Throughout the semester, prompts based on class readings, screenings, lectures, and discussions will be posted on this blog. Responses will be graded on their level of critical thinking, pertinence, engagement with class texts, and grammar/spelling/proofing/
length. Be sure to read the prompt carefully and fully engage with the content of the class materials. At the bottom of your response, type your FIRST NAME and the FIRST INITIAL OF YOUR LAST NAME (e.g. Claudia Z.).
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Week Four: Response 4.4
Describe the work of Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho as Asian
American female comedians.Does the
work counter racism and sexism in mainstream media, or are they reinforcing
certain stereotypes through their satire?
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are similar in that they are both unapologetic in their comedy, making people, specifically white male people, re-evaluate the way they behave towards Asian American women. Kristina Wong started the site bigbadchinesemama.com as a satire on Asian porn sites but also as a way to point out some of the stereotypes that effect Asian women. For example, the section about her big feet responds to the Chinese beauty standards of women having their feet bound to be smaller. Wong felt a lot of shame and embarrassment about how big her feet were when she was growing up but realized it was a sign of her freedom that she was allowed to have big feet. This turns the stereotype on it’s head, showing that they are acknowledging how American, as well as Asian men, expect Asian women to have small feet, but instead these women have big feet, and are proud of it. She also promoted her site through different porn websites or in escort ads in order to find the men that are looking to exploit Asian women, and possibly teach them a thing or two. Or at least make them very angry. While she uses the stereotypes to appeal to racist or sexist men, her site is anything but stereotypical. If anything she works to break these stereotypes by showing true stories and giving real depictions of Asian women who explain how harmful these stereotypes can be.
Margaret Cho also addresses sexism and racism in her stand-up, talking about her experience in media as well as on the dating scene. By talking about what she experienced on her show, she is able to expose just how stereotypical Hollywood tends to make their portrayals of any character who isn’t white. For example, she talks about how she wasn’t seen as “Asian enough” while acting as herself, an Asian American woman, and had to work with a consultant to come off as more Asian. The types of things that made her seem more Asian were things like, using chopsticks and then putting them in her hair. By making a joke about the racist way she was treated, Margaret isn’t making the behavior acceptable but rather reclaiming her own voice in the narrative. She shows how truly ridiculous it was that they treated her that way and finds a way to share a bit of her own culture, something that is still Asian but not the way America thinks Asian people act.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are not only some of the most successful comedians in recent years, they also have mastered an ability to promote activism and well-being for Asian Americans, Women, and Asian American women. The way both individuals raise awareness for women are presented in a way that is much easier for an audience to absorb since it is brought up in generally humorous manner. Nobody wants to be told they are behaving inappropriately or are seriously affected other individuals lives and will tend to block out such negative criticism. However, the beauty of what these two women do is able to criticize the problems in American culture in a way that will get people to listen to them. Margaret Cho has a more blunt and aggressive style that gets more of a shock laugh from the audience because the demeanor itself is breaking several stereotypes of Asian American women. She also can transition into parts of her life that are very serious and horrible discrimination that has occurred in her life simply since she is an Asian woman. Kristina Wong is not as blunt when it comes to her humor but she can present very serious issues among Asian American women through various skits that try and take away the negativity of the topic and twist it to become positive to make it easier for an audience, especially one that has never had to deal with these issues, to hear.
Some critics claim that the way that these women mock their own cultures in their performances is only enforcing the stereotypes that exist about Asian American women. Personally, I do not believe they are doing anything harmful in their acts and are only demonstrating the things that they have experienced in their lives in the way that they have happened to them.
Comedy can be used as a powerful outlet for people to expose less than funny prejudices and revel painful truths about society. We have seen satire all around us in the forms of television show like Saturday Night Live covering the presidential campaign to Late Night Talk Show hosts poking fun at hot topic issues. Comedians Kristine Wong and Margret Cho are trailblazers in their own rights for tackling topics of not only their sexuality but their race as well. Wong and Cho’s in your face self-deprecating humor do not propitiate stereotypes, but is rather used as a source of power and control.
If anything, the fact that the two women use comedy as a platform already breaks several stereotypes. Women in comedy already have to battle against a mostly male dominated field, but as Wong notes, this can be even harder for Asian female comedians as they are often seen as “nice,” “quiet,” and “as commodities instead of humans.” Wong knew that her website bigbadchinesemama.com was going to reach an audience should could not with an average academic journal. Through the use of satire, her makeshift website could be seen by the very people who cause these prejudices.
