Margaret Cho’s Mom Impression
I gotta admit, I was cracking up watching the stand-up. I’m not sure how many people realize this, but the mom impression is perfect. I’m not a linguist so I can’t really go in detail regarding all the things she gets right, but as far as pronunciation and word choice, absolutely perfect. I’m not really sure how to explain it, other than to say that she really captured the essence of an old Korean lady speaking broken English.
It’s kind of funny, I showed my mom clips of Cho doing her mom impressions, and my mom could not tell what was so funny about the act. I don’t think she was offended or anything, I just think she didn’t get it. It might’ve been that the English was too unclear for her to understand, which would be somewhat ironic. It might’ve been that she didn’t understand what could be so funny about something so normal, which only makes it even funnier for me, in my position. It might just be her having a different sense of humor. It might also just be that she just doesn’t get the joke as a human being. She has trouble working with abstract concepts. I don’t really know why.
So then there’s me. I don’t think this joke is a Korean person joke, I don’t think it’s an American person joke, I think the beauty of the impression can only truly be appreciated as a Korean-American, and possibly as an Asian-American. There’s something about the flaws in the speech and mannerisms that have a certain level of care put into them: some words are enunciated strangely; the word ‘the’ is inserted randomly in front of nouns, but not so frequently as to feel overdone. The accent is great, I love the accent.