"Where are you from?"
"Los Angeles."
"Where are you really from? C'mon, you know, what are you?"
In understated ways, the short film Two Lies touches on things that Asian Americans regularly face, like the asinine line of questioning above, mockery by children over their eyes, or the adoration of their "long silky hair" by white men, before settling into its main focus. The divorced mother of two girls has had cosmetic Blepharoplasty surgery on her eyelids to create a crease, which they see described in a book as "the surgical correction of the oriental eyelid" (correction, grr), and which the older says is called "two eyes, two lies" in her school.
The procedure has grown in popularity over the years and might be done for a variety of personal reasons, so it seems less controversial today than it was when Pamela Tom made this film, but I think the concern put forth is that perfectly beautiful eyes might be unnaturally modified to better fit in with society's current definition of "more beautiful," and that being something with racial overtones. To some the surgery perpetuates a Western ideal of beauty and the desire for it is an internalized form of racism. As Tom put it in an interview, the surgery makes her feel that "I'm not acceptable. Our looks are not as good as white women's looks." Then again, many Asians (50% ish) are born with double eyelids, so to automatically assume someone who has the procedure is "trying to look more white" is a mistake, and many do it simply because it looks better to them, as the mom tries to explain to her older daughter in the film.
However you feel about that, the setting Tom chose to tell most of this story, Cabot's Pueblo Museum in Desert Hot Springs, California, is fascinating. It's a Native American style home but it was actually built by a white man, and among other things has some old ceramic figures of stereotypical black people, as well as a collection of "oriental coolie hats" and "brightly colored kimono outfits" that his wife would wear while shopping in nearby Palm Springs, where she was known as "the China doll from Desert Hot Springs." To put this family in that context was brilliant, reflecting the cultural issues they faced in weird funhouse mirror type ways as it did.
I also smiled over the tour guide, who without a sense of self-awareness, shows them a sculpture made by a Native American friend of Cabot, the two-faced white man sculpture, with the explanation that "Chief Semu felt the snakes were the low creatures on the earth, because they crawled on their belly. To him, the white man was right next to him, smiling out of one face, and then cheating out of the other." He mentions all this hurriedly before telling them they have postcards of it in the gift shop.
Beautiful black and white cinematography, and a thought-provoking film that packed a punch despite being only 25 minutes long. Recommended.
