Actor’s past bad behaviour feels like a betrayal

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This article was published 19/04/2023 (1251 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Beef, Netflix’s dark comedy starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as two people who become embroiled in a road-rage incident that keeps escalating, is one of the streaming service’s most popular shows. It’s also a massive hit among critics.

I heartily recommended it in our Don’t Sleep On This TV column, in which I also wrote that a lot of the show’s humour comes from David Choe’s turn as Yeun’s dirtbag cousin.

Well.

Choe is now under fire for a disturbing, recently resurfaced clip from a 2014 podcast in which he graphically describes masturbating in front of a massage therapist and forcing her to perform oral sex, joking that he’s a “successful rapist.”

He later claimed it was a fictional story told for shock value, a work of performance art.

The clip is now very hard to find. Choe appears to have filed copyright notices to get it removed from Twitter.

Joking about rape or creating “performance art” about assaulting someone, however disgusting and unfunny as that is, is not the same as actually raping someone — though it’s still unclear what exactly happened in this case.

But hearing a bunch of podcasters yuk it up about an alleged assault for funsies is not only gross, it contributes to a culture in which sexual violence is normalized. Even if the story was, as Choe has repeatedly insisted, completely made up. Storytelling, as he put it, “in the style of douche.”

In a 2021 New York Times profile teeing up a FX/Hulu limited interview series called The Choe Show, he called himself a “recovering liar,” and revealed his own past traumas and personal struggles. The 2014 podcast incident came up, too: “At that time in my life, I was done with life and chasing a bottom. I wanted out,” he told the Times. “I never raped anyone.”

The recovering liar/performance art excuse is a double-edged one, though. It creates plausibility that he was, in fact, telling a fictional story designed to provoke. It also calls into question his credibility now.

Choe is a graffiti artist who notably became worth $200 million in 2012 after opting for company shares instead of cash payment for a mural he made at Facebook’s headquarters in 2005. That move didn’t make him a household name, exactly, but it attracted a ton of media attention.

In his interview with Barbara Walters, he quickly established himself as a misfit rebel who does whatever he wants. It’s also quippily revealed that he spent three months in a Japanese prison in the early 2000s for punching a security guard.

To that end, Choe evokes a certain kind of late-2000s/early 2010s Disruptor Bro, a bad-boy maverick in a hoodie who courts controversy — and “cancellation” — with his “edgy” stunts and (probably) fronts videos for disruptor media companies like Vice. (Choe actually did work for Vice.)

You could find these kinds of Bros everywhere, from tech companies to restaurant kitchens — see the rise of the (angry, always angry) celebrity chef — to the art world.

Their loose-cannon quality wasn’t a bug. It was a feature. And it made some of them very, very rich. The kind of rich that elevates and insulates.

It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising, that Choe can still leverage that privilege and access to get major, life-changing opportunities — like a plum role on a hit show that also serves as a showcase for his visual art (the title cards for each episode feature Choe’s work).

None of this stuff from his recent past was a secret, as it turns out. You just had to know where to look for it.

But you also had to know to look for it, which is what makes this so disappointing to viewers who loved this show. Situations like this, despite being frustratingly common, always feel like a betrayal.

Maybe his past behaviour wasn’t enough for Netflix or the studio A24 or anyone else involved with Beef to take a pass on this guy, just as it wasn’t enough for FX/Hulu or Facebook to take a pass on this guy. Maybe his previous explanations satisfied them as being the truth. Or maybe they thought enough time had passed, he’d paid his dues. Or maybe they were not aware, though that seems less likely.

But we don’t know, because, so far, no one from the show — including creator Lee Sung Jin, A24, Netflix or stars (and executive producers) Yeun and Wong — has said anything.

All of it is a shame, because Beef, unlike that shameful podcast, actually is a work of art.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com