Who Cares about Laughter? Margaret Cho and Her “Spect-allies” in PsyCHO

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹ The term “model minority” was first used in the mid-1960s to highlight that the educational and financial success of Asian Americans, relative to other immigrant groups, meant that they were able to overcome discrimination. This stereotype created racial conflicts with other minorities, erased blatant Asian racism as a whole, and formed the perception that Asian Americans could even be more successful than whites resulting in “a rise in anti-Asian sentiment” (Leung 321–5).

² My notion of the word “spect-allies” derives from Augusto Boal who created the term “Spect-Actor” to denote a new kind of spectator that would no longer be passive but actively involved in the scene and offer solutions to the problems of oppression (Boal xxi).

³ The term “fresh off the boat” is used toward other newly arrived immigrants, especially Asian immigrants. It is in this sense that Eddie Huang, the chef and food personality whose book Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir the sitcom is loosely based on, uses the term. The story of Fresh Off the Boat follows Huang and his Taiwanese family’s relocation from Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown to Orlando, Florida, where his father starts a cowboy-themed steak restaurant in 1995. Louis Huang, played by Randall Park, and Jessica Huang, played by Constance Wu, and their three boys, struggle with the all-white Florida community they now find themselves in. Even though during the show’s first season in 2015 there were two other TV shows about Asian Americans – Selfie, a comedy starring John Cho and Dr. Ken with Ken Jeong – Fresh Off the Boat undeniably broke new ground as the first successful family show with Asians protagonists on a major television network. In her 2017 stand-up comedy performance, Cho plays on this title by naming her act Fresh Off the Bloat.

⁴ Justifying her use of vivid language expressing violent acts, Margaret Cho stated: “It’s because I am also a rape victim. I am a childhood sexual abuse survivor.” In a later interview about her song entitled “I Want to Kill My Rapist” from her new music album, American Myth, Cho said: “we want to kill the rapists. I’m a victim and now a survivor of sexual abuse and rape, and I think it’s really hard to talk about it. I think having a song to perform live will allow others to talk about it. It’s a huge issue, and this was cathartic for me” (Bacher).

⁵ Aptly, the Washington Post once described Cho as “the patron saint of anyone who has ever felt like an outsider” (O’Sullivan).