Margaret Cho is responding to critics who called her portrayal of a North Korean general during Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony stereotypical and offensive, defending her performance.
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During her cameo, Cho — in full military regalia — weighed in on shows like “Orange is the New Black” and promised viewers that she’d host the broadcast next year, all in cartoonish makeup and heavily-accented English. She came under fire first from viewers on social media, and then in blogposts, commentaries, and articles in the following days.
Cho took to Twitter, citing her Korean heritage and her right to satirize those who “imprison, starve and brainwash my people.”
In a subsequent interview with Buzzfeed, Cho went on to defend her work. “I’m of North and South Korean descent, and I do impressions of my family and my work all the time, and this is just another example of that,” she told the site. “I am from this culture. I am from this tribe. And so I’m able to comment on it.”
Cho also drew parallels between the Golden Globes controversy and the limitations many Asian performers experience in Hollywood. “I feel if there’s negativity, it’s other people’s judgments about what they feel that Asian-Americans are allowed to do, really,” she said. “When we have British people playing American icons, there’s no backlash. But for Asian-Americans, it’s a very particular set of expectations that we are set to maintain, and that in itself is racist.”
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