Cool Media. Hello everyone, Jamie. Here just a few quick housekeeping things at the top of this episode. First off, I'm excited to say that I'm doing my first proper taping of a special of mine on December fourth in Los Angeles. It is called The Tiny Man Is Trying to Kill Me. I'm so excited. If you've been following my work for a long time, I really love building shows like this and it's cool to finally be making kind of a proper production. So there's going to be
two tapings on December fourth at the Lyric Hyperion. It is a mix of some of my newer stand up and a performance about the titular tiny Man Who's trying to kill me. And it's all kind of about the tendency to bastardize every part of your life for material and hashtag content. Working some shit out, if you will. But it's also very silly and very fun, and there's brief nudity. I'd love to see you there. Tickets are
in the description. Second, I wanted to plug another show that I produce on iHeartRadio called We the Unhoused with Theo Henderson. It's a long running podcast about issues that face the unhoused from unhoused perspectives, there aren't really shows that do that, and it's especially important to be informed on right now given the recent Supreme Court decision called Grant's Pass that makes it all but illegal to be unhoused in the US, which will get worse in the
coming administration. For more on that, the link is also in the description. And finally, today we are talking about part two of Volume Hung, as the title of the episode indicates, but I wanted to give you a heads up that in December we're going to be doing a multi part series on the main characters of the Manusphere. Obviously a big conversation right now, and I'm looking for
sources for that episode. So if you are or know someone that was interested in The Manusphere and then got out of interest in the Manisphere, I would.
Love to talk to you.
It can be anonymous, and the email to reach out to is small Ice resurfacer at gmail dot com. Okay, I hope everyone's hanging in and enjoy William hum American Idol is guilty of a lot of things. It's guilty of letting Ryan Seacrest wear jeans with a blazer like he's Kamala Harris giving a pep talk at an elementary school. It's guilty of burdening us with Chris Daughtry, But if you watched early American Idol, you'll know it wasn't just
guilty of millennium kitsch. But damn there was a lot of that.
Thank you.
And there were also a lot of pernicious elements, elements of racism, of sexism, of xenophobia that you could literally hear on the show, often from Simon Cowell. But there was a diverse pool of American Idol winners in those early years. In the first six seasons, three winners were white and three were black. But there are also full half decades where the winners were truly profoundly random white guys. A winner named Philip Phillips. You're joking, And this has
been called out throughout the show's history. Elton Goddamn John called it out all the way back in two thousand and four when future e goddter Jennifer Hudson was eliminated from the show. On wait for It, Barry Man Alone Night from the La Times in two thousand and four, the.
Three people I was really impressed with and they just happened to be black, young female singers, and they all seemed to be landing in the bottom three, said John, commenting on the tally in which the lowest vote getter is eliminated. They have great voices, the fact that they're constantly in the bottom three and I don't want to set myself up here, but I find it incredibly racist.
While it did feature a diverse array of contestants, it's impossible to argue that American Idol was a truly inclusive show, and not just because of the very existence and concept of Barry Mandel Knight. There were elements of discrimination that you couldn't see as a viewer, and once that went
all the way to court. In early twenty thirteen, news broke that ten black contestants had filed a suit against the show with the Equal Opportunity Commission that alleged that they were quote deliberately exploiting black contestants to improve the show's ratings unquote. The suit is an extremely long one, but the summarize I'll quote from this Guardian piece from Amanda Holpuch at the time, speaking here about filing lawyer
James Freeman. Freeman said he noticed something was awry when Jermaine Jones was kicked off the show in March twenty twelve. Producers said at the time that Jones was disqualified because he had not told the show there were outstanding warrants for his arrest.
Freeman also said in the letter that he saw that only nine other people had been publicly disqualified from the show,
and they were all black. Freeman claimed in that letter that by asking potential contestants if they had been arrested, producers violated California employment law, under which employers are not allowed to ask potential employees about their arrest history, and the letter, he said that the show perpetrated destructive stereotypes about black people by using their answer to that question and employing private investigators to examine their arrest history, allowing
them to disqualify the contestants, and from the lawsuit itself.
A staggering thirty one percent of every American Idol semi finalist contestant who happened to be a young black male was disqualified from this singing competition for reasons wholly unrelated to their singing talent, even though there were three times as many white or non black contestants featured on American Idol. Over the course of ten years, there has never been a single white or non black contestant disqualified from American Idol.
Not Ever, nine out of ten complainants were black men who said they were disproportionately focused on with speculation to their criminal history, then punished for it. A similar discrimination case had been brought the year before by black contestants of The Bachelor, and the case was thrown out on the ground that casting isn't the same thing as hiring, and that rejecting black applicants was fair under the First Amendment. What But things didn't go much better in the Idle
lawsuit in late twenty fourteen. It was revealed that the statute of limitations didn't apply for nine out of ten contestants who sued, and the other got dismissed on a technicality. But there's no doubt that American Idol has a history of racism and discrimination in the treatment of their contestants. And it's not like this was Idol's idea. For my money, this just reflected the amount of permissible discrimination that was
acceptable at this time. I'm not saying it's much or at all better now, But the post nine to eleven era was rife with casual xenophobia, with shaming women into eating disorders, to closeting queer people by threatening retaliation or shaming for being out at all. This was the world then, an idol was reflecting it, and when it came to reinforcing existing stereotypes around marginalized people, no one was safe and no contestant picked off the questions about how race
was treated within the show, like William Hung. In part one of this year, we revisited how William's infamy rolled out and spoke with the man himself, and today we are looking at his cultural impact and what we can learn about representation and reality TV by taking a closer look at his story. So let's start Ebanging Baby. It's part two of William Hum. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's main characters and learn how their moment affected them and
what it says about us and the Internet. And this week we're delving deeper into the saga of William Hung. Sir, she bangs himself.
