Danny Cho is a comedian based in LA — you’ve seen him before on this blog, where he was Kim Jong Il in a parody video of eHarmony — and he’s pissed about the reception of Asian American actors, entertainers and comedians; not by mainstream media, but by other Asian Americans.
Agree or not about his different points about a lack of support from other Asian Americans or what offended him or didn’t; he also brings up outright hate from other Asian Americans, accusing him of not setting a good example. It’s something that I’ve received myself — hell, a commenter on another blog publicly called me a shame to Asians for not being completely militant. (I was also called “abjected,” never mind that the word is technically a verb and not an adjective. Whatever.)
I call it the Yul Kwon syndrome — that Asian Americans are so bitter about proper representation in the mainstream media that any type of role or image that doesn’t exemplify perfection gets torn apart by the Asian American community as being a bad example. But here’s the thing; we can’t all have chiseled jaws, six-pack abs, become a master strategist on Survivor and win a million dollars like Yul Kwon did. There’s an issue of not seeing any of us on television, and I don’t hate on him for being so involved with the Asian community post-Survivor win, but if all we saw was 10,000 versions of Yul Kwon, I would be starving myself the same way thirteen year old girls starve themselves looking at issues of Cosmopolitan. And that ain’t right, either. So what’s the fine line?
