From Margaret Cho’s blog:
Even though to me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I am just in acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing. An ugly picture is better than a blank space, and it means that one day, we will have another display at the Museum of Asian Invisibility, that groups of children will crowd around in disbelief, because once upon a time, we weren’t there.
Via Feministing.
I suggest checking out Jenn’s take on Cho’s words over at reappropriate.
I’d like to highlight her second paragraph:
I am in absolute agreement with Jenn that Stefani’s decision to appropriate these women for her own use is troubling both from a race perspective and a feminist one.
I don’t believe that Cho is correct in her “any exposure is good exposure” treatment of this subject. These are four people here, not four objects to be used for media exposure (either for Stefani’s benefit or, as Cho would have it, the benefit of Asian Americans).
Tekanji, I’m pretty sure Margaret Cho was being sarastic.
I spent two weeks in Japan last summer as one of 6 adult leaders for a group of 35 Venture Scouts (age group 14 – 21, co-ed). It was a cultural exchange type of thing; we spent a couple of days touring Toyko, a couple of days with Japanese families, a week at the 6th Nippon Venture Jamboree with a bunch of Japanese Venturers, and 3 days at a hotel with a group of Japanese Venturers and a group of Asia and Pacific Venturers (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, etc.).
One thing I was struck by was the rather casual display of pornography in public areas, and the large amount of it. The magazines are right in the front of the display that is in front of the counter as you walk by to your train, and waist-up frontal nudity is not covered up at all on the covers. Same thing in the convenience store I went into to buy some sunglasses.
Am I missing something here, or does this have absolutely no relevance to the post?
I had a reference to the prevalence of young women in Japanese schoolgirl uniforms in Japanese porn, but I lost it in editing. Sorry.
I’m pretty sure she wasn’t. Cho has a vested interest in saying that some racialized humour is cute and funny — this is a big part of her own act. Cho is well known for her repeated bits involving imitations of her highly Korean mother and playing off the racialized humour involved.
If Cho were to denounce racial stereotypes as bad, overall, she would be lambasting her own work.
I don’t see how you could read Cho’s post as anything other than sarcasm. She’s ridiculing the way American culture creates false dichotomies: either “ugly picture” or “blank space,” with no other possibilities. She isn’t saying “any exposure is good exposure” at all; she’s saying, “Look how stupid and unfair it is to have to choose between invisibility and the Harajuku girls.”
As far as her humor is concerned, I’ve always believed that she targets the stereotype itself, not the stereotype’s subject matter. There’s a big difference. She doesn’t think racial stereotypes are cute; she thinks the people who think racial stereotypes are cute are idiots. She’s making fun of them, not the people being stereotyped.
You know, I have always been fascinated with Japanese street fashion (what Stefani uses the misleading term “Harajuku girls” to describe, apparently unaware that the phenomenon involves men too). That’s exactly why I find Stefani’s displaying of her human toys so offensive. Honestly, it’s offensive on so many levels – racist, sexist, cultural appropriation with no real respect for or understanding of the culture that produced it – that I hardly know where to begin. I never thought much of her to begin with, and even that low opinion has fallen since she started parading around with her infantilized real-life dolls. The whole thing is creepy as hell. If it was a white guy doing it nobody would even be questioning how blatantly racist and sexist it is. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – if Stefani really wanted to pay tribute to a scene she admires, there are dozens of Japanese pop stars who are closely linked to the scene she’s supposedly admiring whom she could have done some kind of collaboration with. That would have been a tribute. This is a slap in the face.
As to Margaret Cho’s piece, I’m puzzled as to how anyone could miss the obvious sarcasm. Cho is so frequently sarcastic, why would anyone assume that this is any different?
Also, RE Cho’s jokes about her Mom, she’s invoking the sacred right to make fun of one’s crazy parents. All comedians do this. I’m not at all sure why anyone thinks it’s appropriate to call Cho in particular on the mat about it.
And here’s another thing – one of the reasons that the Harajuku Girls thing bothers me so much is that it completely erases the men who are part of the same scene. It plays into the same old crap where Asian women are overly-sexualised toys in the eyes of Western men, and Asian men are invisible. That’s bad enough coming from a man, but from a woman?
Stefani is no sister of ours.
Cho says:
Where is the sarcasm? The entire post is about how we, as APIAs, are so invisible in mainstream media, that we often take what we can get. It’s a real viewpoint, highly prevalent in the APIA community, just one that I do not share.
To dismiss it as sarcasm is to suggest that we APIAs really do have an ability to pick and choose our media representations, and that this desperate acceptance of any visibility is all in our heads.
Cho is frequently sarcastic, however this is not one of those times — she makes no written cues that her post is to be taken in any way but sarcastic. From the subject matter and tone of her piece, I cannot see how you could take her words as anything but serious.
And as funny as Cho’s impression of her mother is, no matter how within her rights it is to mock a “crazy parent”, we cannot deny that Cho’s impressions are racialized: from the extreme accent to the “culture barrier” humour, Cho’s “mother” skits are ‘coloured’ because we are talking about an immigrant mother trying to come to grips with her Americanized daughter. You cannot ignore that part of why people (insider and outsider) find the joke funny is because we’re talking about a “crazy Korean mother” not just a “crazy mother”. Part of why we laugh is how funny it is to hear a heavy Korean accent ask about lesbianism.
Cho’s humour is, on occasion racialized humour en par with Stefani’s Harajuku Four. The difference (at least idealistically) is that Cho targets her humour towards an insider audience (if not the APIA community, than the LGBTQ community), although we can see, a la Dave Chappelle, how that too can backfire. Nonetheless, if Cho were to lambast all racial humour, she would be shooting herself in the foot. She takes the smart tactic here, if not one that everyone can agree with.
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