Cheep bags, cheap begs, oh baby, but she moves, She moves.
Getting to speak with William was really wonderful, and his huge cultural moment was so impactful that it became literally impossible to get everything I wanted to talk about in the space of a single episode, because one issue in particular is so significant in the discussions that surrounded William at the time, and since that, I wanted to give
the topic its own space. That's what we're doing today, because there's framing an audition as bad, and framing an audition as bad while referencing and capitalizing on racial stereotypes to make the audition seem even worse. For example, here's how a mediocre white contestant might be rejected.
Thank you so much, Victim.
Should we just do this together?
You guys are on the count of three, one, two, three.
No, you are.
A terrible singer.
You are a terrible dan So you have no charisma, I mean everything.
I've seen some of those people that you sent through there, and I know I'm a lot better than that, Victor. You know what, it doesn't matter what we think, is it?
All that matters is what you think anyway, terrible, It's.
Definitely what America thinks.
America, Victor, America would hate you.
And here's how William was treated. Yeah, he's not great. But listen to how he's spoken about.
What's your last name?
Hung Hu and g Hu?
Yes, brothers and sisters. No, I don't.
I'm the only child, the only child.
Yes.
Do your parents tell you.
Have a great voice?
No, they don't realize actually great?
And they are they excited for you that you're here.
Actually they were.
They were not like it. If they hear that, you know, I'm missing school for two days in a row.
So they wouldn't like it if you go through.
Huh.
They wouldn't be happy if you go through.
No, they wouldn't be happy if I go through. They wouldn't be heapy if I don't go through.
School.
Yes, that's a big sacrifice, William.
It's one of actually the worst auditions we've had this year, if I'm being honest.
Seriously, I mean everything about it was grotesque.
Oh stop it grotesque?
It was you stop it already.
You can hear the judges leaning into common early odds tropes around Asian American people and more specifically East Asian men. He's hyper focused on academics. He should be doing homework. His parents wouldn't approve of a career in entertainment and
would rather he excel in school. In subsequent media appearances William made, he would often be asked how he's doing with the ladies, or in his own music video, would be surrounded by conventionally attractive white women who were only into him because of his fame.
I'm Tony the record company guy.
I meet you, I want you to meet you new girlfriend.
And did that boy yoyoy owing sound happen over the image of William's eyes bouncing out of his head horny cartoon wolf style. Yes, of course it was making the idea that women would be interested in William into a joke, reinforces another long standing media stereotype against East Asian men, that they are somehow less masculine or worthy of any
sexual attention. This is an extremely complicated topic and one that I'm going to get into with our guest Nancy Wangian today, and I just want to add already that these stereotypes being thrown at William here are just as tied in the Western tendency to turn Asia into this big monolith in their minds, when, of course that's ridiculous, and the bad faith that we're seeing here revolves around stereotypes rooted in East Asia in the West, and yes,
William Hung is framed to embody many of the tropes that Americans had embraced around Asian men at the time. But William Hung is also a real person. As you heard in our interview last week, William's feelings towards the role anti Asian racism played into his moment are complex
and have changed over time. For him and many, the message of perseverance and positivity is what he feels catapulted him to success on Idle, and he's generally said that he doesn't think the Idle production itself was discriminatory, but he has been critical of how the media treated him in the two thousands. Here he is in twenty twenty.
I remember when I auditioned for American Idol back in two thousand and four. I had a lot of fans, but I also had quite a bit of probably a big number of haters. Some people say that I portray Asian stereotypes. Other people say that I shouldn't be an entertainment business. That's all these negative things. But let's take a step back. Why are we being so negative? Does it help us to improve our lives by taking our anger on people like that. Not really, And in the.
Same talk, William discusses how he was upset by the massive wave of anti Asian racism that came in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
It really bothers me that there are people locally in the Los Angeles area getting shamed, getting attacked, getting sped on.
It's not right.
So of course he's well aware of the cultural stereotypes that he's being judged by, and he's also just being himself. So what do you do. First, Let's focus on that media reception, because American idol couldn't make a star without the interest and cooperation of both the media and the public.
