We Are Proud of Jo Koy, A Trailblazer Who Has Done Much For Our Community’s Empowerment!
At the heart of ethnic media — including here at the Hawaii Filipino Chronicle — is a goal of reporting on and advocating for community empowerment, for our community to inch or leap forward. There are times when progress has been slow and incremental, for example, Hawaii Filipinos’ gains in higher education. There are other times we have made tremendous gains and feel empowered, for example, politically to be at the table of decision-making in Hawaii.
How we measure community empowerment comes in many forms and all of them are important to look at from Filipinos working hard to realize their dreams of homeownership in Hawaii to who in our community is trailblazing new fronts, making history and inspiring our Filipino youth whether it is in the field of medicine, academia or even entertainment.
Progress on all fronts is worthy of serious coverage and shouldn’t be selectively dismissed because one trailblazer is holding a scalpel or another a microphone on stage. Bringing attention to trailblazers is how we support each other and rise as a community. With again, as a goal, toward enhancing community empowerment.
Jo Koy the trailblazer
Comedian-actor Jo Koy believes in this idea of empowering our community. He not only talks about it in interviews highlighting the need for representation and being a role model, but his career is built on telling our stories, the immigrant experience, our desire to move ahead through education and the challenges we face like discrimination.
So, when Jo Koy was invited to host the 81st Golden Globe awards as the first solo host of Asian American descent, many in our community felt his career milestone of reaching this height of success is also a part of our own success. His hosting The Globes was a trailblazing moment for Koy and a leap in our community’s journey towards greater empowerment as well.
When Jo Koy trailblazed in his blockbuster Easter Sunday, the first major Hollywood-produced and Hollywood-distributed movie starring a Filipino lead and mostly an all-Filipino cast — for many of us, it was more than a movie. It was seeing us, our community, accepted and validated in the greater American society. This was a leap in community empowerment.
Certainly, there are several Filipino stars in entertainment like H.E.R., Bruno Mars, Olivia Rodrigo that Filipinos are proud of. But arguably Jo Koy is the most visible among these stars who is a storyteller of the Filipino experience, a storyteller of the immigrant experience. Albeit it’s within the framework of comedy, which is really a powerful and underrated genre of storytelling that effectively reaches a broad audience. It also brings attention to uncomfortable truths that can be disguised as a joke.
Lessons from the fallout
The fallout of what occurred following Koy’s performance at The Globes reveals the opposite of community empowerment. We are reminded that the crab mentality still exists. It’s one thing to find Koy’s monologue unlikeable or crude even. This is fair. But using this one moment to throw Koy under the bus and go as one poster on social media said from “Pinoy Pride” to “Pinoy Shame” – that’s not how we move towards community empowerment.
Then there are others who like to ignore the bad press as if it didn’t exist. That’s denialism and does nothing for community empowerment if we don’t address head on what everyone else is being exposed to by the mainstream press and we in the Filipino community look the other way.
Poor performance or not, Koy did not deserve the level of vicious hammering he’s received from the press. It was beyond normal criticism, excessive and unfair. The context and traditional role of a comic invited to host an award show involves roasting celebrities. This is what all former hosts have been doing. Why is it that Koy was made to be the vilified host for poking fun at celebrities when comparatively others like Ricky Gervais did far more caustic and biting put-downs in previous Globes and hardly called out on it by the press?
Double standard? Yes. So, the question is why did the press feel so emboldened to exact such a punishing campaign? This needs to be explored more. Some Filipinos on social media have been saying the degree of media-bashing Koy received is racism. That’s debatable. Some Filipinos say the bad press Koy got was entirely deserved. That’s also debatable.
Support Jo Koy
Looking at Koy’s full body of work and his contributions to uplifting our community cannot be dismissed over one monologue. That’s ludicrous.
Now more than ever, our community should be supporting Jo Koy whether we liked his GG stint or not. Ten minutes should not define, make or break Koy’s career.
To those saying, who cares? It’s unimportant. It certainly does. Community empowerment requires that we care about uplifting each other, especially those who are trailblazers inspiring our youth. Historically, we’ve seen how the mainstream press has done a disservice to our community. Locally in Hawaii, there have been vast improvements. But nationally, as we are seeing in this incident, we still have work to do, which is another reason why bringing this to the forefront in a highly visible way is imperative for the Filipino ethnic press.
It would make no sense that the mainstream media will find it newsworthy to bash a host relentlessly (when the real story of The Globes should be in the winners) and that we in the Filipino press relegate this story to a small news.
That’s not going to happen. Thank you, Jo Koy, for your trailblazing efforts once again by accepting the challenge to host The Globes in such short notice. We stand beside you and hope for bountiful future success to come your way.
