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My Turnby Toni Tabora-Roberts |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V18, #26 (July 1, 2008), page 6.
The OPB cringe factor
A bunch of us were down in Eugene in late April to attend the DisOrient Film Festival. The hotel clock radio woke us early so we could listen to some friends and colleagues on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s (OPB) new talk radio program Think Out Loud. The topic for the show was Asian-American identity, in light of the DisOrient Film Festival and Asian Heritage Month …
Before I continue, I must give full disclosure. I am a staffer, volunteer, member, and listener at KBOO Community Radio, which is a little left of OPB on the dial and quite a bit left in spirit. But, I’m also a regular OPB/NPR listener — I admit, I have a radio crush on This American Life’s Starlee Kine and I love the Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz. Those biases aside, I want to tell this story to get it out there, because it needs to be acknowledged. It needs to be discussed.
So, the clock radio turns on. I hunker under the covers in my darkened hotel room to listen in. The intro music comes on and the host, Emily Harris, begins, "How do you say hello in Asian? Konichiwa? Annyong hashimnikka? Sa wat dee khrap? Magandang tanghali po?" She then apologies for her "flawed" accent. (Yeah, it was pretty bad. Bad accents and inaccurate greetings, to boot — when I first heard it, I didn’t at all recognize she was trying to speak Tagalog, my parents’ language.) She then introduced the fact that the show is about Asian-AMERICAN identity. The cringe factor was in full effect.
Wiktionary defines cringing this way: "To shrink or recoil, as in fear, disgust, or embarrassment." Yes, yes, and yes. But mostly I think I cringed in embarrassment. For such a "progressive" city, Portland continues to amaze me with certain kinds of ignorance like this. Another OPB show, Livewire!, has a gimmick called "Audience Haiku," complete with the generically Asian string music and gong. When did haiku become so hip and yet so cringeworthy? Actually, the segment itself is not so bad — it’s a fun way to involve the audience in a quick, creative way. But please, Livewire! create some new "Audience Haiku" intro music! Be hip, be creative, not ignorant! But I digress.
Back to the Think Out Loud debacle. I mean if OPB were to speak about African-American identity, would they have opened asking how to say hello in many African languages? Talk about potential for flawed accents. Or how about Latino identity, maybe — let’s hear different ways to say hello in, say Latin? Okay, now I’m just being silly.
The point is, even on a show meant to speak about the identity of Asian Americans, Think Out Loud had to go back to the tiresome foreignization of Asian Americans in its very opening sequence. What a cringeworthy way to set the stage for dialogue! At least they didn’t use the generic Asian string music.
I won’t say too much more about the rest of the show’s content. The featured guests were Jason Mak of the DisOrient Film Festival; Marie Lo, a professor at Portland State University (and my colleague with APA Compass Radio Collective); Kilong Ung, Royal Rosarian and past president of the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon; and AR columnist Ronault L.S. Catalani ("Polo"). Let’s just say it was great to hear the beginnings of a discussion like this, even though it’s too large and complex of a topic to squeeze into a one-hour radio format.
In that regard, I applaud OPB for putting this issue on the airwaves, reaching such a large audience across the state. I encourage OPB to tackle it more often, so we can get beyond the cringe factor and on to the juicy dialogue we want to have.