I can't cover this subject comprehensively in the space of an episode, and I am not the ideal person too, but I want to give you an idea of the attitudes towards Asian men, specifically when William Hung first came
into the American spotlight. For further, I would recommend the making of Asian America a history and serve the people making Asian America in the long sixties, which takes special care in analyzing how Americans were conditioned to see Asian people as a monolith in the back half of the twentieth century. You can find those at the links in the description. In brief, racism against Asians in America is
long standing and far reaching. There's unfortunately no shortage of violence, harassment, and discrimination against Asian Americans in recent years, particularly around the time of the pandemic. There were tremendous waves of propaganda demonizing Asian countries and people during both the Korea and Vietnam Wars, and the eighteen eighty two Chinese Exclusion Act in the US made it all but impossible for
Asian people to integrate into American society at all. And much of the violence toward Asian people is elevated and reinformed by the pop culture that portrays them in the West, including truly horrific yellow face performances from white actors that would have been remembered by many older IDOL viewers in two thousand and four. Major examples that audiences might have known about included, of course, Mickey Rooney's trash performance as mister Junioshi and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
I wrote this, Oh, Darling, I am sorry, but I lost my.
Key what what wikesable?
You cannot go on or keep her in in my bill You just stob me.
You must have a key mate.
But there is more where that came from. John Wayne played Genghis Khan, Katherine Hepburn in a movie called Dragon Seed, the white actor who played Charlie Chan in sixteen movies entire career. The list goes on, and part of this was related to the Hayes Code, an extremely restrictive policy in a American movies from the nineteen thirties into the sixties that explicitly banned any sexual contact between different races
on screen. So if you did cast an Asian actor in an Asian role, they couldn't have a love interest who was of any other race. But this isn't the sole reason this happened. It's also just mask off American racism and a vested interest in affirming negative stereotypes around Asian people, and this continued after two thousand and four, more recently with the casting of Scarlett Johansson as a Japanese character in Ghost in the Shell in the twenty tens.
In twenty eighteen, teen Vogue interviewed Keith Chow, founder of the pop culture blog nerds of color.
He says, it's all connected. Chow tells teen Vogue, it all results in the dehumanization of people of color, and in the specific case of yellow face, in the dehumanization of Asian people.
And that's not to say that there were not impactful Asian stars that broke through in the West in the twentieth century. Stars like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan experienced global success, and movies that centered Asian characters and culture, like The Joy Luck Club had a big moment upon its release in nineteen ninety three. But that's not very much good representation and certainly isn't proportional to the Asian
American population. That's one mainstream movie for an entire generation, while other Asian characters in popular movies were most often relegated to side roles to mainly white protagonists and even more often embodied these racialized stereotypes. And if you've taken a media studies class, you might know where I'm going
with this. For gen X, and that's none of my business due to my radiant youth, But for gen X, one of the most prom in portrayals of an Asian man came in John Hughes's nineteen eighty four movie Sixteen Candles in the form of a character named Long Duck Dong. And not only was his character's name written as a joke by a white guy, this character embodied basically every cultural stereotype we've discussed so far. He is literally introduced with the sound of a gong repeatedly.
What's happened in the hot stuff.
He's a quote unquote good boy, a model minority stock character with an over emphasis on good behavior and academics.
I love a visiting with a grandma and a grandpa and writing letters to parents and pushing lawnmowing machine so Grandpa's hyena don't get disturbed.
And later on when he has a white girlfriend, it's presented as ridiculus.
I've never been out with Oh neither.
And maybe you saw this coming. But the actor you heard performing Getty Wantanabe. He's of Japanese descent, but he's from Utah, and the fact that he had to take this role on has everything to do with the kinds of parts that were available to Asian American actors at this time in a white dominated entertainment landscape. In front of and behind the scenes, there was very little imagination
to see Asian men as anything but caricatures. Long Duck Dong is indisputably presented as the butt of the joke, and studies found that this happened more often than not throughout Hollywood's history. Here's our guest today, Nancy wang Yin talking about Long Duck Dong in an interview with NBC in twenty twenty one. Anything he said was something you laughed at, not with. He kind of defined Asian characters for decades, and this kind of representation makes a difference.
In the early twenty twenties, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media studied the top grossing films of the twenty tens and how AAPI people were represented in them, and the study found that over half of these characters were the butt of a joke in the opinion of a number of Asian American writers in two thousand and four, it's this Long Duck Dong playbook that is being weaponized
while portraying William Hung on reality TV. This is a trope specifically weaponized against East Asian men, and you can hear echoes of it in the way that William is spoken to at the peak of his fame.
And how about the girls.
Have you noticed a big difference with the attention from the girls?
I noticed that I get a lot. I make a lot of friends in general, not just girls, a lot of girls.
Yeah. By two thousand and four, around thirteen percent of the American population were people of Asian descent, but the representation was still nowhere near proportional then or now. As recently as the late twenty ten's, only four percent of speaking roles in Hollywood films came from Asian actors, and so this meant when an Asian person appeared on American TV, the way they were framed disproportionately mattered, something that is
entirely the fault of American media. And while William was often presented as unaware of the conversations around Asian representation taking place, of course that's bullshit. He was well aware and genuinely struggled with it. Here he is during his twenty eighteen TED talk discussing why it was challenging to accept a record deal in the first place.
