ABSTRACT

This article examines the late Korean American stand-up comedian Johnny Yune’s television career at NBC. Yune made his comedy debut on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in 1978 and charmed the nation’s most beloved talk show host of that era. As a result, NBC signed Yune as the lead in three pilots over the next two years but his career on network television abruptly ended in 1980. Some of the factors that contributed to this end include the mystification of South Korea(ns) as a nation and identity, NBC’s struggle to compete against ABC and CBS, and systemic racism in the US. Yune’s stand-up routine was rooted in racialized and politicized self-deprecation which appealed to the dominant biases of mainstream (white) Americans in the late 1970s. With that said, given America’s hazy recollection of its involvement in the Korean War (1950–1953), Yune’s comedic material produced a memory in place of its forgottenness. This paper historicizes Yune’s transnational career as an actor, comedian, filmmaker, and talk show host in Los Angeles and Seoul, as well as his reception in America, which was impacted by the ‘cold’ war between the US and USSR.

摘要

本文考察了已故的韩裔单口喜剧演员约翰尼·尤恩（Johnny Yune）在NBC的电视职业。尤恩在《今夜秀》中首次亮相喜剧1978年由约翰尼·卡森（Johnny Carson）担任主角，并吸引了该时代美国最受欢迎的脱口秀主持人。结果，NBC在接下来的两年中签下了Yune作为三名飞行员的负责人，但他在网络电视上的职业生涯突然于1980年结束。促成这一目标的一些因素包括韩国作为国家的神秘化和身份，NBC与ABC和CBS竞争的斗争以及美国的系统种族主义。尤恩（Yune）的站立常规源自种族化和政治化的自我贬低，这吸引了1970年代后期主流（白人）美国人的主要偏见。话虽如此，鉴于美国对参与朝鲜战争（1950年至1953年）的朦胧回忆，尤恩的喜剧材料对人们的遗忘产生了记忆。本文将尤恩（Yune）作为演员，喜剧演员，