Not only is comedy a useful tool to reach different types of audiences, it can also be therapeutic. Although Margret Cho’s struggle during her run of All American Girl on ABC was a tragic one, Cho’s humor is used as a powerful storytelling technique. Cho tells an audience a story about how an ABC affiliate station asked her to sign off in her “native tongue,” to which Cho happily does so in English. As Cho finishes telling the story to the audience, we see her give a look of complete confusion as to why the news anchor would assume that language would be anything other than English. The confused expression resonates with the audience as they too begin to ask themselves why exactly do we assume this as a society. What is interesting to note too is that Wong mentions this stereotype being a problem as well and even includes it in her websites’ “FUQ.” IF site goers on her faux bride site wonder if the brides speak English, the answer insists, “why the fuck wouldn’t we?”
Ultimately, what Wong and Cho both do is effective because it leads to what I think they want most- a dialogue. Though Wong’s site is a bit outlandish, she notes that she has received a large amount of feedback (both good and bad). This feedback proves that people are taking note of what she is doing and are beginning to think about why or why not they find the martial offensive. An although Cho’s sitcom only lasted for one season, she has carried on to have an extremely successful career for being so truthful in her stand up acts about the adversity she faced by caring the burden of representation. By taking the reigns and telling the stories of the discrimination they faced through humor, these women have control by making their audiences look at issues they may have never considered.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho both speak about issues faced by Asian American women in the United States but they use starkly different platforms in order to convey their messages. Kristina Wong’s project is about the fetishizing of Asian women by making her websites url redirecting men looking for porn sites because her target demographic is not the people who would normally attempt to access her project. Her forced education of these individuals brings in a new demographic that are probably more irritated than enlightened. The website is meant to be a mock mail order bride or mock porn website meant to educate people who might not be versed in academic theory. It is meant to be accessible by academics and non-academics. One of the ways she does this is by her descriptions but more visually are the spelling errors prevalent across the page. The only exception is the frequently un asked questions page of the website which engages in critiquing western fetishizing of Asian women. Margaret Cho discusses how her experience with network television reinforced stereotypes about Asian Americans. She was asked by a reporter to read an announcement in her “native language”, Asian Americans are often told to perform the part of the compliant foreigner. Margaret Cho does not speak fluent Korean, so she naturally said the lines in English. This highlights how as an Asian American in the United States she is marked as other, and when she had her show she had the burden of representation. While filming All American Girl, they hired a consultant to tell her how she should act more “Asian” so that they could boost their numbers in the Asian American category. This policing of people of color’s actions is played on a large scale where they are told that they need to act within a certain spectrum of westernized ideologies of what Asian culture should be. This dictation is false and creates a false cultural representation that pigeonholes individuals into caricatures that only further stereotypes. There is little to no representation for Asian Americans in mainstream media. What little representation is out there, is usually the same stereotypes that have existed for years. Aurora S
Both Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho give us a great example of third wave feminism. Both women share their personal stories and frustrations in order to give others insight into their individual experiences. Kristina Wong does this by creating a mock porn website, www.bigbadchinesemama. This website managed to hit white men where it counted, in their big oppressive penises. Wong took the mass media stereotypes of Asian women as being exotic, nerdy, and sexual creatures and used these attributes in order to reel in men. When in fact when they entered the website they were met with faces of real women, these women were friends and classmates of Wong who gave some perspective into the array of Asian women and not just the glorified stereotypes. These women wrote down their experiences and the issues they’ve dealt with being a woman for site visitors to read. I believe Wong has used this website to counter the racism she and others have experienced, she opened a forum that was meant to be demeaning and instead gave several women a chance to educate the men who were so ready to get off. Margaret Cho chooses to share her hardships of being an Asian American woman in showbiz through her comedy; it’s a light way to hit on heavy issues. Even so it still gets the job done. Margaret speaks out about her experiences on her first sitcom and how her producer’s claimed she wasn’t “Asian” enough, they then proceeded to hire her an official Asian consultant that she could refer to. As well as the time she had to film a promo for the sitcom and the head producers asked if she could say her script in her native tongue, she the proceeded to read the script in English. She also bags on her mother quite a bit for being “hardcore Asian” but she does this in a loving and comedic way. All in all I believe these women are using art, comedy, and the media to reveal their struggles with those who might have undergone similar treatment or for those who have inflicted it.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are individuals who unapologetically take pride in using blunt, sarcastic, and humorous examples of discrimination they have experienced or identify with, due to their Asian American identity. Both use these methods as forms of activism by emphasizing on how sexist, stereotypical, and discriminatory individuals can be, based on distorted images that reinforce the treatment they face as a marginalized woman. Wong takes an approach for change through a website molded specifically for those who reinforce the discrimination and oppression, which individuals of Asian dissent face. "I thought intercepting traffic would be the best way to reach those who needed to see my message" (Wong p. 100). Wong’s method targets people as they actively engage in oppressive perceptions of Asian women by providing the audience captured with facts and or clarifications of Asian women and culture. Cho on the other hand uses comedy and the power of her voice to share the experiences she has personally endured to get through to people in a relatable and easygoing setting. The content of her skits allow a variety of audiences who not only target Asian American women but anyone who is not of the dominant ideology, to be able to understand how lives can be affected because of an individual’s race, class, and sex. The issue they are attempting to address is the burden of representation as an Asian American woman, which is a person whose identity confronts with the expectation to represent the majority of their marginalized group or identity. Some may say that using stereotypical and racist methods in their work reinforces these ideas upon their identity. However, I believe that feminism has allowed space for women and individuals to reclaim the negativity that they have faced with and turn it into empowerment, whichever way fits best.