Now, I know what you're thinking, how how can this be? Take the money for But for me it wasn't easy at all. You see I was aware that I was made the laughing stock for Asians on American Idol. In my heart, I felt like there were magnetic forces pulling me in different directions. But these forces graduate disappeared when I realized that perhaps I have the power to bring smiles to people's faces.
Because remember, there was criticism of William's success on American Idol coming from within the Asian activist community, citing the sting of feeling like these stereotypes were once again being lifted up by the American media for the purposes of mocking Asian men, the same way they had with Long Duck Dong. One of the most influential critics was s F Gate writer Emil Gierma in his piece William Hung Racism or Magic from two thousand and four.
It wouldn't be so bad if we saw positive images of Asian American males in the media, but for the most part, we've been invisible, and the images have usually come with martial arts enhancements. Bruce Lee's combative persona has been the most virile and most enduring icon for Asian American males, but the stereotypes that predominate are the sinister and inscrutable or ineffectual and effeminate. One thing that can be said for those who seek to exploit William Hung.
He has not been asked to demonstrate any karate moves or threaten the American way of life. Hung doesn't see himself reinforcing stereotypes with the lame dancing and the accented rhythmlessness of it all. He's proud of his badness.
And Guermo revisited this critique over a decade later. In twenty sixteen, when William Hung made a return guest appearance on Idle Publishing, this time in the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, he wrote.
Besides, here was the all too willing Hung, glad to extend his fifteen minutes of fame under the guise of good, clean fun, reveling in his accented, unmusical oddness. Only it wasn't all that fun, because it's not just Hung up there. Given our relative invisibility, we are still in a US society that believes if you've seen one Hung, you've seen
them all. Asian Americans that is at five percent of our nation, around twenty million strong, with a population that is two thirds immigrant, many with accented tongues, hearts, and minds. To trot Hung out there as a joke in primetime is still offensive.
However, as Guierromo acknowledges in both of these pieces, there there were also Asian American people that enjoyed and embraced William's persona in message. The reaction to William Hung was not monolithic then or now. So I was excited to speak with a media critic who had seen and reflected on Hung's journey from its beginning. And there's no one better than Nancy Wang Yun. We'd met before when she appeared on my other podcast, The Bechdel Past Shout Out,
and she's wonderful. She's the author of Real Inequality Hollywood Actors and Racism, and I was really interested to hear her thoughts on this two thousand and four wormhole. Here's our talk.
I am Nancy Wang Yun. I'm a sociologist and currently I'm also teaching ethnics. I write on Hollywood and representation, especially Asian Americans, but I write on representation in general, and I've written a book called Real Inequality Hollywood Actors and Racism.
I think about Asian American.
Representation as an Asian American immigrant myself having come here when I was five and growing up here and understanding that there's a world out there, even though Asian Americans are about seven eight percent of the population. Having grown up in Taiwan, I remember what it was like to see lots of different kinds of different Asian Americans who look maybe similar to people who don't know Asians, but are
quite distinct and different. And we have multitudes, and so I think it's really weird to be in a country where, you know, people tend to lump us all together when we are quite distinct and different.
I hate to bring you back to two thousand and four, but unfortunately that is my sacred duty.
Do you remember this moment?
How did you receive it at the time.
So I think I was a little disturbed by the popularity of it at first, because I think my instinct on why William was so popular was that because he had fit a pre existing stereotype of the kind of awkward, nerdy Asian guy like Long Duck Dong from sixteen Candles. You know, William himself is a real person, right, He is not a character. No one invented him. He is
himself authentically himself. But I think the fact that I mean, American Idol auditions was just part of so many American Idol episodes, and there's a lot of people who audition and are not good or are not not not good whatever, not up to par in terms of what a pop star is supposed to sound and look like.
There's that too.
There's the kind of racialization of, you know, what American.
Pop star should be.
I think black and white usually are the you know, winners.
Predominantly of American Idol. Asians are really such a minority.
And so here comes William Right who comes and becomes this phenomena.
And I think a lot of Asian.
Americans were perplexed because he really fit into a stereotype that we wanted to distance ourselves from, the kind of that Asians can't sing, can't dance, and are only nerdy. So he fit into what people thought of as Asian American. I think I was already in graduate school at the time studying Asian American representation and thinking about it in
that context. Was Okay, he's popular because he fits into a stereotype, not because he is a stereotype necessarily, but what about you know, all the Asian young folks who are auditioning, who actually you know, could sing and dance in a way that was, you know, conforming to pop music standards. They didn't seem to enjoy the same popularity, so he went viral for the wrong reason.
That was what I thought at the time.
In two thousand and four, what is Asian American representation in media?
Like?
Yeah, so there wasn't very much. I think Margaret chose All American Girl was a pretty big I mean it wasn't a huge show. I don't think everybody knew about it, but Asian Americans did.
It was about her family set in San Francisco.
It was essentially one season and then canceled, And it did show Margaret as someone who was the antithesis of maybe Asian American stereotype. She was very kind of rebellious, more quote unquote Americanized, more westernized. There was racism, that was sexism that she experienced. She was told to be more Asian, which maybe you know in that time was thinking be more like William Hung.
I don't know, it was like what does that mean? Yeah, what does that even mean?
