Beyond Tokenism and Tricksterism: Bobby Lee, MADtv, and the De(con)structive Impulse of Korean American Comedy

Asian Americans have not been completely invisible in the history of American popular culture, but what visibility they possess has taken delimiting and disempowered forms. … Asian Americans must harness their technological skill, economic power, and political focus to influence the television industry so that [they] will have a stronger presence on and beyond television.

—L. S. Kim, "Be the One That You Want"

I think our generation of guys hopefully will do it.

—Korean American comedian Bobby Lee, interviewed in the documentary film The Slanted Screen (2006)

On her recently published critical overview of the politics of representation attending minority images in classic and contemporary television series, media scholar L. S. Kim asserts that, apart from anomalous instances of counterprogramming and color-blind casting, little has changed in the fifty years that have elapsed since Asian Americans first appeared on the small screen (125–46). Having earlier filled submissive roles as household servants in such TV westerns and domestic comedies as Have Gun—Will Travel (CBS, 1957–63), Bonanza (NBC, 1959–73), Bachelor Father (CBS/NBC, 1957–62), and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (ABC, 1969–72) and after having played bit parts as Communist soldiers, impoverished farmers, refugee children, and flirtatious barmaids in the long-running antiwar comedy M*A*S*H (CBS, 1972–83), Asian American actors were finally given a chance to reveal their talents in the decades that followed, when relatively new, ostensibly "progressive" stereotypes like the model minority and the technologically savvy over-achiever emerged in popular culture. However, as Kim and other critics (including Gary Okihiro, Robert Lee, and Hye Seung Chung) have argued, the model minority image is just as problematic as—or no less detrimental than—the stereotypes that preceded it, delimiting the range of expressive possibilities available to performers of color. The model minority myth has perpetuated deceptively triumphant tales of professional success and educational attainment, privileging individualism and ethnic assimilation as desirable alternatives to collective political activism. Thus, it promotes the idea of American egalitarianism while masking the institutional bases for continued discrimination.¹ Moreover, with few exceptions, Asian Americans as categorically circumscribed emblems of the model minority myth maintained little more than a token presence in 1980s and 1990s broadcast television, as exotic seasoning sprinkled throughout otherwise monocultural TV series or, conversely, as bland, nonthreatening supporting characters positioned along the periphery of the frame.

Although Kim perhaps overstates the case in her pronouncement that "virtually no Asians or Asian Americans" appeared on prime-time and late-night television during the 1980s, she is fundamentally correct in asserting that Fox as well as the smaller broadcast netlets—The WB and UPN (now The CW)—have done a better job than the "Big Three" networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) in terms of diversifying minority roles and opening up new opportunities for creative expression, albeit primarily within the ghettoized (culturally disparaged) arenas of children's programming, animated cartoons, and reality television (137). More debatable, though, is Kim's contention that, while Asian American female characters have appeared with greater frequency in recent years, "Asian American men basically do not exist in visual culture" (137), a statement that she then contradicts in a single paragraph touching on the careers of three young Korean American actors: John Cho, one of the stars of the unconventional buddy film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) as well as TV series such as Off Centre (WB, 2001–02), Kitchen Confidential (Fox, 2005–06), and FlashForward (ABC, 2009–); Eddie Shin, one of the cast members of the short-lived sitcom That '80s Show (Fox, 2002); and Bobby Lee, the go-for-broke joker on Fox's late-night sketch comedy MADtv (1995–2009). Indeed, far from having limited "face time" (as Kim maintains), the latter performer has been an ever-present source of both spectatorial pleasure and provocation since his first appearance on the show in October 2001.

Unlike Kim and other important media scholars, including Darrell Hamamoto, I will not attempt to methodically survey the entire history of Asian-accented ethnic...