In a highly stylised world of constructed film sets, sculpture and puppetry, Sweaty Scales (2019) tells the story of two Asian American women as they navigate their individual sexuality and interracial dating through a quagmire of pop culture imagery that fetishizes and typecasts Asian women.
Exploring the impact of racial and gendered stereotypes found in film, television and advertising media, this playfully structured narrative video depicts the complex ways that racial fetish and desire enters interracial intimate relationships.
Peppered with sculptures and a narrator in a powder blue suit, this comedy unpacks sexual identity as it relates to the depiction of the Asian women as either the deceitful and sexually aggressive “dragon lady” or the innocent “lotus blossom” in mainstream Western film.