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are both Asian American female comedians who challenge the stereotypes of Asian Americans in society. Kristina Wong does this through her website Big Bad Chinese Mama. This website is designed to look like a mail order bride website, and as the headline says, “Your Source For Meeting A Nice, Subservient, Asian Bride.” However, the moment a person begins looking through this website, they realize that the women are definitely not nice or subservient, and instead the site is set up as a parody of these stereotypes of Asian women.
Margaret Cho challenges these stereotypes through her standup comedy routines that address how Asian American’s are expected to be, and how they may differ from that expectation. In her work she talks a lot about her time on TV and how she was often told that she wasn’t “Asian enough.” She wasn’t fitting into what producers thought an Asian American woman should be like. For example, she wasn’t small and thin, and her first language was English, not Korean. She mentions the pressure she felt being one of the only Asian American women on television, and how she was expected to represent all Asian American women.
I think that Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho’s work counters racism and sexism in mainstream media because it provides an analytical and critical commentary on these issues. Instead of presenting racism and sexism as being “okay,” their work challenges them and says, for example, that the commonly used stereotypes of Asian American women do not represent their many different bodies, personalities, etc. While some might find the medium of comedy, through which both Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho address these issues, to be offensive, I think that comedy makes this critique of society more accessible. People don’t like to feel attacked, and comedy allows information and critique to be presented without people getting defensive.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are great examples of women with stereotyped examples. They both share issues involving their race in order to spread the world about their discriminating experiences. Wong created a porn site to mock men and expose their oppression. It’s a way to tell them off about their stereotypes and women are standing up for it. This was to teach them a lesson about how hurtful it can be to demean Asian women. Also, to cause stereotype conflicts to get them mad. Asian women should be treated equally than any other race. Wong might’ve had a great idea on relieving this issue but it’s only temporary. Margaret Cho addressed a lot of racism and huge stereotypes through her experience. For example, her experiences in Hollywood affected her a lot. She tried to lose weight just to be appeal to others in the Industry and for her Career. This just demonstrates a lot of stereotypical things that happen when trying to be Famous, especially in Hollywood. She was also told that, “she wasn’t Asian enough.” How can that be real to hear? In order to be Asian, she had to use chopsticks, take off her shoes in the house, and etc. This caused a lot of low-self esteem in her life and in order to keep her career. She also had to get sexually harassed and give up her dignity just to publish her movie she created. It was completely unfair for her, especially being an Asian American. That is why she embraces it by telling her story and making it a joke. It’s not wrong to embrace an issue and expressing it through humor. It’s not reinforcing stereotypes if it’s true but only through her or anyone’s personal experience. They are both strong feminists and I admire their methods of expressing their experiences. They turned these issues into positive ideals to let Asian women know that they aren’t alone and that they should stand against stereotypes and be better than any negativity they hear.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are both Asian comedians that freely express their encounters with racism and sexism. They both go have gone through oppression because of their race but in a different situation. For example Kristina Wong created a porn website to describe the different types of Asian women, while Margaret Cho makes jokes about her being Americanized Asian. They both talk about how they have experience sexism and racism through their work. The way they talk about their encounters they try to make a joke out of it to not offend anyone. For example, Margaret Cho was making fun of the short guy who wanted to have sex with her in exchange for a movie role. She made the situation funny by explaining the way it happened in a different scenario. Even though it made people laugh, women go through this a lot to obtain a career in the media. It was not encountering sexism because she never said anything positive about standing up for herself and the media, instead she made a joke about it. When it came to racism she did reinforced Asian stereotypes as she explained that people would tell her she was not Asian enough to take a role. They made her take classes to be more Asian and also have an Asian accent. The media also would make jokes about her losing weight by eating a lot of rice and fish, it was the Asian diet. She explained how there is not a lot of Asian actors or actresses in the movie industry and when there is, Asian actors tend to take the same role in all the movies. Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho both represent Asian women who have gone through many struggles and Asian stereotypes to take a role in America Industry.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are two Asian American women who so happen to be comedians. These female comedians are two prime examples of Burden of Representation. Burden of Representation is a person who is expected to represent the majority of his/her marginalized group or identity. With Kristina Wong being Chinese American and Margaret Cho being Korean American, they play a huge part in the projection of their culture and living up to the expectations of what they should be in the public eye, especially with such a high profile in Hollywood.