Because she is definitely herself that was probably one of the few TV shows about Asian Americans. And then of course I mentioned Long Dut Dong, which was a John Hughes movie, and that that basically was a stereotype, that it was more akin to who William was, and I think that was why people were pretty disturbed. But I also think, yeah, I think it's because we had such a dearth of Asian American representation that anyone who goes
viral or becomes popularized becomes a stand in. Of course, there was also a Pooh who was South Asian, also a stereotype based on Peter Sellers's performance in The Party, which was brown face performed.
So this is the kind of the representations were pretty bad. And of course, if.
We think about the predecessor to Long Duck Dung, played by Geddy white Nabe was essentially yellow face performances of Asians like Mickey Rooney and Breakfast at Tiffany, who was also you know, had buck Te.
Was nerdy, was awkward, very massive fortunate Willim Hung.
I think if you watch the audition, the judges except for Paula Abdul, laughing at him, and he becomes kind of a clown and a buffoon, but he's a real person, right, And I think that people are also drawn to his sincerity and his positivity and really kind of confidence.
Despite the fact that he, you know, wasn't as skilled.
As maybe some of the other people who auditioned, he didn't seem to let it bother him, and I think that people were drawn to that.
It's possible to be drawn to that.
And to the stereotypes that he invokes, right, So it's like it's complex, and I think that if he were to audition today, the post post crazy rich Asians post everything everywhere at once, where we have someone like Keith Wei Kwan, who is who plays both kind of an endearing, awkward kind of person, but in another universe he's like one car wide.
Cool with you know, his tuxedo. I think William Hung today wouldn't.
I wouldn't see him as problematic because we have so many more representations of Asian Americans that we can say.
Okay, well, William is a real person. He's cool, you know, I know people like William.
So it wasn't like a stereotype in the sense that someone like him, many people like him exist.
But yeah, I think the fact.
That there was a dearth of representation back then made his stardom much more kind of cringey for those of us who didn't see a multipitude of representations to balance out William's kind of stardom. I felt like William Hung fit into the model minority stereotype, something that we really wanted.
To push against, I think during that era.
Actually, I feel like we're always trying to push against that, So we definitely were cringing because he fit into the model minority stereotype as well.
You can sort of feel the author real hand presenting you with a stereotype that a lot of Western people are going to be familiar with and latch onto unquestioningly, and that is a problem when there's no other representation.
In the twenty years that have.
Passed, how has Asian American representation in Hollywood evolved?
I think that there has been. There's always been independent Asian American filmmaking, even during the time and preceding the time of Voe Hung. But I think that only in recent years that Hollywood has elevated. I think Asian American stories more Minari and the Farewell you know Sundance movies now d D this year, so there's still a lot of independent movies, but I think it is because of Crazy Rich Asians doing really well.
At the box office. People are more open and interested in more studios.
So even you know, even yes, there have been so many more Asian American representation, but I think the majority of Americans are still unaware of those representations. It feels, at least for I think for Asian Americans who want to see themselves, we can actually see ourselves much more.
Like when I was growing up. I'm a little bit older.
Than Williams, so I would have, you know, experienced similar things to him, and I never saw myself.
I think it was the Joila Club in high school. Was the first time I.
Read the book, I saw the movie, and that was the first time I had ever seen myself. But it's not like the Jrola Club ushered in a whole golden era of lots and lots of representation.
It wasn't until Crazy Rich Asian that we.
Had another kind of epic movie, you know, that was a predominantly Asian American cast, and prior to this is again East Asian.
Prior to Jola Club, it was The Flower Drum Song, which was you know, a movie in the.
Sixties, right, So it's like you got the sixties in the nineties, then twenty nineteen. I mean, this is like generational differences, one movie per generation, which is.
Just really terrial. I also wanted to tell a story before I forget.
So I was part of an Asian American watchdog organization called MANA, and they got a phone call that someone wanted to protest William Hung.
And guy Guy who is the head of Yes, this.
Is in two thousand and four, and he had said to us, who you know, were part of the organization, He's like, we can't protest a real person.
You know.
You can protest like negative representations of Asian Americans, but you can't protest a real person.
And that always sticks with me. You know that William Hung is a real person. He's not a stereotype.
He's a real person, right, And of course you know why they decided to highlight his audition.
And the way that he was maybe treated by the judges. You know, although Paula.
Abdul bless her heart, she was so encouraging and treat him at all like the stereotype, you know, and used her kind of stardom and maybe Yeah, her lift experience to connect with William in a way that the other two judges didn't as much.
Simon certainly was the worst. I mean, Simon was always terrible.
He called William grotesque, and I think that he didn't understand.
Well, maybe he did understand.
But the weight of those words I felt was there was racism in it, even if he didn't intend it that way. When you have so few Asian East Asian contestants and you call him grotesque, I thought that was over over the line and yeah, and definitely racist. And I do like the fact that the other two judges really pushed back on that. The other two judges who happened to be people of color, pushed back on that because I think instinctively they knew that that's not okay to call, you know.
A young man of color grotesque.
