32I don't think so, but just a man in between.
02:33But now this is something that I have to talk to you.
02:33And I am really, I love that.
02:34And the purpose of this is the thing that you can take
02:34I love that.
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