John Cho sure is a breath of Fresh Air
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
