Apparently I find the depressing -20 wind blowing up my cherry red jeans and freezing my... prairie cherries to be quite funny. So I'm suddenly stuck on funny people. For my second artist today- Margaret Cho. Cho is a comedien, actor, activist, and huge supporter in the Queer and Asian (mutually exclusive- though I'm sure she's down with the gaysians) civil rights movement.
This celebrity comedienne was probably one of the first almost-mainstream Asian-North American personalities that I saw on TV. I had watched "I'm the one that I want" when it first came out in my last year of highschool. Because of her, I thought it was completely normal to have Asian representation on national/international television and media. So I was wrong. So she was fighting/is fighting for representation, and so what if she has gone so far off on the depend on political life that some argue she's lost all the funny and pretty much become a political pundit.
I was 14, when I first saw 'All American Girl'. Margaret Cho's sitcom, where as she puts it in "I'm the one that I want", "the network turned my 60 minute comedy set into a series." The show flopped, because the jokes ran out, and the subsequent writers... sucked. They didn't understand Asian-American humor... and neither did America at the time.
Following her career a bit, Cho has gone on to produce several more stand up comedy dvds, established herself as a social media tour de force, and several television roles while balancing out a career of gay cruise ships, and rehab.
Her methodology is stand up comedy. Writing humorous and thought provoking text that turns into stand up comedy, animated television characters, books, social media/youtube videos that maintain her relationships with audiences, fans, and collaborators.
For this artist, I think the best way to look at her autobiographical performance... is by looking at her work.
Reading her books "I'm the one that I want", "I have chosen to stay and fight", and watching her stand up comedy series, "Notorious C.H.O", "Assassins", "CHO Revolution", "I'm the one that I want" are my starting point.
What do you think?
Here's a clip of her on chicken salad.
Peace,
Johnny
Cho's methdoology is not just "stand up comedy", what specifically is she doing? Look at her use of embodied persona's and steroetypes that both draw on Asian performance practices and make fun of them, look at the way she uses contrasts between cultures, her use of voices, her physical work, her costuming, her mic work etc etc
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