Toward the end of her new concert film Notorious C.H.O., stand-up comedian Margaret Cho stops talking about sex long enough to say what she really means: “If you are a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, a person of intelligence, if you are a person of intensity, then you are considered a minority in this world.”
Badda-boom-badda-Cho!
OK, so Cho’s summary remark doesn’t come with a punch line, but it doesn’t need to. Notorious C.H.O. is funny enough in its overall body to allow its star to become evangelical at the climax. And besides, like the best comedic observations, her take on what constitutes minority status in this country comes honestly, and it is clearly appreciated by a cult of followers, many of whom who are gay and lesbian.
Cho is nearly everything she recites in that closing list. She’s non-white, she’s zaftig and she’s intensely smart. As for her sexual orientation, about midway through Notorious she claims, “I’ve done everything sexual you can do.” All of it, but mostly the sex, forms the basis for this, her second concert film. The first, I’m the One That I Want, was about coming to terms with who she is. Notorious C.H.O. is about celebrating it.
Once the All-American Girl in a failed ABC sitcom, the Korean-American Cho steps well outside the mainstream with the unapologetic Notorious. She provides a taste early on with bits on the effects of Sept. 11, drinking in a gay bar in Scotland and what men would be like if they had a monthly menstrual cycle.
Cho really finds her stride when she sources gay culture, her own sexual world, the tyranny of dieting and body image, and the love-hate dynamic of relationships.
Regardless of the subject matter, Cho stays true to the joke with well-crafted one-liners that are equally pointed and comic. She’s especially sharp in her quips about gay men, noting, “I learned everything about being a woman from gay men.” On gay marriage, Cho declares, “Any government that would deny a gay man the right to a bridal registry is a fascist state.”
Cho gets hard-core, at times to the point of self-congratulatory excess, in discussing her own sex life.
The comedian is most passionate, however, when she laments how much time she’s wasted worrying about her weight and how her obsession with mirrors undermined her self-esteem. She notes, “I thought if I was thin I would get married,” adding wisely, “The world regards single people as incomplete.”
With Notorious C.H.O., the comic has obviously overcome her feelings of inadequacy. Now she’s also asking her audience to get past theirs, and she succeeds, even when she isn’t trying to be funny.
Jeff Rusnak’s comedy column appears the first Friday of each month in Showtime. He can be reached at .
