I had avoided, averted, excused myself, gave rain checks, and procrastinated as much as I possibly could, in viewing the film “Bamboozled.” This is the brilliant Spike Lee film starring lots of heroes, friends, acquaintances, a bizarre one night stand (which I will not go into) and my very favorite actor/artist/activist/educator/healer/shaman Danny Hoch in a hilarious cameo as a Tommy Hilfiger type street fashion magnate, as well as many other wonderful performers that I have admired for years. The film is tailor made for me, despite its tragic, yet melodic and melancholy ending, but the rest of it I experienced first hand some years ago when I was developing my own television sitcom and entering into the secret war of race fought in this country day in and day out. I have used this experience to fuel my own ‘comeback’ and resuscitated and propped up a new way of working as an artist, using political and social change as a format in which to inform and educate, as opposed to just following television executives around, being so certain of their rightness, possibly owing to their ‘whiteness,’ although all the players in my game were not white, at least not in their ethnic makeup. The film is about a sitcom produced by a frustrated suit played by Damon Wayans, the best of all the Wayans family in the way he works. He really is magical. He is a genius, as he is able to play all sides of the comedic spectrum, and when he wears the characters he completely becomes them. Emotional changes come as easily as a twist on a kaleidescope, as vibrantly unexpected, just as in life, yet something that is near impossible to capture on film.
Wayans puts together the ultimate racist minstrel show, presumably for the new millennium, with old stereotypes of Black America once banned by protest so many years ago, only to be replaced by new ones brought to you by the music industry in the form of corporate hip hop. Not that all of that shit is bad, I love it myself, but I can see how the politics of rap get thrown over easily, when the stereotype is familiar, easy to dance to, and unlikely to change the status quo. The show in “Bamboozled” stars Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson, who through their television debut, go from squatting in the ghetto to lofts overlooking midtown Manhattan. They remind me of myself at that age and at that time when I got suckered into the system in Hollywood. When you are hungry and young and nobody ever really accepted you because of your color or class, the family that cast you out in the first place still hurting somewhere, you dance hard because there is no other way to live, and when opportunity knocks, it is more of an abduction than a housecall.
There was one thing that I was certain of, that blaze of exceedingly exceptional talent, what I consider Savion Glover to have, not to say that I possess the limitless and fiery body and ability that he does, a preternatural and innate understanding of what it means to dance that transcends movement and becomes purity of heart and beat and soul, closer to lovemaking than a box step, but I have something inside me that is rare, that has kept me alive and whole and given me meaning in a life which might not have had much. Just as the two characters in the film were taken by showbiz charlatans in one fell swoop, so was I.
Swept up in the grand illusion that I might be able to eat, have a roof over my head, some pretty dresses, and the heady and vast realization that I could make a living doing my art, which was the only dream I had ever had – what could I say but “Yes, where do I sign?” “Bamboozled” differs in that the show becomes an outrageous hit, where my television show languished in relative obscurity before its innocuous death after one season. We have in common tremendous backlash from the communities that would claim us as their representatives, and label us traitors to the cause of equality and an insult to our own civil rights’ movements. How hated I was, and as the “Bamboozled” duo experienced the onslaught of high level politicos like Al Sharpton (who always is the best person to have in your movie) leading protests blaming them outright for denigrating their race, I remembered newspaper articles reaming my parents’ friends when they couldn’t access my mother, trying to retrace my race traitor roots, as if those school pictures from the seventies, you remember the ones that have you as the subject in the foreground holding one happy expression with another image of you, in a pensive mood, superimposed on to the first so that you look like your own ghost is haunting you or that the captured image was the real you along with the presentable public you wearing the horizontally striped multicolor sweater, could predict the backstabber of an ethnic identity, menacingly coming of age.
Never did I consider myself an Uncle Tom before the experience of being called one by numerous Asian and mostly Korean activists who told the network that they had their protest signs at the ready at the first infraction of any rule they had made up for themselves as to what was proper to the race and what was absolutely not. I wasn’t sure then which I hated more, my skin color or my talent. Why did they co-exist in one body? What the fuck kind of shit is that? I had asked for neither, and gotten both with great abundance and to that now I am grateful, but it wasn’t so easy back then. When is it a compliment when someone reaches over to you and says, “No matter what EVERYBODY says, I still think you’re PRETTY good?”
I took the compliment, and the paychecks, and silently faded into the background when the network decided to give up on their pet “ethnic” project which was just too much to deal with, what with the protests, the virulent op-ed pieces and the LA riots so very fresh on everyone’s minds, and North Korea as unpredictable then as it is now. It was apparent already that Asian Americans were not to be televised. Maybe one here and there, like a nice Bonzai tree or a bamboo fountain, but please, not an entire television show of them. TOOO MUCH!!!! Like wasabi, we are good in small doses, but too much, and they think they will go up in flames. Mind you, this is still the case, and my ex-television family haven’t been on the air in over a decade. You will doubtfully see a box set of “All American Girl” on dvd, like “My So Called Life,” which had the exact same life span and launched their season on the same network at the same time that we did, because we were not to be nostalgic about it. Just like Japanese internment, it is better in America to let those things slide. I think there have recently been some shows that had martial arts involved, therefore employing more than one or two Asian American actors, but I am not really sure where they are now. I lost my numchucks ages ago and I am glad because I was forever hitting my own head with them.
Jackie Chan is fantastic, but nonetheless a foreigner, so in a reverse way, that is like comparing the glorious marathon runners from South Africa who win fucking every race there is to win, to Michael Jordan. The runners are foreign and who knows what anyone’s name is, whereas Michael is an American, and we claim him 100% ours. Again, not the best analogy, not one for the book jacket or the pull quote, but I am working fast here. I cannot be claimed 100% American, even though by all rights, I am. I was born here, I live here, I make my money here, I spend my money here, I pay my taxes here, I make my art for American audiences, yet my ethnicity will precede me everywhere I perform. I am always the “Korean comedian.” My introduction – unless somehow intervened by myself or my posse always includes that disclaimer, as if to say that my achievements thus far are miraculously novel, as I can speak English so darn good without any trace of an accent and do not bow all the time or anything.
All I know, is that inside me, I have the seriousness and the maturity to say that without hubris or bravado, I am the best at what I do, which is the plain and simple truth, undisputed by most, argued only by those who have never seen me and or plainly cannot stand to see a woman, especially a foreign one, take that much pride and such a vaingloriously, unapologetic stance in a traditional American folk art, stand- up comedy. This is not a realm I was born nor welcomed in to, yet I forced my chinky bound foot in the door and somehow kept it open by being so fucking good. How dare I? Watch me.
So to say that there are Asians all over the place, making bank at the box office, kicking cinematic ass over here, they are still fucking kicking.
No one ever called me to tell me my show was cancelled. At least in “Bamboozled,” there is a heroic and startlingly magical implosion in the final act, which both illuminates and gives grief for the much hidden past, and sweet hope for the future, as far as the Asian American impact on the entertainment industry, I am still standing, working, writing, growing, AND independent – albeit reclusive and insanely dressed. Sometimes Asian American kids come up to me (when they can find me) and say that they grew up watching me on tv, and that made them feel like they were ok. That they were Americans too. I like that very much, and it is enough for now.
A big thank you, Spike Lee. You are a tremendous and important filmmaker. You are not only a treasure in the art of cinema itself but uniquely instructive and illuminating to the way we view race in our culture, the real way, not some stupid made up or safe “Imitation of Life” way. You never pull any punches in a world where everyone needs to get slapped. Please feel free to throw me a right hook anytime.
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