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31 March, 2003
A Voice for Asian America
There are still so few Asian Pacific Americans with public profiles, I can't help but appreciate the efforts of the handful that do speak out. That short list includes Margaret Cho, the Korean American comedian, who is currently on tour with her latest show, "Revolution," which Erin and I just saw at Denver's Paramount Theater.
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The premise of the program was the cultural differences between three generations of a Korean family in California, with Cho playing the Americanized "sansei" or third generation to her parents' "nisei" and grandparents' traditional "issei." The show foundered on its producers' inability to gauge mainstream America's readiness for a storyline that aired real issues about Asian ethnic families, although by that time, African American sitcoms were already quite common. Although groundbreaking as a concept, the execution of the concept didn't result in viewers, and "All American Girl" hasn't led to a flood of television series showcasing Asians, the way, for example, "The Cosby Show" did for African Americans.
Cho was caught in the middle of the cultural clash.
She was told just before the filming of the program's pilot to lose 40 pounds (even though weight wasn't an issue with Roseanne Barr, with whom Cho was sometimes compared as a comic), then told she wasn't "Asian" enough and an Asian consultant was hired to tell her how to be more "Asian." Towards the end of the run was told she was "too Asian." The weight-loss regimen caused her to collapse from kidney failure after she finished filming the season, and the experience left her both depressed and juggling problems with alcohol and drugs.
Looking over her career now, that episode was just a blip along the way.
| "The only Asian role model I had," she says, "was Hello Kitty." |
Cho was born in 1968 and raised in San Francisco, the daughter of Korean immigrants (she wonderfully lampoons her mother in her standup routines) who ran a bookstore in the colorful Haight Ashbury district. She began performing comedy when she was just 16 in a comedy club upstairs from her parents' bookstore, and eventually won a chance to open for Jerry Seinfeld. By her 20s, she was touring the country's college circuit and in 1994 she won the American Comedy Award for Female Comedian, making her first TV appearances on Arsenio Hall's late night show and a Bob Hope primetime special.
After her series fiasco, she settled into movie roles (including director John Woo's "Face/Off" starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, and a voice part in the animated feature "Rugrats") and began developing her touring shows. Each award-winning and sold-out national tour has been made into a movie; her first, 1999's "I'm the One That I Want," grossed more money per print -- $1.3 million with only nine prints -- than any film in history.
Her second tour and movie from 2002, "Notorious C.H.O.," was equally successful, and her current tour, which is also being filmed, promises to repeat. In between, Cho published a best-selling autobiography, "I'm the One That I Want."
Her comedy routine is not for everyone. It's not just crass and brash like you might expect from any standup comic working today -- it's over the top in its frank sexuality, which plays up to Cho's core audience, which is not Asian, but gay.
As Cho says as part of her act, she was raised not just in an ethnic community but also in a colorful community of gay men and drag queens. It'll take a while yet for that community to make it to a TV sitcom ("Will and Grace" nothwisthstanding), but her concert audiences appreciate the perspective. As a comedian, she uses all her experiences, from her Korean roots to her many sexual and addicted adventures, as fodder for her worldview. I wish more Asians would see her show (we only saw a handful at the concert we attended); they're missing out on a lot of great self-awareness.
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Her performances on both movies and the current tour hilariously mingle blunt routines about sex with vignettes about her Asian upbringing, but her cultural and political insights are what stay with me.
In her current show, she recalls that for APA kids growing up, "to you, your parents are foreigners. It's embarrassing." While other kids in school have fruit rollups and Capri Sun juice with their lunches, "I would have squid and peanuts… you can't trade that."
She also remembers how few role models she had as a child. "The only Asian role model I had," she says, "was Hello Kitty." And she proceeds to make her face look remarkably like the mouthless cartoon cat, a Japanese creation. (She has a fabulous ability to manipulate her face into both comic expressions and character masks, including a squinty look her fans recognize immediately as her mother.)
But, she anchors the laughter with sobering reminders that being Asian means facing prejudice, both overt racism and the well-meaning but stupid type that many APAs will find immediately familiar. "What's going on with North Korea?" she says she's often asked. "I don't know - I have no idea. It's like me going up to a redhead and asking what's going on with the IRA."
She also explains shy she hasn't appeared in a lot of movies, and lists the stereotypical roles available to Asian women, which include manicurist, liquor store owner, tourist, good exchange student, violin prodigy, a woman holding a chicken under her arm, a woman doing tai chi in a park or a geisha.
At the end of her performance, Cho makes the connection for her mostly gay audience that racism and homophobia are the same thing. She notes that people can work on surface qualities such as weight (another favorite funny topic), but "race and sexuality are the two things that can't be changed."
Then she urges her audience to speak out and give a voice to their own experiences, issues and anger. "Silence equals non-existence," she says, evoking generations of Asian Pacific American identity. On the other hand, "A loud voice equals power, and power equals revolution."
Margaret Cho is a fine loud voice and a hero for APAs everywhere. More Asians should listen to what she's saying.
Read more about Margaret Cho at her Web site.