Yes, I do feel like, yeah, that audition it revealed more about I think America's perception of Asian Americans than William Home himself. It was a kind of mirror onto US racism against Asians, anti Asian racism. But he himself, as a real person, deserves to be who he is. So just because he wasn't bothered by it. It doesn't dismiss the fact that others were bothered by it, because again, one Asian shouldn't have to speak for all Asian Americans.
So because a lot of times people will be like, well, what's the problem, William Hong himself doesn't have a problem.
He doesn't think it's racist or whatever.
Again, because there's such a dearth of representation, he cannot speak for all Asian Americans who are perhaps being bothered by it because they themselves have experienced racism that was really painful.
Now, twenty years later, what can we take away from this moment in twenty twenty four.
I appreciate reality shows because there are are people that are represented on screen that we don't see in narrative film or television shows.
Because those only come from the imaginations of a predominantly white male production team. Reality shows you can't predict who's going to show up.
Of course, you know, we have.
Casting and if you look at The Bachelor, and you know the Bachelorette, the first Asian American bachelorette, and we have so few Asian male contestants, which I was concerned about. So we're still dealing with some of the same problem of scarcity. How Hollywood decides not to kind of show
the multitudes of Asian American men and women. Yet we have also YouTube and actually Wang Fu Productions came out with Asian American Bachelor kind of spoof and actually invited some Asian American contestants.
In the past, Asian.
American men and women, but especially Asian American men, have become celebrities in the YouTube world, much more so than I would say Hollywood in terms of being able to create their own content week after week and show different kinds of representations. And I think Asian American men as hot, sexy, whether it's leads, whether it's in music, if we want
to talk about music. K pop has changed the climate of how people in the West perceive Asian American men because I think there's just a very very small band BTS in the US and in.
The global group of people.
So I think that, yeah, the perception of East Asian men have changed, I think for entire generations. So young people coming up now Gen Z I think probably see Asian men in a completely different light than two thousand and four. Looking at William Hung, right, I think William Hung probably represented.
What people thought of of Asian men.
There were you know, those studies that showed I think it was about was it Okaycupid or Match, that show that Asian men were the least desirable on those dating sites. And I think that that perception has shifted because of K pop, because.
Of I mean, crazy rich Asians. John M.
Chew worked really hard to make sure that there were lots of hot Asian men on screen.
Showing their ass off.
It was very successful, very successful. Yeah, I think that that perception has shifted, but it is very very recent. We need more variation. Twenty years later, we can look back on William Hung and see his sweetness and see his sincerity and not just see him as a stereotype, but we can see those other real aspects of him. And that's actually when I when I watched it again, you know, twenty years later today in preparation for this podcast, I did see those aspects of him, and I also
noticed the racism of Simon cal So. It was like I was able to I think when he came on screen and knowing that he was, you know, representing us, that's all I could see at that moment and feel really scared that Oh my gosh, this is another you know, ding against us.
But now I can see him as who he for who he is and for who.
He was, and then also contextualize him in a way that you know, young Nancy back in two thousand and four was just more reactive. We all are protagonists of our own story, right, and so we are all the romantic leads of our own story.
And I think that there are folks that look like Wim Hung, that look like Jimmy O.
Yang and and and the fact that we can have stories about their lives and them as heroes is promise.
Thank you so much to Nancy. You can follow her work online and buy her book at the links in the description. And finally, when we come back, we take a look at William's lasting effect on reality television. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I personally believe that the connection between Jack Skellington and teenage mall culture should be studied, and today we're taking a closer look at the William
Hung phenomenon of two thousand and four. When most people look back in the two thousands, they think of it as the peak of the reality TV genre because it was from Survivor in two thousand and one to peak Jersey Shore in the late two thousands. For nearly the entire decade, reality shows were the top rate on TV.
But why was this such a big moment. The simple answer is it's traditionally cheaper than scripted TV, and if the American Idol debut to ten million people was any indication it got the same or better numbers when it came to viewers and advertisers. And as many hyper specific genre seargis tend to do, it was also related to
labor strikes throughout the two thousands. Sag AFTRA, the Actress Union, was on strike for one hundred and eighty two days during the year two thousand, leaving the uni universe industry to look anywhere else for content. We see another bump in reality in the later two thousands for a similar reason. The WGA, the Writers' Union, went on strike then, which led to the late aughts renaissance of shows like Jersey Shore and sixteen and Pregnant. Of course, reality TV has
remained popular and content traversial in the years since. So I wanted to speak with someone who had been there through it all and could speak to William's moment in the year since from inside the reality industry, and of course I wanted to talk to an editor. Steve Flack has been in the industry for a while and experienced every manner of ethical dilemma and massive media backlash that
comes with working in the world of reality TV. You've seen his editing work on Real Housewives, Say Yes to the Dress, and, according to his IMDb page, something called my Husband's Not Gay. Here's our talk.
Hi. My name is Steve Black. I'm a video editor, professional video editors, really been specializing in unscripted in reality for the last, oh god, twenty years. I started working in the industry in two thousand and three as an assistant. I was a full time editor by two thousand and six, and I've been doing that pretty consistently ever since.
You've been in the industry for a while, it was it the preference to stay in New York that brought you into reality specifically.
