Question by CrO4^2-: What is was the point of including the fat Chinese girl in Donnie Darko?
She basically has two appearances: The first is near the beginning when she’s waiting at a bus stop with the “cool guys” that are smoking. They yell at her, “Go back to China!” She says nothing. Next is a stylized slow-motion scene romanticizing life in what appears to be a purely white high school that’s like an 80s music video.

Her second appearance shows her in a silly costume doing a boring dance to equally boring music. After her performance comes a group of five white girls dressed very flashy and dancing to upbeat 80s music.

She is just like a tool to make the white people in the movie look good by contrast. She’s the only Asian person we see, and she’s lame, and so it makes not only the main characters, who are all white, look good but all of white society, and consequently, makes us think that all the other Asians that we don’t see are not as good. It also makes the white people watching it feel good about themselves. A racist technique. What do you think of my observations?
Just because I notice racism doesn’t make me the racist. I turned on the director comments and you hear them saying something racist, saying that he was worried about the font after 9/11 because it was arabic. The dance wasn’t dreamy it was lame, and some white guy even yells at her to get off the stage.

Best answer:

Answer by muaythaibjjmaalove
She made Donny and his friends seem higher up in the social structure of the school. I think the fact that she is Asian means nothing and to mention it is proof of your own racism. Also her boring dance added a certain bit of dreamy weirdness to the movie

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