Kristina Wong had done a project that was a snap back at the way society, specifically men, viewed Asian women in general. This general thought of Asian women being sex objects, lead Wong to create a fake porn site that redirected viewers to a site that gave them a different perspective of Asian women. I think that the excitement and curiosity of male viewers with a "porn site" was very clever but at the same time sad. She proves another point in which is very important in that people won't listen unless it is either appealing or beneficial to themselves.
With Margaret Cho, as a Korean American comedian, she shares her toughest times as an upcoming female Korean American comedian at one of her stand up shows. She shares how hard it was to be accepted everywhere she wanted to be accepted. Cho, while being very funny and sarcastic somehow finds a way to fit her struggles into her performance. In the film that we watched in class of her performance she quoted a man who asked her somewhere within the lines of “Don’t you think as an Asian American woman, your parents would be ashamed of the things you talk about?” and she replied “I think any parent would be…”. Another thing that popped out at me is that when producers had told her that she wasn’t “Asian enough”. How is one not enough of their own culture, isn’t it innate? They through her into a category in which she didn’t fit into because it was stereotypical.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are similar in that they are both unapologetic in their comedy, making people, specifically white male people, re-evaluate the way they behave towards Asian American women. Kristina Wong started the site bigbadchinesemama.com as a satire on Asian porn sites but also as a way to point out some of the stereotypes that effect Asian women. For example, the section about her big feet responds to the Chinese beauty standards of women having their feet bound to be smaller. Wong felt a lot of shame and embarrassment about how big her feet were when she was growing up but realized it was a sign of her freedom that she was allowed to have big feet. This turns the stereotype on it’s head, showing that they are acknowledging how American, as well as Asian men, expect Asian women to have small feet, but instead these women have big feet, and are proud of it. She also promoted her site through different porn websites or in escort ads in order to find the men that are looking to exploit Asian women, and possibly teach them a thing or two. Or at least make them very angry. While she uses the stereotypes to appeal to racist or sexist men, her site is anything but stereotypical. If anything she works to break these stereotypes by showing true stories and giving real depictions of Asian women who explain how harmful these stereotypes can be.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Cho also addresses sexism and racism in her stand-up, talking about her experience in media as well as on the dating scene. By talking about what she experienced on her show, she is able to expose just how stereotypical Hollywood tends to make their portrayals of any character who isn’t white. For example, she talks about how she wasn’t seen as “Asian enough” while acting as herself, an Asian American woman, and had to work with a consultant to come off as more Asian. The types of things that made her seem more Asian were things like, using chopsticks and then putting them in her hair. By making a joke about the racist way she was treated, Margaret isn’t making the behavior acceptable but rather reclaiming her own voice in the narrative. She shows how truly ridiculous it was that they treated her that way and finds a way to share a bit of her own culture, something that is still Asian but not the way America thinks Asian people act.
