Personal yet nonconfrontational

MARGARET CHO: ASSASSIN (2005)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Margaret Cho is a comedienne who prides herself on honesty. As she points out in her latest concert film, "Assassin," she is too honest for the Republican crowd. Though there are some funny moments in "Assassin" (though nothing quite as hilarious or pointed as I think she can be), something irked me about Cho. She makes the unstated assumption that jokes on sexuality in and of itself is funny - not if you don't place the jokes in a comedic context.

What I probably just said makes no sense because if it is a joke, it is in a comedic context, right? Not if the idea that sexuality solely is funny - it is not. So we hear Cho speaking of lesbianism, sometimes in a slightly funny context when spoken of politically. There are also references to the Pope (is he in drag?), tired cliches on the Bush administration, the Terry Schiavo case, the Iraq War, and so on. The Schiavo joke is extreme but not really humorous (though I agree the case was overexposed on TV). Her ranting and raving about same-sex marriage also lacks humor. Cho is a lesbian herself but she never confronts these issues in a personal way - she just wants us to be shocked and awed by the very nature of what she is saying. I once saw Eric Bogosian in Princeton, NJ in a very personalized, confrontational concert that left many (myself included) exhausted yet also enlightened - you felt Bogosian spoke from experience and found a way to make what he said humorous. Cho misses with every aim she makes.

I enjoyed Cho's riffs on her mother and a particular kind of Asian female - I would assume the geisha kind but I can't be sure. But the rest of this concert film, shot in May 2005 in Washington, D.C., does nothing more than assault the audience rather than to provide the jokes with any sort of social commentary built on humor. The bottom line is that this time out, Margaret Cho is simply not very funny.