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Start Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
While the late-night television genre continues to be overwhelmingly white and male among the hosts, many women of color writers have emerged on network and cable late-night programs behind the scenes and on camera. Late Night with Seth Meyers prominently features a diverse group of women writers engaging on-air with the host in their own segments. Despite the diversity visible on screen, Meyers’ hegemonic position is reinforced in these segments, situating a woman of color’s perspective as a joke itself. Using representational analysis and close readings of the segment “What Does Karen Chee Know?”, which features Karen Chee, the youngest female and Asian American writer on LNSM, I argue that the segment constructs Chee in a positive and humanizing way and is a visibly progressive move on late-night, but functions to patronize Chee’s positionality, reinforce positive yet constraining stereotypes of Asian American female identity, and reinscribe the centrality of Seth Meyers’s patriarchal authority. This power dynamic is deconstructed in the segment “Karen Chee Addresses the Atlanta Shooting”, where Chee reflects on the 2021 shooting of six Asian women and history of oppression against Asian Americans, granting her more authorial agency than previously seen on the show. Chee’s role on LNSM illuminates complex issues of intersectionality on late-night television, particularly among women of color comedians. When considering recent attacks against Asian American women in the United States, critical understandings of representation, Asian American female (in)visibility, and agency in popular culture are needed.
“What Does Karen Chee Know?”: Examining the Limitations and Progressive Potential of Asian American Women’s Representation on Late Night with Seth Meyers
While the late-night television genre continues to be overwhelmingly white and male among the hosts, many women of color writers have emerged on network and cable late-night programs behind the scenes and on camera. Late Night with Seth Meyers prominently features a diverse group of women writers engaging on-air with the host in their own segments. Despite the diversity visible on screen, Meyers’ hegemonic position is reinforced in these segments, situating a woman of color’s perspective as a joke itself. Using representational analysis and close readings of the segment “What Does Karen Chee Know?”, which features Karen Chee, the youngest female and Asian American writer on LNSM, I argue that the segment constructs Chee in a positive and humanizing way and is a visibly progressive move on late-night, but functions to patronize Chee’s positionality, reinforce positive yet constraining stereotypes of Asian American female identity, and reinscribe the centrality of Seth Meyers’s patriarchal authority. This power dynamic is deconstructed in the segment “Karen Chee Addresses the Atlanta Shooting”, where Chee reflects on the 2021 shooting of six Asian women and history of oppression against Asian Americans, granting her more authorial agency than previously seen on the show. Chee’s role on LNSM illuminates complex issues of intersectionality on late-night television, particularly among women of color comedians. When considering recent attacks against Asian American women in the United States, critical understandings of representation, Asian American female (in)visibility, and agency in popular culture are needed.
Bio
Madison Barnes-Nelson (she/her/hers) is a master’s student at Colorado State University in the Department of Communication Studies. She graduated from Gonzaga University in 2021 with a B.A. in Communication Studies. Her research interests include television and film studies, media industry studies, identity, representation, and feminism, and American political popular culture.