Appreciation: William Hung
I’m sure nobody has noticed, but I’m embarking on a short series of Appreciation Posts here on BPRLive, dedicated to API trailblazers on the scene in music and performance. This is the third installment, and perhaps the most controversial. I am writing an entry to pay tribute to the hardest working man in show business: William Hung.
This is not some ironic hipster “so uncool that it’s cool” thing; I have a genuine affection for the man from whom so many folks wanted to distance themselves. I’m not going to link to the YouTube video because we all know what happened. William – an engineering student at Cal – walked into auditions for “American Idol,” a television show that has been incredibly lame since its third episode, and sang an a cappella version of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs.” Many people describe his performance as “off-key,” but go back and listen kids; that was spot on. It wasn’t that his singing was off-key, it was that his singing lacked charisma, and thus wasn’t very good. But more importantly to mainstream America, he looked like a kid who wasn’t supposed to have confidence in his artistic abilities: he was a short Asian man, obviously an immigrant, obviously booksmart, and a little awkward in that environment.
And that accent. He had a foreign accent – that wasn’t European – and so he gained notoriety as the worst performer ever to audition for this god-awful television show. With an unbiased eye, there’s no way William Hung is even in the worst third of bad auditions that Fox has put us through over the years. The truth is: America wants to laugh at people who aren’t aware of their own limitations. Who the hell does he think he is? We didn’t open our borders to you people so you could do stuff like this!
The sad thing to me was that so many APIs were so quick to dis my man William. And not just a little bit of that reason was that he could have so easily been us, and nobody wanted to admit it. Say he had been born to the same parents in San Francisco, rather than Hong Kong. Or Boston. Or Memphis. Or Honolulu. What would be the difference between the hypothetical William Hung and the one we saw all over the Internets? He’d have grown up speaking more English, so his accent would sound different, he might dress a little differently, might relate to people in a different way. Maybe he’d be more likely to chase this dream, or maybe he’d be more likely to write it off as foolishness. But we don’t have the hypothetical William; we just have the real deal, and it’s scary to us that with a couple of tweaks to his background, he could be us. Even scarier is that with a couple tweaks to my background, I could be him.
Many API folks I knew were dissing Dub-H even before white America could. No matter how I look at it, I can’t shake the feeling that all that outrage directed toward him came from the desire to not be seen as one of him.
I agree he is stereotypical in many ways, but he isn’t doing it to mock us. That’s him, and if people have a problem with the way he presents himself, then that’s on them, not him. And besides, who isn’t stereotypical in some ways? I work in Chinatown, earned a Masters degree, turn red after a few drinks, always have three or four jobs at a time, buy bootleg DVDs, blah bah blah. Am I supposed to worry about how people see me before going out in public? In my mind – and in William’s, maybe – the answer is hell no. F**k them.
So what next for William Hung? He left Berkeley to chase the record deal, and was not allowed to reenroll, so he’s at Pasadena City College (according to Wikipedia). In all likelihood, he’ll end up getting his degree, finding work somewhere in a few years, and slowly fading into oblivion. But it’s a guarantee that his future coworkers – white, Asian, whatever they are – are going to chuckle behind his back over the fact that he exists. They’ll buy him drinks at happy hour, offer to hook him up with their sisters, just to see him embroiled in a joke he’s not in on.
We’re all watching from afar and we all react the way we think is right. But if you still think he’s funny or you still blame him for misrepresenting you on television, then I hope you get a chance to spend some time with the members of your family that are closer to your immigrant roots. Because my guess is you’re missing out.
Last 5 posts by giles
- Haini's Here! Haini's Here! - May 9th, 2008
- Appreciation: DJ Towa Tei - May 5th, 2008
- Playoffs? - May 3rd, 2008
- Are You Ready to Rock? (Band) - April 4th, 2008
- Appreciation: The Visionaries - April 1st, 2008
Tags: Appreciation, Commentary.
nice feature!
hell yeah api folk don’t like him b/c they don’t want to be seen that way! dude’s sex appeal was six feet under. sure women love a man who’s unabashedly himself, but Dub wasn’t getting any ridiculous booty from the fame. or was he?
joking aside, i cringed at the william hung phenomenon b/c it seemed to me like live action yellow face. and if william hung knew why he was getting the notoriety and continued to pimp himself out for laughs, isn’t there a little twisted exploitation/exhibitionism going on there?