Sammi L.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are not only some of the most successful comedians in recent years, they also have mastered an ability to promote activism and well-being for Asian Americans, Women, and Asian American women. The way both individuals raise awareness for women are presented in a way that is much easier for an audience to absorb since it is brought up in generally humorous manner. Nobody wants to be told they are behaving inappropriately or are seriously affected other individuals lives and will tend to block out such negative criticism. However, the beauty of what these two women do is able to criticize the problems in American culture in a way that will get people to listen to them. Margaret Cho has a more blunt and aggressive style that gets more of a shock laugh from the audience because the demeanor itself is breaking several stereotypes of Asian American women. She also can transition into parts of her life that are very serious and horrible discrimination that has occurred in her life simply since she is an Asian woman. Kristina Wong is not as blunt when it comes to her humor but she can present very serious issues among Asian American women through various skits that try and take away the negativity of the topic and twist it to become positive to make it easier for an audience, especially one that has never had to deal with these issues, to hear.
ReplyDeleteSome critics claim that the way that these women mock their own cultures in their performances is only enforcing the stereotypes that exist about Asian American women. Personally, I do not believe they are doing anything harmful in their acts and are only demonstrating the things that they have experienced in their lives in the way that they have happened to them.
RJ G.
Comedy can be used as a powerful outlet for people to expose less than funny prejudices and revel painful truths about society. We have seen satire all around us in the forms of television show like Saturday Night Live covering the presidential campaign to Late Night Talk Show hosts poking fun at hot topic issues. Comedians Kristine Wong and Margret Cho are trailblazers in their own rights for tackling topics of not only their sexuality but their race as well. Wong and Cho’s in your face self-deprecating humor do not propitiate stereotypes, but is rather used as a source of power and control.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, the fact that the two women use comedy as a platform already breaks several stereotypes. Women in comedy already have to battle against a mostly male dominated field, but as Wong notes, this can be even harder for Asian female comedians as they are often seen as “nice,” “quiet,” and “as commodities instead of humans.” Wong knew that her website bigbadchinesemama.com was going to reach an audience should could not with an average academic journal. Through the use of satire, her makeshift website could be seen by the very people who cause these prejudices.
Not only is comedy a useful tool to reach different types of audiences, it can also be therapeutic. Although Margret Cho’s struggle during her run of All American Girl on ABC was a tragic one, Cho’s humor is used as a powerful storytelling technique. Cho tells an audience a story about how an ABC affiliate station asked her to sign off in her “native tongue,” to which Cho happily does so in English. As Cho finishes telling the story to the audience, we see her give a look of complete confusion as to why the news anchor would assume that language would be anything other than English. The confused expression resonates with the audience as they too begin to ask themselves why exactly do we assume this as a society. What is interesting to note too is that Wong mentions this stereotype being a problem as well and even includes it in her websites’ “FUQ.” IF site goers on her faux bride site wonder if the brides speak English, the answer insists, “why the fuck wouldn’t we?”
Ultimately, what Wong and Cho both do is effective because it leads to what I think they want most- a dialogue. Though Wong’s site is a bit outlandish, she notes that she has received a large amount of feedback (both good and bad). This feedback proves that people are taking note of what she is doing and are beginning to think about why or why not they find the martial offensive. An although Cho’s sitcom only lasted for one season, she has carried on to have an extremely successful career for being so truthful in her stand up acts about the adversity she faced by caring the burden of representation. By taking the reigns and telling the stories of the discrimination they faced through humor, these women have control by making their audiences look at issues they may have never considered.
Steven G.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho both speak about issues faced by Asian American women in the United States but they use starkly different platforms in order to convey their messages.
ReplyDeleteKristina Wong’s project is about the fetishizing of Asian women by making her websites url redirecting men looking for porn sites because her target demographic is not the people who would normally attempt to access her project. Her forced education of these individuals brings in a new demographic that are probably more irritated than enlightened. The website is meant to be a mock mail order bride or mock porn website meant to educate people who might not be versed in academic theory. It is meant to be accessible by academics and non-academics. One of the ways she does this is by her descriptions but more visually are the spelling errors prevalent across the page. The only exception is the frequently un asked questions page of the website which engages in critiquing western fetishizing of Asian women.
Margaret Cho discusses how her experience with network television reinforced stereotypes about Asian Americans. She was asked by a reporter to read an announcement in her “native language”, Asian Americans are often told to perform the part of the compliant foreigner. Margaret Cho does not speak fluent Korean, so she naturally said the lines in English. This highlights how as an Asian American in the United States she is marked as other, and when she had her show she had the burden of representation. While filming All American Girl, they hired a consultant to tell her how she should act more “Asian” so that they could boost their numbers in the Asian American category. This policing of people of color’s actions is played on a large scale where they are told that they need to act within a certain spectrum of westernized ideologies of what Asian culture should be. This dictation is false and creates a false cultural representation that pigeonholes individuals into caricatures that only further stereotypes. There is little to no representation for Asian Americans in mainstream media. What little representation is out there, is usually the same stereotypes that have existed for years.
