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Film in Focusby Jana DanielsMulticultural Mayhem:Kosher Pigs, Jewish Lawyersand Chinese GangstersThe Jewish FamilyTelevision producer MoonCho isn’t Chinese and sheisn’t Jewish either, neitheris co-writer and director EricPatton but together they arethe force behind Kosher Pig. (Is it evenkosher put those two words together?)For the producers, though, this inherentparadox in their sitcom’s title perfectlyrepresents the complications involvedin attempting to bring together twodisparate cultures. And what if, likecharacter Joy Cohen, these twoseemingly disparate cultures wereboth critical parts of her own complexidentity? Joy Cohen is in most wayslike any other Jewish girl raised in thesuburbs of Los Angeles and studying tobe a lawyer, except, she happens to havea bit of an Asian look about her. Adoptedat birth by her oh-so stereotypical LosAngeles Jewish parents (no offense tomy in-laws), Chinese culture is entirelyforeign to Joy. She makes gefilte fish,not shao mai (very definitely, very treifeChinese dumplings).The sitcom follows Joy Cohen as shesearches for her biological parents.Cohen dreams of bringing togetherthese two families and making peacewith her own multicultural identity.36 ASIAN JEWISH LIFE ISSUE 6
Film in Focusby Jana DanielsTo Cohen’s surprise however, herbiological family is not living in a ruralChinese countryside, but rather also arein LA and are the owners of a ChineseRestaurant named “The Joy Luck Pig”(yes, this play on Amy Tan’s Joy LuckClub is almost too silly to believe).Ok, so where is this going? A kosher pig,The Joy Luck Pig Restaurant, a Jewishlawyer, even Chinese gangsters. First ofall, the show is funny but jokes aside,there are themes and issues behindthe laughs. As Patton explains, “Wetried to focus primarily on the comedy,but that’s not to say we neglect thenecessary pathos. Without an emotionalconnection you’ll never care for thecharacters, so we took those momentsto build a connection to the audience.”According to Cho, multiculturalism andblending cultures are very commonthemes in American sitcoms now.Patton furthers this idea by saying thatmulticulturalism is the ultimate Americantheme, as it is a country of immigrantsand a veritable ‘melting pot’. As for theChinese-Jewish connection, neitherCho nor Patton was aware of how hot atopic this combination is now, but theyboth found they were incredibly easyto blend. As Patton learned, “They mayappear to be very disparate but they’reincredibly similar. They are both deeplyrooted in tradition and have a resoundingrespect for older generations, incrediblytight families and strong family values.Not to mention that both cultures havean almost ritual relationship with theirfood.” Cho adds in that there’s a sharedemphasis in the value of education andachieving success. (Also, quite simply,we Jews really do love Chinese food.)In order to research the cultures, themulticulturalism in Los Angeles itselfprovided much of the context andreadily available information as well asinteractions with both cultures. The teamalso relied on the resources available atthe Skirball Cultural Center but foundtheir own cast itself was an invaluableresource drawing on information fromactors Jim Lau, Elizabeth Sung, TammyKaitz and John Pleshette. Pattonexplains that through the cast, “thecharacters and their traditions reallybecame more three-dimensional…Theidea was to set those stereotypes upin a pilot episode so that as the seriesprogresses we can deconstruct someof those stereotypes and the audiencecan learn the depth of the charactersthroughout an entire series.”Again jokes aside, her nuclear familystructure suddenly must also be alteredin order to make room for her biologicalparents, creating a most unusualarrangement and an unconventionalfamily. Ultimately, Cho suggests that ifthere is a message, the show is aboutself-acceptance. The character JoyCohen’s struggles to reconcile theThe Chinese Familyseemingly incongruent parts of her ownidentity are not dissimilar to those ofothers with multiple layers of ethnicity.The reality is, though, that Joy Cohenas an Asian-Jew must repeatedly beforced to defend her own ‘Judaism’,something Jews of European descentwould never have to do. In koshershops, when buying her matzah forPassover, she would be faced witha barrage of questions. She wouldconstantly have to prove that she wasJewish just because of how she looks.The world would see her as Chineseand yet she would have no culturalcontext for her Chinese side. The ironyis that, in some respects, life is simplerfor her parents in that they fit well intoJewish stereotypes and her biologicalparents who fit so well into Chinesestereotypes. They don’t have to dealwith the complexities of multiculturalidentity that she struggles with.For a show that ‘focuses primarily onthe comedy’ these are some weightyissues to tackle.ASIAN JEWISH LIFE ISSUE 637
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