Maybe Asians All Look The Same
2018
Summary
For my 2018 Commencement at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I had a stunt double who looked nothing like me walk in my place. With my student ID, she successfully passed all the security checkpoints and received the diploma from the hand of my Department Chair, whom I had spoken to personally just one day before. Hence, I thought maybe Asians all look the same.
Proclamation
This is not an angry political work. It was just for fun.However, I do apologize for all the faculty members I had accidentally made feeling awkward as a result of this act.
"Me" at 1:47:05 in the official commencement recording
Inspiration
During my years living in the States, I’ve received quite a lot of comments from people about me that are generally based on how I look (Asian female). A lot of those comments happened in an academic environment, coming from highly educated professors.
For example, countless of time, I have had professors asking me, “Do you know xxxxxx ? She was my student from xx years ago, and she’s also from Taiwan.” Perhaps, we Taiwanese really have some special charms, that they just can’t wait to connect us together.
Additional examples: “I don’t get why you Asian female students all like to make something cute” (I guess he’s not wrong? lol); “Oh, you are from Taiwan? Have you been to [name of a random Asian country]? I’ve been.”
Of course, these comments are usually harmless. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it’s just me being overly sensitive. Thus, I decided to create a “social experiment”, to see if truly Asians are the same to people. This is by no means a serious social science experiment, but more a performance in an attempt to generate uncomfortable conversations that touched on my experience of constantly being stereotyped.
For example, countless of time, I have had professors asking me, “Do you know xxxxxx ? She was my student from xx years ago, and she’s also from Taiwan.” Perhaps, we Taiwanese really have some special charms, that they just can’t wait to connect us together.
Additional examples: “I don’t get why you Asian female students all like to make something cute” (I guess he’s not wrong? lol); “Oh, you are from Taiwan? Have you been to [name of a random Asian country]? I’ve been.”
Of course, these comments are usually harmless. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it’s just me being overly sensitive. Thus, I decided to create a “social experiment”, to see if truly Asians are the same to people. This is by no means a serious social science experiment, but more a performance in an attempt to generate uncomfortable conversations that touched on my experience of constantly being stereotyped.
Me in beanie with my 3 Asian friends on the day of commencement.
The Actual “Performance”
On the day of the commencement, I was surprised by the high level of security, all graduates needed to go through the security checkpoint and varified with their student IDs. I thought my friend was for sure going to be questioned by the security, as she looks very different from my student ID (at least that’s what I thought).Just when I was ready to accept the failure, I saw my friend went through the security photo check smoothly. I guess we do look alike, even though she had long hair and I was basically bald. I happily moved to the guests section, and watched “myself” walked the stage when time came.
My stunt double happily shake hands with the Dean, and took many professional graduation photos using my name.
After the commencement, I had professors came to me telling me that they “saw” me on the stage, and were very proud of me. When i told them what actually happened, I think many of them started to feel really awkward and bad about what they said. I made sure to comfort them though. Afterall, prosopagnosia is much more common than people think.