I think it was just desire to work to pay off my student loan situation. It's like, I graduated film school and I wanted to get right to work, and I fell into working in unscripted television because that's again, that was the ninety percent of the industry in New York climbed through the ranks pretty quickly, and I was
pretty set. Also, I'll be honest, when I started in the industry was a little different, a lot more homemakeover makeover shows, not as much through exploitation the way modern reality TV has become, but also as someone who grew up on basic cable, on MTV, on VH one, on you know, stuff like that at Comedy Central, I didn't really have a problem with it because it was stuff I was watching anyway, Like it's not foreign to me.
Way I like to explain reality television editing, you have all of the positives of scripted with all the negatives of documentary. Basically you're not beholden to the truth. But you also don't have any of the stories already fixed in the script, so therefore you're making it kind of up based on what you have in the footage. So it's like being handed a puzzle and being told put it together, but not the way it's time to be put together.
As an editor, it seems like you do have like a fair amount of, at least in my estimation, a fair amount of creative freedom about how the story is presented, But are you told, like, try to shape it in this particular way. Does that approach on the producer side? Very How does that work?
Usually you try and shape it the way the producers want at first, and you put it together and it makes sense, and then you present it to the network and they don't like it at all and you have to do something else with it. Again, like I said,
you're not beholding to the truth or the script. So therefore everything is kind of malleable until at Arizon Television because ninety percent of the time, the people the talent are one hundred percent aware that they're going to be messed with and shaped the way the producers wanted, and they think they're in on it, and then they find out it airs and they disagree. You said, this is this is mainly about William Home and William Hong was on season what American Idol wasn't season one? Season it
was season three. Yeah, it was season three, So by the time you get to season three, people know what the gig is like. It was one of those things like I enjoyed watching season one of American Idol as a college student, but it was one of the things like I couldn't get to season two because I felt like by then the gig was up. Like, you go to the audition, do you know you're going to get made fun of? The talent kind of knows going in they're getting screwed with.
Based on my conversation was William, it was like a little bit of yes, a little bit of no, Like where yeah, by two thousand and four, people who've watched TV are familiar with the ways that these are shaped. But it did sound like, just from his account, that it does feel different when it happens to you. Where he was like he was even though he was familiar with the cadence of even this specific show, He was like, Oh, as an editor, when you have to shape a person, where do you start?
What are your instincts? Because I know it's like second nature at this.
Point, this second nature. I think a big thing for me is that they're not I don't want to say they're not people, but they're not something like, especially in post production an editor, like even if I'm working on a show with hosts and recurring characters, like when I worked on Housewives shows, I didn't know any of the Housewives.
Sure, you're just.
People on my TV screen, Like, you know, none of these people are ever something I have to deal with. I think a lot of it is just kind of giving the producers what they want. Things that go through so many hands. You don't have any ownership of anything, so even if you start something, you don't necessarily finish it. Like I try and to the best of my abilities with the straits as white Man, try and be as
ethically correct that I'm aware of. You know, of course you have your own unspoken biases that you're just completely unaware of. But even if you put something in, someone comes down the line and changes it based on network notes. Like there's there's a level of complete non ownership to the editor, but at the same time realizing like this isn't my baby, this isn't a piece of art that's
mine that I need to stick to. I don't want to say like I'm a tool, but sometimes you are just a tool for the producers and for the editors, and if you're not going to give them what they want, they'll find another guy in the edit room. He'll do it. You have no idea where the notes they're coming from and everything, Like when I did Housewives, I got notes from Andy Cohen, but then you also get a rounded notes from Mandy Cohen's boyfriend at the time. Oh wow,
who wasn't hired or anything. He just got to like give a passive notes because you know he watched him with Andy. You're completely disconnected from so much that you're not exactly sure who's asking for what or what's what. Like I said, ninety five percent of the people involved in unscripted reality television art I don't want to say they're in on it, but they're at least a way of what they're getting into. Everything's kind of fair game.
It feels like, hey, so what you've told me.
It seems like you've worked on a wide range of unscripted to how the approaches would vary on shows like Housewives, where people don't always come off well but they're cast members, and it's like it does seem like cast members versus contestants.
Yeah, I mean it's people want their fifteen minutes a lot of times, you know, Like that's the I keep people keep always asking me where do you get these people? I Like, there's a website, do you know about realitywanted dot com. It's like a dating website for reality television shows. You make a profile, you say the type of shows you'd be interested in being on, whether the makeover competition, whatever, and casting people just go through it looking for the
next pup. I mean, that's a thirty year old reference, but you know, like he's like one of the first reality TV show turned into celebrity type person. There's there's a good chunk of reality television that's just hey, what's the movie or TV show and how do we make it real? Like Laguna Beach was THEOC, or Housewives is Desperate Housewives.
In my mind, William Hung while he does sort of kind of prominence at the time where reality TV is somewhat understood, it feels like a million years ago where it's like he stood in line for ten hours. There was no website component. I feel like the way that people interact with reality TV as contestants or as knowingly like was not quite there.
So I would love to talk about the.
Changes you have felt in the industry throughout your career.
