Full Circle
by Oliver Wang

No false idol

LAST TUESDAY A friend boldly predicted, "William Hung is going to outsell Dilated Peoples." Five days later the numbers told different stories. In Hung's backyard, Berkeley's Amoeba Music had only sold 2 copies of his Inspiration, compared with 16 of Dilated's Neighborhood Watch. On Amazon.com though, presumably more representative of American consumer tastes, Inspiration ranked an astounding 8th, while Neighborhood Watch was far lower, at 2,421st. No matter how you feel about Hung or his album, it's undeniable his 15 minutes have lasted a good half hour longer than anyone could have predicted.

In the last two weeks he's had his CD come out, appeared on The Today Show, and done halftime for the Warriors. He has become, in the words of the Village Voice's Daniel Ng, "the most famous Asian American in the world right now." He's also become a flash point, the icon some love and others love to hate. Ng describes Hung as "not a man, but a walking grotesque and a self-parody," while SFGate.com columnist Emil Guillermo remarks, "The joke has gone on too long." Even my Asian American students at UC Berkeley, some of them Hung's classmates and dorm mates, view him with derision, wary he's the unwitting butt of a national punch line, dragging the rest of Asian male-dom down with him.

Because of his accented English, bad teeth, and questionable fashion, critics decry Hung as the living manifestation of Gedde Watanabe's Long Duc Dong (Sixteen Candles) or Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yonioshi (Breakfast at Tiffany's), i.e., the latest humiliating caricature of Asian masculinity. Even though Hung isn't some actor FOBing it up, his critics pervert this too, accusing Hung of conspiring in the racial slandering of his brethren whether he's aware of it or not.

I'm instantly reminded of a headline in the Onion in 2000: "Chinese Laundry Owner Blasted for Reinforcing Negative Ethnic Stereotypes." An excerpt from that brilliantly prescient story, once meant purely as hyperbole, is now indistinguishable from the hysteria around Hung: "this man is a degrading anachronism that has no place in a supposedly enlightened society like ours."

OK, it is impossible to fully separate Hung's popularity from the specter of racist love. On The Today Show, white teens were shown holding Hung face masks before them, holes cut out so their blue eyes could replace Hung's brown. The image was amusing yet bizarre, unintentionally reminiscent of Hollywood's yellow-face tradition, when white actors would tape their eyes and insert buckteeth to "play Oriental." But racism alone cannot explain the Hung phenomenon.

In recent video footage from San Diego, Hung performed at Westfield Shoppingtown and was surrounded by thousands, some waving "It's good to be Hung" posters, their screams drowning out his singing (probably a good thing). Burgeoning crowds do not create fire hazards at malls just to mock someone. To believe otherwise betrays a deep, myopic cynicism. Hung is not the disgraced nerd being held up for ridicule – he's the revenge of the nerd, and that's what explains his appeal.

People flock to Hung precisely because he is awkward, can't sing, and can't dance. We admire him with a mix of sympathy and awe (described by the San Jose Metro's Sharon Mizota as "the Awwww factor") because he's so convincingly "real" and not some parody created by soulless executives to profit off of (though no doubt they have and will). Hung strikes a chord because his persona – in interviews and performances – appears entirely sincere. His now infamous American Idol comment was "I have no regrets," and that simple statement of self-confidence is what earned everyone's interest. Take that away and he's just another joke contestant, but leave it in and you realize Hung has heart, and that makes all the difference.

The protests against him can be so overstated – one pundit called him an Asian Sambo – you have to wonder if some male critics aren't dealing with their own self-image issues, ironic given that Hung seems so unburdened by his own. Far from the simpering, passive stereotype of Asian masculinity he's supposed to represent, Hung has shown little fear in boldly taking to the stage, and not as some shuckin' and jivin' act.