Aurora S
Both Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho give us a great example of third wave feminism. Both women share their personal stories and frustrations in order to give others insight into their individual experiences. Kristina Wong does this by creating a mock porn website, www.bigbadchinesemama. This website managed to hit white men where it counted, in their big oppressive penises. Wong took the mass media stereotypes of Asian women as being exotic, nerdy, and sexual creatures and used these attributes in order to reel in men. When in fact when they entered the website they were met with faces of real women, these women were friends and classmates of Wong who gave some perspective into the array of Asian women and not just the glorified stereotypes. These women wrote down their experiences and the issues they’ve dealt with being a woman for site visitors to read. I believe Wong has used this website to counter the racism she and others have experienced, she opened a forum that was meant to be demeaning and instead gave several women a chance to educate the men who were so ready to get off.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Cho chooses to share her hardships of being an Asian American woman in showbiz through her comedy; it’s a light way to hit on heavy issues. Even so it still gets the job done. Margaret speaks out about her experiences on her first sitcom and how her producer’s claimed she wasn’t “Asian” enough, they then proceeded to hire her an official Asian consultant that she could refer to. As well as the time she had to film a promo for the sitcom and the head producers asked if she could say her script in her native tongue, she the proceeded to read the script in English. She also bags on her mother quite a bit for being “hardcore Asian” but she does this in a loving and comedic way. All in all I believe these women are using art, comedy, and the media to reveal their struggles with those who might have undergone similar treatment or for those who have inflicted it.
Susana H.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are individuals who unapologetically take pride in using blunt, sarcastic, and humorous examples of discrimination they have experienced or identify with, due to their Asian American identity. Both use these methods as forms of activism by emphasizing on how sexist, stereotypical, and discriminatory individuals can be, based on distorted images that reinforce the treatment they face as a marginalized woman. Wong takes an approach for change through a website molded specifically for those who reinforce the discrimination and oppression, which individuals of Asian dissent face. "I thought intercepting traffic would be the best way to reach those who needed to see my message" (Wong p. 100). Wong’s method targets people as they actively engage in oppressive perceptions of Asian women by providing the audience captured with facts and or clarifications of Asian women and culture.
ReplyDeleteCho on the other hand uses comedy and the power of her voice to share the experiences she has personally endured to get through to people in a relatable and easygoing setting. The content of her skits allow a variety of audiences who not only target Asian American women but anyone who is not of the dominant ideology, to be able to understand how lives can be affected because of an individual’s race, class, and sex. The issue they are attempting to address is the burden of representation as an Asian American woman, which is a person whose identity confronts with the expectation to represent the majority of their marginalized group or identity. Some may say that using stereotypical and racist methods in their work reinforces these ideas upon their identity. However, I believe that feminism has allowed space for women and individuals to reclaim the negativity that they have faced with and turn it into empowerment, whichever way fits best.
Clarisa G
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are both Asian American female comedians who challenge the stereotypes of Asian Americans in society. Kristina Wong does this through her website Big Bad Chinese Mama. This website is designed to look like a mail order bride website, and as the headline says, “Your Source For Meeting A Nice, Subservient, Asian Bride.” However, the moment a person begins looking through this website, they realize that the women are definitely not nice or subservient, and instead the site is set up as a parody of these stereotypes of Asian women.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Cho challenges these stereotypes through her standup comedy routines that address how Asian American’s are expected to be, and how they may differ from that expectation. In her work she talks a lot about her time on TV and how she was often told that she wasn’t “Asian enough.” She wasn’t fitting into what producers thought an Asian American woman should be like. For example, she wasn’t small and thin, and her first language was English, not Korean. She mentions the pressure she felt being one of the only Asian American women on television, and how she was expected to represent all Asian American women.
I think that Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho’s work counters racism and sexism in mainstream media because it provides an analytical and critical commentary on these issues. Instead of presenting racism and sexism as being “okay,” their work challenges them and says, for example, that the commonly used stereotypes of Asian American women do not represent their many different bodies, personalities, etc. While some might find the medium of comedy, through which both Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho address these issues, to be offensive, I think that comedy makes this critique of society more accessible. People don’t like to feel attacked, and comedy allows information and critique to be presented without people getting defensive.