Big standout changes is Housewives and doctu soaps where nothing is real. When I broke into the industry, it was a lot of you know, homemakeover, makeover. I did what not to where I did while you were out, which was like kind of a companion pies to trading uh spaces, which everyone really was aware of us.
It's like I remember all of these Yeah.
MTV always had, you know, real worlds and whatever. Then the Housewives kind of changed everything. I feel like postwifestyle shows were like, there's literally not a real thing about them. The stories are fake, the situations are fake. Every single thing is not real. I mean, look, reality television has a lot in common with another one of my hobbies, which is professional wrestling. Like you know about the concept of kababe.
Right of course, yeah, yeah.
I mean it's all cafabe. But the reality television, professional wrestling politics, it's all the same thing. Speaking of not being behold into the truth, and this is where I have the conversation a lot with documentary editors. Are you are you aware of the term frank invite? No, you're not aware of the term frank invite?
No'.
So it's one of the key things in reality editor's tool kit is the frank invite, which is basically, if they say it on camera, every word is available to be used to be recut into any way to make them say whatever they want.
Oh. Oh.
I once went into a gig started to start telling people like I don't I don't Frank Invite for ethics, ethical reasons, and people freaked out and I'm like, no, it hold time. Oh the most famous one is and it's not holding up in court. Is just the famous confession, right, the Confessions of Frank Invite. Look it up. Look, I'll
be honest with you. If I'm an editor and I'm working on a show and I have a guy admit to murder on television, I don't hold it for the premiere, the season finale, the episode I go to the cops. They didn't go to the cops because he said something like, oh what did I do? What are they going to say that I killed them all? They cut out like a bunch of words and say, oh, this is his confession. You go back to the raw footage, you listen to what he says, and it's like, well, I didn't actually
say he did it. He said a bunch of other stuff, and they manipulated it. The changes the whole true crime docudrama's things where they're just completely unethical. They're trying to edit things in the style of like reality television, but make documentaries and like, that's not how you make a documentary. Documentaries don't have cliffhangers every week. Documentaries don't say tune in for more. You just make your statement and you move on. They're not ethical.
That is wow.
As a former Jink said, that is I feel like such as dumbass.
Oh it would just to bring it back to the Franken by and this brings in the future of like AI is now like that you can make people say whatever they want, because the whole drawback to AI was that it's not perfect. Like if you really, if you really critically listen, you're like, oh, this doesn't sound right. But like listen to most Franken bites, you don't sound right anyway, So it's now you're kind of beholden to nothing.
I mean, I think like reflecting on the William hunks story, I do feel like the way that like his narrative was presented was to be humiliating, was to be like, oh, this guy bombs, let's edit it to make it look more humiliating than it even was at the time. Based on you know, William Hunk's account seems to be like a very intensely edited version of something that happened versus what you're describing, which is like it doesn't even need to have happened.
To be aired.
Part of what I find really interesting about Willyam Hung's story is that it happens at a time where TV and the Internet are starting to be in more regular conversation with one another. This was still wasn't a time where you could vote for American Idol online.
But you know, when.
William Hung was on TV, a lot of the reason it seems like he kept being brought back was because there were like forum posts about him, and there were online petitions to like bring William back. There was the sort of inklings of like what happens now in the space of two hours, like you're saying, happen over the course of two weeks in your industry. Has the way that the internet interacts with unscripted TV shifted? Do they feel more in conversation with each other?
It just feels like I must churn, like and the people who came to fame on it, the Housewives, the Kardashians, are just trying to like hold whatever they have for as long as possible because they've made it a lifestyle, a career, and they don't know what else to do.
Thank you so much to Steve Flack for offering his experience in the industry, and you can follow him at the links in the description. And here we are at the end of our journey with our boy William. William Hung has mainly discussed today as a relic of pop culture, one who inspired conversation that ranged far beyond his first fifteen minutes. You see, William become a focus of and by some people's standards, a perpetrator of cultural stereotypes. But when you talk to the guy, he was just having
fun and capitalizing on this moment. It is not fair at all that his very existence was politicized from every angle. But as we see time and time again, that's often the nature of capitalizing on your moment in America. And in spite of the roadbumps along the way, William has remained adamantly himself, something that is extremely difficult to do with twenty years of public and internet opinions being hurled
at you. It's pretty amazing. Now if we could just get them to stop working for the La County Sheriff's Department. William Hung, your sixteenth minute ends. Now, thank you so much for listening to this two part series. I really hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed researching it. And again, a lot of what we've talked about in these episodes truly only scratches the surface. So please grab yourself a copy of Nancy Wongyan's book Real Inequality at
the link and the description. And for your moment of fun, here's my full rendition of the national anthem in two thousand and two, See you next week.
The national anthem.
You see by the teleology music.
We're so proudly we.
Have a light.
We suta bird shots do.
Fin over the land, but.
So bad.
Hallo long.
The p.
Gay pool they had at the see over.
The same that same The.
B sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lastus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lickderman and Robert Evans. Themason Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen.
Voice acting is
From Grant Crater and pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's flee and Casper and my pet rock bird who'll outlive us all Bye,