indeed, his final performance further cements this fact.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7956210)

See Dr. Fulano, in the past.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7962110)

It may very well be the case that Cho did not intend to convey dual metaphors, but the "meaning" of those dual metaphors may, nevertheless, be found in his work.

The fact that Cho was the author does not bestow upon him the authority to pronounce for all time what the text can and should mean.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955810)

especially because he was an illiterate tard.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955819)

It seems pretty clear that he suffered some sort of molestation as a kid - both plays have that as a central theme.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955569)

Dante Hicks: "Empire".

Randal Graves: Blasphemy.

Dante Hicks: "Empire" had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All "Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955608)

seriously this is the best website on earth.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955921)

Both plays set up a larger narrative of authority figures continally plundering the most helpless citizens of our society. Whether or not McBeef and Brownstone are guilty of the crimes they are charged is irrelevant to the central meaning of Cho's work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955682)

Because of this, I think Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality might shed light on the commentary Cho was making in his dramatic work.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that neither McBeef nor Brownstone actually committed sexual assault against the protagonists of either work. Despite this, the protagonists' action is motivated by sexual assault. Sexual assault is thus a proxy for the real source of their hate of McBeef and Brownstone, and this hyperreal construction prevents them from emotionally engaging the real issues that motivate them. Thus the two plays might be taken as a critique of modern consumerist culture, where brands serve as a symbol of social status. They might even be read as a critique of XOXO culture, where Vault rankings *become* prestige, regardless of whether or not an individual lawyer is prestigious in his practice.

(It should be noted that Cho's use of the casino setting in Brownstone gives more weight to the use of Baudrillard as a tool for understanding his work, as Baudrillard uses the casino as a prime example of the hyperreal, where gamblers live in a dream world, forgetting about the *real* money they're losing when they gamble in a fantasy playground where everything is an exaggerated version of itself.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7956589)

At the bottom of the thread, I have also taken the chance to analyze Cho through the lens of Paulo Freire.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7959593)

I have long said that there is the Bible, and there is Cho's canon - and that if one must be put to the scourge and karcherised from human experience, may it be the Bible.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7957482)

"The authors fulano and Platitude Jones disagree over:"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955633)

by the time of mcbeef, the protagonist merges and with the clarity of a single protagonist comes clarity as to the ultimate target of the writer's animosity. rather than corrupt institutions like casinos or evil father-substitutes like brownstone, the ire is focussed on the parental units that created his disaffection in the first place; the enabling doting mother and the step father (a character written with remarkable ambivilance despite the overwhelming simplicity of the piece at times).

this cycle shows a young man determining who he hates (everyone, basically) and why (because parents suck). brownstone is like plato's dialogues, while mcbeef is more conventional theater based on the realizations gained in brownstone.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955763)

We go on stage around nine

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955827)

well scholars at least.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955835)

But like Sweep the leg, I'm of the camp that thinks mcbeef is the victim in this story.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955887)

Its interesting that Cho chose to commit suicide right after the persecution of the Duke Lacrosse boys, and the coincidence cannot be ignored.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955948)

Bravo.

And what courage.

But unlike Sopranos, Cho was able to end his career on high.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7956000)

but the audacity and courage of his final performance seems to indicate a man who was prepared for his life and his work to be considered together. indeed, his later work was designed specifically to encourage a dissection of his thoughts and feelings.

in light of that statement, i doubt Cho would really expect (much less desire) critics to consider his work in a vacuum.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7956162)

I will concede, however, that this type of blunt instrument is not usually present in his earlier work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7956342)

that's what makes it a superior work to brownstone.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955934)

A caveat, though: With popularization and permeation into middle- and low-brow strata, the Cho canon effectively "leaves the nest" of the intelligentsia, where maxims prescribing the "death of the author" and the unattainability of authorial intent are now more than just a metaphor. A mass-marketed Richard McBeef, connected with the face of Hollywood's "hunk du'jour," will engender a predictable disquiet among Cho scholars. Without Cho's famously spare and reclusive voice to interject even the cryptic objections that have subtly denounced not a few wayward scholars who dared venture beyond the boundaries of the Choian Zeitgiest, it is the "market" -- untamed and brutal in its candor -- that will determine, for instance, Mr. Brownstone's place in popular iconography. But such is the sparsely traveled yet definite path of genius.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7957050)

I read the banana flavor of the cereal bar as a reference to a more primate, animal heritage much broader than simple phallic psychosexualization. Indeed, what is the boy in McBeef but an embodiment of the Freudian id? Impulsive; physical; a thin layer of constantly shifting "rational" justifications dressing up a primal, singularly-focused hunger (e.g., "JOHN: I hate him. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick." -Richard McBeef). It is as though the banana cereal bar is a totem of humanity's animal heritage. Observe that mere physical contact with it is all it takes to awaken that ancient, decivilizing urge in the work's characters: John is at his most physical when holding the bar; Dick's contact with the bar, however involuntary, yields similar result.

The initial and obvious interpretation of the bar as mere phallic sexuality seems to be bait that the author counted on readers taking. In light of animal reanalysis above, perhaps he did this in order to make a distinct point regarding the inability of psychosexual interpretation to completely account for the the full pressures of his characters' primal heritage and the constant tension between our civilizing tendency and our decivilizing urges. The fact that McBeef was able to have that instinct involuntarily awakened in him seems to ask the reader whether he, himself, has a "banana cereal bar," so to speak- and whether he would even know if he did.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7956867)

I should note that I believe the label "simian" as regards this line of critical scholarship to be an unfairly oversimplified characterization. I agree that pure simian interpretation of Cho's work is a dead end (see Hartford's excellent "On the Death of the Simian Narrative", Harper Row, 1981), but my analysis is clearly not pure simian interpretation of his symbology.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7957591)

I suppose we should expect this. With Cho's final work came notoriety and with notoriety come hangers-on.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7957674)

If this is the case, then McBeef is a much larger social critique then we initially anticipated. For within us all there is the conflict with our id. John's attempts to combat the evil he sees oppressing him alongside his attempts to combat the evil he sees in him portray the nature of humanity over the past 10,000 years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7957161)

i would also note cho's choice of a cereal bar, itself a commoditized simulacrum of participation in a nourishing breakfast ritual, to represent that animal heritage. as the breakfast bar can never be "real breakfast", the play is restricted to the sybmolic real by its modes of signification, suggesting cho has grown weary of traditional theater and hinting at the direction of his later work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7957401)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&forum_id=2#7955930)