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Created: June 26, 2002
Latest Update: June 26, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Race, Culture and Art: Margaret Cho's Comedy

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, May 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on a review of the new film, Notorious C.H.O., Los Angeles Times, Calendar, Arts and Entertainment, p. F 1, Wednesday, June 27, 2002: Cho and Her Mother of Comic Invention. Backup.

Essay up soon. Gotta go. jeanne

"Cho's stage show ends in an anthem of inclusiveness and self-acceptance, but while growing up, even in multiracial San Francisco, she couldn't help but feel cheated that she wasn't mainstream--that is, middle-class white. "We wanted to be really American," says Cho, 33. "At the same time, we're constantly reminded of our foreignness every time we go home--the customs, the different food, the different life we had as opposed to the one we saw on TV or at our friends' house." From the LA Times June 26 article.

I was particularly struck by Cho's candid expression of an over-riding desire to be like the white middle class. But the white middle class dictated the status norm of the dominant discourse. So of course young people want to share in the status norm - which means they want to appear white middle class, regardless of what white middle class really means.The over-riding aspiration is to higher status on the predominant hierarchy, not to any specific racial or social class characteristic. So when "grubbies" are in, our kids want "grubbies" because they're cool (translate High status). When gangs are "in" with young people, they want to wear gang clothes, often without being clear on what those gang clothes signify. It's the symbol of power, of autonomy, and independence from authority. To many of their elders, they're still "gang clothes."

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