By Jason Lim
I just heard that Margaret Cho, the original Korean American standup comedienne, will star in the hit reality TV show, ``Dancing with the Stars.”
I had totally lost track of her more than 15 years ago and found her rather strange when she became the underground Queen of San Francisco, transforming her act into an outlandish combination of black-robed ``The Cure” and the foul-mouthed Sam Kinison with a sadomasochistic twist. But I know that I will be pulling for her on ``Dancing with the Stars” because she was one of my heroes growing up.
She was one of the first Asian Americans, let alone Koreans, who forced the mainstream media to take notice through the sheer power of her talent. Although her sitcom lasted less than a season, I still remember sitting glued to the TV and watching in amazement as Margaret Cho, so obviously Korean by her looks, captivated a mostly white mainstream audience and had them rolling with laughter.
``I’m Korean,” she would muse in her opening act, pausing and letting the audience fully take in her Korean face. ``But I don’t own a store or anything.” This would be followed by a thunderous laughter.
Of course, the laughter was based on a universal understanding that equated Koreans to small store owners, mostly vegetable and fruit stands, delis, and drycleaners. Our parents embraced this stereotype with a vengeance, often working hard for 12 hours a day to lay the financial foundation upon which their children could succeed in schools and dive headlong into successful careers as professionals.
Unfortunately, such disciplined sacrifice led to a certain rigidity of expectations that recognized success only in three professional tracts: doctor, lawyer, and Wall Street banker, in that order. Failure was defined as not becoming any one of the three because then you had no choice but to take over your parents’ store and wait for the next generation to come through. You were then officially a disappointment.
Margaret Cho was the first Korean American that taught me that I had other options in life. Although it might seem silly now looking back, that single revelation at the time was like taking your first breath of pure oxygen. The freedom was intoxicating.
The trail that Margaret Cho has blazed has been kept smoldering by others that followed, including Paul ``PK” Kim, a standup comedian who founded Kollaboration back in 2002, a highly competitive and highly visible talent show for Asian American would–be professional entertainers. It was conceived as a movement to encourage Asian American and Asian Canadians to be empowered to entertain by providing an outlet for showcasing their talents on stage and to inspire others.
Since then, this ``movement” has been growing and has spread to 10 cities including: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Toronto, Atlanta, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, Tulsa, and Washington, D.C. this September 25.
Christian Oh is the regional director of Kollaboration DC 2010. He takes the role and responsibility of director to bring about a paradigm shift in perceptions and to help pave the way for future Asian Pacific Islanders to accomplish their goals and dreams that may be entertainment related seriously.
``It is about providing visible role models and to widen the pool of aspirations,” he says. ``Not all Asian Pacific Islanders will become doctors, lawyers, engineers, we have to help cultivate our artists, and overcome the barriers that exist in the entertainment industry, that’s the stuff that really feeds me, and I know it does that for a lot of those who are involved in Kollaboration across the country.”
This is not Oh’s first effort to empower Asian Americans by enlarging their entertainment footprint. Oh had been passionately involved with the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival for the past few years. His focus was delivering a variety of Asian American films to the diverse DC community.
From fundraising to being president, he became committed to the goal of raising public awareness of Asian Pacific American media arts. ``I really took what I thought was exciting and basically sharing it,” he confides. ``Even though I had a full-time job, I loved making this my mission, and ultimately my passion.”
After serving almost five years to DC APA Film, Oh reconnected with PK and Kollaboration. Through this reconnection, Oh applied the same vision and energy to bringing about Kollaboration DC. In addition to the talent, several community organizations, including the Chinatown Community Cultural Center and local businesses have become supporting sponsoring organizations as a result of Oh’s energetic leadership in galvanizing the whole community.
This is the first Annual Kollaboration happening in the Washington Metropolitan Area. In keeping with Kollaboration’s overall mission to ``empower through entertainment” it is Oh’s hope that this show will usher in more Asian Pacific Islanders to become empowered and take the steps towards artistic pursuits.
If you are in the DC area on September 25 and want to have a fantastic experience with an amazing show, see a slate of performers that will inspire you and would not likely see anywhere else, and are interested in contributing to the overall mission of Kollaboration throughout the country, please check out www.kollaborationdc.org.
Here is wishing ``Break a leg!” to all Kollaboration DC finalists. And that goes for you too, Margaret. Break a leg once more, just like you did so spectacularly for the rest of us way back in 1992.
Jason Lim is a non-resident fellow at The Peace Foundation, a non-partisan think-tank researching policy options for peace on the Korean Peninsula. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com. You can also follow him on Facebook.