The Uses of Laughter

By Sheerly Avni, AlterNet. Posted September 10, 2005.

Most of Margaret Cho's greatest comedic moments are also her most difficult to translate into print; first because she delights in the offensive unprintable, and second because her performances are exactly that: performed. Cho's famous facial contortions, the impressions of her Korean mother, and the dancer's awareness she brings to her acts are all part of her outrageous appeal, but they also disappear like smoke in an interview.

She speaks in measured, thoughtful tones, with long pauses and a soft voice completely at odds with her in-your-face onstage persona. But Cho has also been one of the country's most political comedians, and this month she re-emerges as a triple threat: With a new concert film, Assassin; a self-produced feature film premiering this week at the Toronto Film Festival, Bam Bam and Celeste; and a biography with a title that is pure Cho: I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight.

Cho spoke with AlterNet from her home in Los Angeles this week, about Katrina, the connection between humor and hope, her newfound love of belly dancing, and the troubling issue of canine nomenclature as a threat to national security.

SHEERLY AVNI: I had a lot of questions prepared about your new projects -- the book, the feature film, the new comedy documentary -- but in the wake of the flood, they seem fruitless ...

MARGARET CHO: Yes, it's the worst thing. It's almost like September 11 again. And of course a lot of people who are being displaced are people who are poor and black, and it's such a racially defined thing ... Normally refugees should not be deterred by shotguns. It's a very weird situation, terrible.

In times like this, what do you see as the role of a comedian?

A comedian can be more honest, and question things more openly. Like with the issue of black people in New Orleans being called looters [ed note: see this week's edition of The Onion]. There are things that don't get addressed by mainstream pundits, which comedians address. Maybe because with the humor, we're disarming people.

When do you think it's okay to start joking about a disaster?

Oh, immediately. You have to start right at the moment it's happening, because there's nothing worse than having no hope, and humor represents hope.

After 9/11 it was so tragic to me that people like Letterman and Leno were unable to joke, they were coming across so grave and serious. That was what was so terrifying, because we had no one to look to for hope. These were the daddy-clowns, the very major figures that we look to for sarcasm, wit, satire, something. And when people were unable to come up with something, it was scary.

Yes, I remember waiting desperately for The Onion, wanting to believe they could give us some laughter, thinking they probably couldn't, and then lo and behold, their September 11th issue turned out to be their crowning achievement. How long did you wait after September 11th before putting it in your routine?

My very next performance, on September 13.

And Katrina?

Oh, the very next night. and I was talking about how people were just shooting at clouds, shooting at anything looked like weather and also that [switches into her patented Valley girl accent] me, personally, if I didn't, like, have a house and I was all wet? I'd be soooo looting. That's my TV! That's totally my Mountain Dew.

Well even in Assassin, your most recent standup documentary, you seem to be even more political than in the past. What does it mean to be a political comedian, and what kind of an impact do you think you have?

It's hard to talk about my role when I step outside of it, because I don't really have a concept of what my impact is, I can't speak about it in a way that's knowledgeable ... but I do try to represent the underrepresented and voice a political voice that is clear. The thing is that no matter what I actually say, the nature of my existence is political, because I'm an Asian American woman talking about queer rights and race and gender.

Like your joke in the movie, people think they can just walk up to you and say "So what's up with North Korea?"

Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based writer.