Hyla R.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are great examples of women with stereotyped examples. They both share issues involving their race in order to spread the world about their discriminating experiences.
ReplyDeleteWong created a porn site to mock men and expose their oppression. It’s a way to tell them off about their stereotypes and women are standing up for it. This was to teach them a lesson about how hurtful it can be to demean Asian women. Also, to cause stereotype conflicts to get them mad. Asian women should be treated equally than any other race. Wong might’ve had a great idea on relieving this issue but it’s only temporary.
Margaret Cho addressed a lot of racism and huge stereotypes through her experience. For example, her experiences in Hollywood affected her a lot. She tried to lose weight just to be appeal to others in the Industry and for her Career. This just demonstrates a lot of stereotypical things that happen when trying to be Famous, especially in Hollywood. She was also told that, “she wasn’t Asian enough.” How can that be real to hear? In order to be Asian, she had to use chopsticks, take off her shoes in the house, and etc. This caused a lot of low-self esteem in her life and in order to keep her career. She also had to get sexually harassed and give up her dignity just to publish her movie she created. It was completely unfair for her, especially being an Asian American. That is why she embraces it by telling her story and making it a joke. It’s not wrong to embrace an issue and expressing it through humor. It’s not reinforcing stereotypes if it’s true but only through her or anyone’s personal experience.
They are both strong feminists and I admire their methods of expressing their experiences. They turned these issues into positive ideals to let Asian women know that they aren’t alone and that they should stand against stereotypes and be better than any negativity they hear.
Milan N.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are both Asian comedians that freely express their encounters with racism and sexism. They both go have gone through oppression because of their race but in a different situation. For example Kristina Wong created a porn website to describe the different types of Asian women, while Margaret Cho makes jokes about her being Americanized Asian. They both talk about how they have experience sexism and racism through their work. The way they talk about their encounters they try to make a joke out of it to not offend anyone. For example, Margaret Cho was making fun of the short guy who wanted to have sex with her in exchange for a movie role. She made the situation funny by explaining the way it happened in a different scenario. Even though it made people laugh, women go through this a lot to obtain a career in the media. It was not encountering sexism because she never said anything positive about standing up for herself and the media, instead she made a joke about it. When it came to racism she did reinforced Asian stereotypes as she explained that people would tell her she was not Asian enough to take a role. They made her take classes to be more Asian and also have an Asian accent. The media also would make jokes about her losing weight by eating a lot of rice and fish, it was the Asian diet. She explained how there is not a lot of Asian actors or actresses in the movie industry and when there is, Asian actors tend to take the same role in all the movies. Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho both represent Asian women who have gone through many struggles and Asian stereotypes to take a role in America Industry.
ReplyDeleteDenise M.
Kristina Wong and Margaret Cho are two Asian American women who so happen to be comedians. These female comedians are two prime examples of Burden of Representation. Burden of Representation is a person who is expected to represent the majority of his/her marginalized group or identity. With Kristina Wong being Chinese American and Margaret Cho being Korean American, they play a huge part in the projection of their culture and living up to the expectations of what they should be in the public eye, especially with such a high profile in Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteKristina Wong had done a project that was a snap back at the way society, specifically men, viewed Asian women in general. This general thought of Asian women being sex objects, lead Wong to create a fake porn site that redirected viewers to a site that gave them a different perspective of Asian women. I think that the excitement and curiosity of male viewers with a "porn site" was very clever but at the same time sad. She proves another point in which is very important in that people won't listen unless it is either appealing or beneficial to themselves.
With Margaret Cho, as a Korean American comedian, she shares her toughest times as an upcoming female Korean American comedian at one of her stand up shows. She shares how hard it was to be accepted everywhere she wanted to be accepted. Cho, while being very funny and sarcastic somehow finds a way to fit her struggles into her performance. In the film that we watched in class of her performance she quoted a man who asked her somewhere within the lines of “Don’t you think as an Asian American woman, your parents would be ashamed of the things you talk about?” and she replied “I think any parent would be…”. Another thing that popped out at me is that when producers had told her that she wasn’t “Asian enough”. How is one not enough of their own culture, isn’t it innate? They through her into a category in which she didn’t fit into because it was stereotypical.
Brianna F.