Hines Ward - Korean Pride
Korean - American (Gyopo) Margaret Cho - Gay and ProudScott over at The Partypooper (see links) has just written an interesting
post about Korean pride in hunky superbowl MVP Hines Ward. One of
the fundamental questions raised in the post is whether the success of Hines
and asscociated national pride would help combat what Scott percieves as
Korean negative attitudes to mixed marriage and in particular black and
asian mixed marriage - you see Hines's mother is Korean and father is a
black American. Hines was himself raised in the US. In addition, Hines's
father apparently left his mother when he was at an early age and the
Pooper questions whether this will only serve to reinforce negative
attitudes or if Hines's unquestionable success will shine through in Korean
public perceptions of mixed blood marriage and people.
On this the jury is still out but it got me thinking about whether the Korean
negative public perception of gays would alter for the positive if a gay man
or woman were to achieve the same level of success as Hines. Coming out
certainly didn't do any favours for Korean actor Hong Seouk Chun in 2000
who became the first well known Korean to do so. Subsequent to the revelation
he lost his acting roles and spent 2 years in self-imposed exile Stateside.
The only other relatively famous gay celebrity QEK has managed to identify is
openly gay comedian Margaret Cho. She was born in San Francisco in 1968 to
Korean parents and began doing comedy at 16. From the beginning, jokes about
gays and lesbians were central to her humor. "It occurred naturally," she says.
"My experience - my home, my friends, my surroundings - is very much entrenched in
the gay scene of San Francisco in the 70s and 80s."
In I'm the One That I Want , the 1999 show the Ass Masters were at the Warfield to
see, Cho opens with a half hour of exuberantly gay humor. The funniest sequence
is one in which she speculates on what fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (Chanel)
would behave like in jail. She imitates Lagerfeld, who's known for carrying a fan
with him at all times, using his one phone call to call fashion editor Andre Leon Talley:
"Andre," he begs, in a clipped German accent, "could you send me a fan? Could you
bake it in a cake? Or stick it up your ass or zomething?" "Karl Lagerfeld is such a
faggot," she concludes, and then imagines him responding, "Of course I'm a faggot,
dahlink. I am a flaming faggot. I am fanning the flames of my faggotry."
Cho finishes her intro by declaring, to thunderous applause, "I love the word 'faggot'...
because it describes my kind of guy."
The subtext to I'm the One That I Want is poignant. In 1994, after establishing herself
as a comedian, Cho was given her own sitcom, All-American Girl , on ABC. It starred
her as a hip Korean-American woman trying to get by amidst the eccentricities of her
conservative Korean family.
The problems began before the pilot was even shot, when ABC executives told Cho
to lose weight. She lost 30 pounds in two weeks, and ended up in the hospital with
kidney failure. The demands on her and on the show -- first to be less Asian, for
instance, and then to be more Asian -- continued. Despite a warning from then
boyfriend Quentin Tarantino, "Don't let them take away your voice!" Cho
compromised. When, predictably, the show was cancelled, she went into a severe
depression, and found solace in addiction to alcohol, drugs and sex. I'm the One That I
Want was her triumphant return. She was back, clean and glad to be alive. Her opening
routine - "I love the word 'faggot' ... because it describes my kind of guy" - was funny,
but it was also a show of gratitude to the people who had never asked her to be
anything other than who she was, a proud fag hag.
"Not that I am so famous that it causes logjams at every turn," she writes on her
website, "but in gay environments, my name shoots to the top of the charts, number
one with a bullet, practically household."
The tour and concert film for I'm the One That I Want were immensely successful.
She followed in 2001 with Notorious C.H.O. , and is now touring with her new show,
Revolution , which she'll be performing in Northampton this Sunday. Stand-up comics
are the short story writers of the entertainment world. As aspiring novelists tend to
begin with short stories -- the stakes are lower and stories are easier to publish - many
aspiring TV and film performers and writers do stand - up first. It's easier to get on-stage
than on screen; it's a low-risk space to develop performing skills; and the stand-up
comedy world has become a talent pool from which agents, producers and entertainment executives look to draw.
The comedy world functions as a farm system for Hollywood, and in that it works well,
bringing eccentric talent into the fold. It's hard to imagine, for instance,
that sitcom stars like Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano and Drew Carey, none of whom is
talented as an actor, or good-looking, would have emerged had they been forced to go
through the audition gauntlet in L.A.
Stand-up comedy as a distinct form, however, is corrupt. Most of the people who
are doing stand-up would rather be doing something else. The cynicism is
compounded by an emotional hardness, or glibness, comics acquire to endure the
humiliation of failed material. Audiences can only signal approval with laughs, and
so depth of development, which can't always be funny, is often sacrificed. A truly
coherent routine of substantial length is, unsurprisingly, rare. A truly interesting
comic, of any depth, is also rare.
Into this sickly brew Margaret Cho brings two elements - social conscience and
vulnerability - that are often redemptive and sometimes distracting.
Cho, unlike most comics, cares, and uses her comedy not just to get laughs but to
articulate a genuine artistic vision of the world. She speaks frankly about her life
and about political issues - gay marriage, tolerance, body image - and she's been
recognized, by groups such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and NOW,
for doing so. More importantly, she acts as an affectionate translator of gay and
lesbian culture to the straight world.
"You can really tell the difference between straight male sexuality and gay male
sexuality in a personals ad," she says in Notorious C.H.O. "A straight personals ad
goes something like: Divorced White Male, 41, seeks slender lady for long conversations,
walks on the beach and foreign films. Non-smoker a plus [she snores into the microphone].
A gay personals ad is like: Wanted, Ass Bandit. Hold up this caboose. Dick-smoker a plus."
Cho's interesting not because she's political, but because her politics lend passion to her
humor. She's on stage, doing comedy, because that's her medium, not because, or no longer because, she wants to impress a Hollywood producer.It's difficult to evaluate her purely
as a comic because she's made herself into something else. In interviews and in her comedy, she's made reference to Richard Pryor as an influence, but she's no Richard Pryor. He
was willing, as she hasn't yet been, to takemore formal chances with his comedy, to let the audience simmer while he developed a story or a character.
Cho is too interested in flattering her audience. "I have a lot of self-esteem," she says at
the end of Notorious C.H.O., "which is amazing 'cause I'm probably somebody who
wouldn't necessarily have a lot of self-esteem, as I am considered a minority. And if you
are a woman, if you're a person of color, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gender, if
you're a person of size, a person of intelligence, a person of integrity, then you are
considered a minority in this world."
Cho is difficult to evaluate because her sentimental love for her audience, which
handicaps her as an artist, elevates her as a human being. As a comic, she's funnier
than most. As a human, she's better than most comics. As a political thinker, she's
deeper than most people but shallower than most political thinkers. As a diva-fabulous
combination of all these things, she's pretty great.
Cho is certainly a star in her own right but unlikely to endear herself to the Korean
public with her outrageous style. Similarily, Hong has been type cast in recent 'gay
roles' and I doubt his coming out has much impacted Korean opinion about gay
relationships. The fact that Cho and Hong are about the only openly gay Korean
entertainers QEK can identify is in itself an indictement on the state of play.
As in the case of Hines Ward, the jury is still out but the gay question will have to wait
for a more mainstream famous character to 'come out' before Korean national pride
in a queer has any chance of being ignited.
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