Ballad of a Karaoke Cowboy

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Ballad Of A Karaoke Cowboy, set in the present, split between an abandoned log cabin off an Indian reserve in Northern Ontario, and a karaoke bar in downtown Toronto. The story of a young Chinese man who loses his â??selfâ? in the world of karaoke and the myth of the western cowboy. His Chinese â??damsel-in-distressâ?, an ESL student, who attempts to understand the karaoke cowboyâ??s predicament and identifies her plight as a person in the new world. â??Conventionalâ? conundrums about identity are pushed to extremes. What happens when we push our allegiances to race, ethnicity, gender and language to their logical conclusion? What happens to individuals when their identities cannot be so neatly compartmentalized as social forms dictate? Karaoke constructs a universe where self-less identification with the â??otherâ? is the modus operandi. The myth of the western cowboy glorifies a form of identification with its impossibly simplistic moral codes to which one must comply if one is to achieve cowboy â??statusâ?. Show more