Maybe he thought he could really get a record deal and put out music, and he just bit the bullet. Do I secretly wish he would’ve shut his mouth b/c he didn’t properly represent me?? hmmm. It’s just another fad API entry into the general consciousness, next to so many fads who’ve already dropped out from my memory.
Oh i was watching X files last night and the Chinese episode came on, where there’s this game that involves folks drawing chips from a bucket and losing their organs. Along with some humorous bits (including a non-chinese actor who spoke cringe-inducing phonetic chinese), it featured a pre-Charlie’s Angels Lucy Liu, who billed herself with the middle name Alexis (something like that). I think dropping the middle name and goign with the Double L was the key to her fame. Either way, is she worthy of a Giles Styles appreciation post?
I have been mulling over this post for a bit now. Honestly, I’m conflicted by the William Hung phenomenon. And I’m not sure if I have a point to make. Nonetheless, the door has been opened.
On the one hand, I feel that his rise to fame is the result of exploitation. He is not terrible, but he’s not superb. So why is he the one that Fox and the rest of America keep focusing on. I can’t stop thinking that it is because they are mocking him, and moreover the mockery is intimately tied to the fact that he is an immigrant and has an appearance that some might say lends credence to the yellow face stereotype. Whether or not this is really true cannot really be known.
Personally, I don’t think I dissed him. Maybe I was too busy minding my own model minority ass. I do remember laughing at him. Because he did not fit my preconceived notion of how a talented singer should behave and perform. Maybe I’m a victim of Hollywood and the record companies as much as he is. But if I never held preconceived notions, I don’t think I would be human. Nonetheless, I never went out of my way to make fun of William Hung. I assumed that he knew what he was doing and was merely pursuing his dream.
I could see why some AA musicians might feel compelled to dis him. If I were an artist who had worked long and hard to try to get the attention of a record company and then out pops the William Hung phenomenon, I might get a little ticked and then a little jealous. Of course, that is the artist’s problem with self-esteem, but I can see how that sentiment of disdain could arise.
I do extend some kudos to William for trying to cut an album, for ignoring his detractors. Even really talented musicians have had detractors. So kudos to him for trying to prove that he can be successful in a “non-traditional field”. Kudos to him for not caring what other people think. I’m not sure that he blazed a trail that the rest of us can or are willing to follow.
But maybe I’m just not as brave as Mr. Hung.
i’m feeling like it’s def indicative of how racist mainstream america is that william hung is still a punchline. as far as i’m concerned, he turned in a fairly poor audition, which i would have been able to giggle at if so much venom wasn’t immediately unleashed in his direction.
he is not a symbol of the “unassimilated” or “undesirable” asian - his rise to notoriety is an indictment of mainstream america’s preference to see asians - and other people of color - as characters, not people.
if william knew this and went for it anyway, then yeah, that’s problematic. it’s also the exact same thing 50 cent does. he acts the way white america wants him to act, so they can easily compartmentalize and not have to think about him as an actual human being.
but then who’s to blame? do we hold the person who is playing the game accountable? or do we blame the society that created the rules in the first place?
regardless, it doesn’t seem to be the case that william hung s aware of the game being played. i would love to talk to him; he seems to have a misplaced faith in the goodness of other people.
This reminds me of your Anna Nicole piece. I love the way you’re challenging mindsets by making the “punchline” human.
[...] Sure, there’s Vanness Wu and Daniel Wu (no relation), but face it, they’re more eye candy than anything else. The Chinese just don’t have the same mass affection for Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu or, God bless him, William Hung [check out Giles’ post on Mr. Hung here]. [...]