Margaret Cho and Representation in Sitcoms

While I am usually not a fan of shock humor in the style of Margaret Cho, I laughed hardest at Cho's most vulgar jokes. Her whole act is clever, but she seems to be at her most creative when thinking of the most off-putting concepts (one that sticks out to me is her explanation of how the HPV vaccine is developed/collected). Cho mentions Joan Rivers as a mentor and idol, which is very evident in her content and comedic timing.

While I have never seen Cho's All-American Girl, I am interested in the notions about the show expressed in Cassinelli's piece. The landscape of race representation in sitcom television has puzzled me in recent years. In particular, the shows Fresh Off the Boat, Modern Family and Blackish come to mind. I have only seen a handful of episodes of these shows, so I cannot offer a definitive opinion on any of them, but they all make reference in their titles to a "modern" subversion of the traditional nuclear sitcom family. I suppose that this representation of the non-traditional American family is a good thing in the long run, as it offers non-white and LGBTQ Americans the chance to feel seen and validate their identity through mainstream entertainment. I am curious why these shows have become commercially viable in recent years. From the content that I have seen, these three shows are fairly banal in form and content, essentially fitting in with the slew of other recent sitcoms save for their surface-level representation.

Shows such as The Jeffersons, Will and Grace and All-American Girl (though it was much less successful than the former two) can be seen as pioneers of representation from decades before because they lacked a safety net of a woke audience. The Jeffersons, a sitcom from the 1970s and 1980s about a wealthy black family, was created after Black Panthers visited Norman Lear's audience to complain about the portrayal of black people in poverty on television, especially in Lear's earlier show Good Times. From there, shows such as Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Everybody Hates Chris emerged, making black families a mainstay in American sitcoms. Outside of Will and Grace and Roseanne, I cannot think of any significantly popular depictions of the LGBTQ community in television until Modern Family, which was seen as pioneering despite starting in 2009 (six years before legalization of gay marriage in the U.S.). As for Asian American representation, representation has been very much lacking, possibly due to the perceived failure of All-American Girl. Most of the Asian American characters I can think of fulfill more of a token role, such as Aziz Ansari in Parks and Recreation or Mindy Kaling in The Office (although these are outside the realm of traditional family sitcoms). Unfortunately, because sitcoms require the distribution from entertainment conglomerates to reach a wide audience, white ownership is largely in control of how minority groups are portrayed in mainstream television. The most notable exception to this that I have seen is Everybody Hates Chris, a very funny show that feels like Chris Rock's version of self-representation and subversive comedy in every frame.

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Comments

  1. LaurenJanuary 30, 2021 at 6:10 PM

    I also am not usually that into shock humor, but I liked how she used body humor and in general her timing really worked for me. I think she also comes off as really approachable which Tida said in her blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nina AustriaJanuary 31, 2021 at 11:11 AM

    I'm also curious to know if the perceived failure of All-American Girl is largely responsible for the significant lack of Asian American representation in sitcoms. I found it so interesting how producers of the show dealt with backlash / poor reviews-- hiring an Asian consultant, incorporating white side-kick characters, etc. Because the show "lacked a safety net of a woke audience," it turned to strange (and in my opinion, desperate) methods in an effort to boost its success.

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    Replies
    1. AmyFebruary 1, 2021 at 1:16 PM

      Their response to their perceived failure of the show was so cringe worthy. I think there is no doubt that the failure of this show reverberated for at least ten years in terms of the ability to create content for and about Asian Americans and its perceived marketability.

      Delete
  3. AmyFebruary 1, 2021 at 1:13 PM

    I'm not really a television scholar and I barely watch network television myself but I think a major factor driving the creation of more shows with "non-traditional" families is changing demographics in the United States and the fact that people of color watch more television than white populations as a whole. Commercial art forms like Hollywood film and network television are more driven by these concerns than other creative enterprises as they are more dependent on audiences to drive revenue.

    ReplyDelete

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