| “Notorious C.H.O.,” a filmed live performance by Margaret
Cho, may shock newcomers to the stand-up comedian’s repertoire, but it
delivers an hour and a half of exactly what her fans have come to expect:
raunch, self-deprecation, more raunch, jokes about her mom, heartfelt polemic
and . . . just a little more raunch.
After an opening sequence starring Cho’s fans – a dream of demographic diversity, featuring gay men, lesbians, transvestites, young heterosexuals, whites, blacks and folks of all shades of brown – Cho gets right down to cases, immediately puncturing celebrity sanctimony with an unprintable joke about visiting Ground Zero. From here, it’s open season on all manner of subjects, taboo and otherwise: Delivering her jokes with slow, deliberate timing and adding lots of contorted facial expressions, Cho cheerfully and often crudely discusses her first colonic, menstruation, ethnic stereotypes (Cho’s parents are Korean), gay sex, straight sex, pornography, S&M clubs, eating disorders, breakups and lots of things that can’t even be referred to in a family newspaper. Some of her observations are funny – like “the creepy connection between leather sex, ‘Star Trek’ and Renaissance fairs” – and she even manages to inject irreverent humor into her most impassioned political complaints. (After a serious critique of homophobia, she adds that “any government that would deny a gay man the right to bridal registry is a fascist state.”) Mostly, though, Cho is relying on shock value for her laughs: It’s not that what she’s saying is particularly observant or witty but that she’s saying it at all. Ultimately, even Cho’s most confrontational material – including a Lenny Bruce-inspired passage during which a particular epithet is repeated so often that it loses its meaning – is wrapped up with a big, unthreatening bow in the form of a plea for more self-esteem for the oppressed (which for Cho includes not only homosexuals, people of color and women, but also “people of intelligence and people of integrity”). 100d she manages to squeeze in one more anecdote about her mother in a characterization that rings with both specificity and universal truths. Cho’s mom is clearly a favorite with the crowd, and she’s obviously the source of some of her daughter’s best material. The fact that Mrs. Cho has a cameo at the beginning of “Notorious C.H.O.” is just a bonus in a movie that will surely be profane, politically charged music to the ears of Cho’s fans. |