Racial Stereotypes, Stand-up Comedy, and Self as an Art in Rob Shin’s The Art of Waiting

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The article examines Rob Shin’s The Art of Waiting (1991) in terms of how the play utilizes the form of stand-up comedy in generating sharp criticism and resentment toward racism and Asian American racial and cultural stereotypes. The generic convention of stand-up comedy enables Shin to resist and deconstruct oriental stereotypes and internalized racism in witticisms and comic renditions. The play succeeds in representing the destructive force of mutual stereotyping and racial discrimination among different races, especially between Asian American waiters, and African American and white customers in a Chinese restaurant. Shin overcomes the limitations of the often-vilified format of stand-up comedy beyond entertainment and laughter in the play. The form of stand-up comedy turns the comedy into an art work of self-reflection on racism and racist reality. The stand-up comedian and waiter, Rob, exposes the questionable aspects of reciprocity in racism and racial stereotypes. In addition to its pungent commentaries on racial reality, Shin’s play makes his alter ego, the protagonist, into an object of satire, parody and racially-charged humor. So the sense of “art” in the play's title points to the aesthetics of self that is being constantly laughed at, satirized, and negotiated. The play shows the possibility of the force of racism not simply from the structure of the society and its system, but from the sense of responsibility of individuals. Michel Foucault's aesthetics of the self is relevant to our discussion of individual responsibility featured in the play. The keen effort of one to free one’s self from racism can open up the potential for one to become an art work in the Foucaudian sense. When an individual is able to have control over his own self—which means he knows himself very well and thus is able to take care of himself—he or she turns one’s self into an art of self or an aesthetic self. Shin’s character recognizes his own share of responsibility in relation to persistent and pervasive racism. Waiting becomes an art not only of the waiter but also of the waited in the play. Waiting in restaurants as constant negotiation and cooperation becomes a kind of metonymy for what Shin’s play suggests as a way of overcoming racism in a multi-racial American society.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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