More on NPR: Fresh Air and 'Columbus' Reviewed
Continuing my paratextual analysis of NPR media related to John Cho and Columbus, I will take a look at his appearance on Fresh Air, a radio-podcast series, and a review of the film itself by Mark Jenkins. Here, I want to juxtapose the concepts of in-group and out-group discussions. Baldonado and Cho - two Asian Americans - are able to (somewhat) elucidate more nuanced and more complex claims by having an inherent awareness of the stereotypes and struggles Asian Americans face in media. Mark Jenkins, a white man, delivers a review that plays on decades-old stereotypes, ethnicizes the film's identity in a mostly over-determined fashion, and reveals his own biases that limit the film's potential, in his mind.
Taking a guest spot on Fresh Air, with producer Ann Marie Baldonado and not the usual host of Terry Gross, the conversation between Baldonado and Cho focused on three primary topics: transnationality and immigrant-family issues, Cho’s personal experiences in acting and auditions, and Cho’s thoughts on Asian American representation. I focus on this interview because this is a rare chance for Cho to engage with an Asian American interviewer and because Cho does not have to do the basic leg-work of distinguishing Asian from Asian American, or even Asian American from white. This interview reveals Cho as a member of the 1.5 generation, which rides a tricky line between foreigner and citizen. As well, Cho is able to talk about the the ethnic identity of the film more explicitly than in other interviews, which center on universal themes and the artistic/aesthetic direction of the film.
Before starting the interview in earnest, Fresh Air plays a clip from the film. Introducing the clip, Terry Gross describes Jin Lee as ‘from Seoul’, ignoring his Asian American background, and then the clip discusses the ritual performance of grief that is also used as voiceover in the film’s trailer. However, the clip ends with Lee saying “Of course, my dad didn’t believe in that shit.” This quip is a moment of ideological rupture that acts as both a general funny line but also a challenge to the expectation that all Koreans everywhere subscribe to the same beliefs and myths.
Cho talks about being part of the so-called 1.5 generation - being an immigrant body himself (having been born in Korea) but being primarily raised in the United States. In Kim & Stodolkski’s study, Korean Americans “recognized cultural differences between Koreans in Korea and Koreans in the USA and they no longer saw their culture as equivalent to typical Koreans from their home country. At the same time, however, they realized that they would always be considered foreigners in the USA and face assimilation-related problem” (268). With an acknowledgement that he is not from his parent’s culture, Cho recognizes this cultural difference both between Korea and America but his parents and himself. And yet, in trying to mimic white-normative forms of resistance against his parents, he still received Korean-normative punishment, again realizing that he and his family are facing ambiguous cultural and assimilation-related problems.
In the next section of the interview, Baldonado asks Cho how he became interested in professionally acting. Cho states that a college production of the Woman Warrior, featuring many other Asian American actors, made acting seem like a viable career. Although Cho has elsewhere noted his valuation of acting as a form of expression and art, now Cho identifies acting as a place to both carve himself out as an individual (obtaining his own room) but also engage with a larger Asian American community. Cho just narrowly missed the burgeoning Asian American comedy community on YouTube - check out an early and definitely dated viral Steven Yeun appearance. However, Lori Kido Lopez notes that online community formations are powerful, “Online media provides a new arena for Asian Americans to voice their opinions, organize themselves and their allies, initiate conversations, create their own media, and increase the impact of their messages—tactics which act in concert with or contribute to the efforts of other Asian American media activists” (141). The same tactics can be transferred to amateur or local theater efforts, which Cho leverages in this interview as a way to see himself within productions, act as a symbol for other burgeoning young Asian American actors, and surround himself with fellow allies and supporters.
The final aspect of this interview I want to examine is Baldonado’s inquiry into auditioning and interrogation of stereotypical roles. She brings up Kal Penn, Cho’s Harold and Kumar co-star, and his Twitter thread of racist casting calls.
When she asks Cho how he views these casting calls, he simply said: “I [didn’t] go in for those.” While acknowledging he wasn’t necessarily picky as an up-and-coming young actor, if something called for accents or mocking, he just wouldn’t pick up the phone. “I had no right to. I had no experience, no standing in the business. It just struck me as not worth it to do that.” He relays one story of being in a scene where the joke was mocking an Asian person’s accent. He says that there were no other people of color on set, only white people, and noticing himself as an exception for the first time. He notes that he never wanted to feel that type of discomfort again, leading to increased activism for more people of color in casts and crew. I personally find this type of question odd, of asking Cho to recollect potential trauma and racism he experienced in the workplace. The tone was not somber or serious, but joking. Perhaps this is a level of in-group communication between two people-of-color: the answer to ‘have you gotten any racist harassment’ is an obvious "yes," but the interaction must be rehearsed for the sake of a perceived white NPR audience.Found a bunch of old scripts from some of my first years trying to be an actor. pic.twitter.com/GydOwlUKGW
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
'Columbus' Is Soulless, By Design: Reviewed by NPR's Mark Jenkins
In their review, Mark Jenkins immediately begins with a comparison to the Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation (2003). Although Jenkins points out that both films are about a ‘not-quite-romance’ between an older man and younger woman, in my evaluation, this is a thinly veiled categorization, combining Asian aesthetics (the city of Tokyo in Lost in Translation) with Asian bodies (Cho in Columbus) - immediately announcing this review’s understanding of the film as text of Asian image, not character.
From there, Jenkins describes Jin Lee as ‘Korean-born’ and ‘no hint of an accent’ - despite the film making it clear Lee was raised in Indiana and can trace his roots back to the titular city, not Korea. Jenkins’ odd characterization gestures towards the Perpetual Foreigner stereotype. Further, Jenkins describes Lee’s relationship with Eleanor (played by Parker Posey) as a ‘crush’ - an odd way to describe two adults who engage in an immediately physically sexual dynamic. In this review, Lee has already been dislocated as a Korean, not Korean American, and infantilized in his own sexual relationship. Jenkins next appeals to his favorite part of the film, the cinematography.
Not content with simply allowing Kogonada and the film to stand on its own merits, Jenkins reveals that director Kogonada took his mononym from Kogo Nada, "the co-scripter of many [Japanese director] Yasujiro Ozu films." While this homage is intentional and the film certainly does look like an Ozu-film from the 1950s, the comparison of Kogonada to Ozu shows that Jenkins will only allow this film to exist in relation to other Asian films and filmmakers.
After initially praising the aesthetic quality of the film, Jenkins enters with his most sizable critique: a distance from humanity. Jenkins states what the two main characters lack: “Casey and Jin are not, after all, fellow strangers in a strange land.” The question remains - did Jenkins want a story about two foreigners? Did he not find their isolation within their own communities convincing? Was Cho’s presence as an Asian American figure betraying the overall narrative themes of isolation and surprising kinship? Did Jenkins need a more explicit Orientalist-twist on this otherwise very Midwestern, very American, setting? By indicating that the film seems inhuman is to tap into a larger framework around Asians in America that creates discourse around a perceived lack of emotionality or empathy, in favor of coldness and shrewd ambition. An NPR review for The Farewell notes its "emotional restraint" (in this case, a positive) while famed reviewer Richard Brody, with The New Yorker, calls Minari a "strangely impersonal tale".
Of course, the film can be critiqued any number of ways, but I found this NPR review aligning with multiple discourses of anti-Asian rhetoric that cannot be coincidental. And - given that it is from NPR - I doubt the review was made with a racist intent, but nonetheless, these inherent biases that color our expectations going into a film made by Asian Americans can be fulfilled in any number of ways.
