I was planning on settling into a nice evening at home, just me and my Margaret Cho DVD — for a rare and restful girl’s night in, no boyfriend, no chores and no little ones around to protect from R-rated “graphic language and references to sex.” As I carefully pried open the tricky envelope that doubles as the Netflix mailer, a full color advertisement caught my eye. It was for the film, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and it covered the face of the envelope’s throwaway panel. Ironically, my DVD of choice was Cho’s “Revolution,” the show with her now-famous riff on Hollywood’s depiction of Asian women through the ages (she’s no fan of the geisha girl).
My first impulse was to write a letter to Ms. Cho and report my observation, but I hesitated. “She constructed a hysterical 90-minute show to help cope with the pain of racial stereotyping — to mention the geisha now would only hurt her,” I thought to myself. Then again, if I write to her or to Netflix, post a note about it on my blog, send a letter to the local paper or e-mail my congresswoman, I’m being the kind of culture watchdog that Cho encourages us all to be. But you see, I’m not Asian American and so maybe it’s none of my business …
Born in San Francisco and having lived most of my life there, I’ve always felt a personal, though arguably imagined connection to Asian culture, Chinese in particular. Let me qualify with the proverbial “some of my best friends are,” at least as a kid they were. And yes, they were good girls and smart girls with wicked senses of humor. It didn’t hurt my compatibility that as the years went by, my family lived in neighborhoods where we had become the minority race. And while my grandfather, a mostly Asia-bound seaman, called every Asian dish set before him “chop suey,” I am a world citizen who knows the difference between bao and shu mai, pho and udon.
To further my cred with you, let me also say that I am a great lover of Asian American literature and Japanese film and fiction:I’ve read Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, Murakami, Yoshimoto and more. I could just about teach a course in Indian lit and yet I feel pretty certain that my c.v. in Asian American relations in no way makes me qualified to speak up on matters of race regarding your community. Or does it?
A week passed after the whole “Geisha”/Cho affair but I noticed my race radar was heightened (partly because by Thanksgiving, there was no escaping the geisha girl whose face was staring at me from every other billboard in the greater Los Angeles area). First, there was the newspaper piece by an Asian American reviewer, savaging the book I’d just read and loved by a Chinese Canadian author. Then President Bush went to China and my favorite public radio station was running a report on Chinese immigration to California. And what about the avian flu scare and how like with SARS, our nation’s ill preparedness was framed as Asia’s fault! Was the world always so filled with Asian news and I just hadn’t noticed?
In my doctor’s waiting room, I read an article on controversial comedian Sarah Silverman; she’s been branded a racist because she uses the word “chink” in her routine, though critics suspect her motive is smarter than sheer shock value. Cho uses the c-word in “Revolution,” too, and though I understand the difference between Korean American Cho using the word and the Jewish Silverman uttering it, I still have to wonder … Is it OK for me to laugh at either of them?
There are no easy answers for this white girl and so from here on I think I’ll leave the comedy to Cho and Silverman and the letters-to-the-editor to someone else, though there is one thing I feel clear on and that’s the geisha. Like Cho, I’m not much interested in seeing her depicted on-screen either. The Asian American women I know and the ones I don’t know have been hurt enough by being held up to such a worn-out image. I’ve decided that the best thing I can do today is make aware the girls in my house (both obsessed by Japanese anime, manga, Hello Kitty and “Memoirs of a Geisha”) that stereotypes hurt. And as for those DVD rentals? Next time I think I’ll stay away from the comedy and choose some light entertainment!
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I was planning on settling into a nice evening at home, just me and my Margaret Cho DVD — for a rare and restful girl’s night in, no boyfriend, no chores and no little ones around to protect from R-rated “graphic language and references to sex.” As I carefully pried open the tricky envelope that doubles as the Netflix mailer, a full color advertisement caught my eye. It was for the film, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and it covered the face of the envelope’s throwaway panel. Ironically, my DVD of choice was Cho’s “Revolution,” the show with her now-famous riff on Hollywood’s depiction of Asian women through the ages (she’s no fan of the geisha girl).