So William Hung has a record deal.
Does Hung even qualify as "kitsch"? For those of you who have been lucky enough not to be following pop culture in the past six months, Hung was a failed contestant on American Idol. He was so bad, yet so earnest in his sucking, that he became some kind of celebrity. Hung is a third-year engineer at Berkeley. He yearns to be a singer, but he can't sing and he can't dance and he certainly doesn't have MTV-calibre looks. Despite this, he now has a record contract. You can visit his website here.
I know that every once in a while something strikes a nerve in American pop culture for no apparent reason. Some things just can't be explained, nor should they be. But I can't help but think that there is a racist form of paternalism that has framed the Hung story from the beginning. If a white American were as bad as Hung, even if he were as genuine as Hung in defeat, would he be featured on Entertainment Tonight and Dateline? If so, those shows would be nothing but failed dweebs all the time.
That is, what's so endearing about William Hung? Have we never seen a dweeb fail before? Even a well-intentioned (but deluded) dweeb?
I think what many people find "cute" or "funny" about Hung is (aside from his last name) the fact that he is playing the role of the "silly foreigner". It's similar to the way in which some of the humour in Lost in Translation is found in the way two Americans view Japanese culture. (I realize Hung is Chinese. I'm simply making an analogy on other grounds.) In Lost in Translation, many of the gags revolve around Japanese people trying to speak English, or Japanese people performing at a karaoke party. The humour, that is, is in watching foreigners butcher the English language. It's funny stuff, no doubt; but it also contains an element of racism in the way it condescends to this other culture.
I call it "paternalistic" racism because it objectifies the person in a way that infantilizes him; it reduces the object of ridicule to a "child," in effect. The humour is presumptuous. We're laughing at these Japanese people because they apparently don't know how ridiculous they look and sound. It's not simply a case of two people feeling "dislocated" in another culture (though it is certainly that); it's also a case of two people thumbing their noses at a foreign culture.
Don't get me wrong: Lost in Translation is not a racist movie. I think it's a wonderful movie, but it contains elements of this kind of paternalism that I think is also found in the celebration of William Hung. I'd like to think people are laughing with William, that they're in on the joke and just indulging this moment of cultural generosity; but I think instead people are laughing at William Hung, on the surface saying he is an emblem of optimism, a refreshing dose of genuine humanity in the otherwise hostile world of popular entertainment, while underneath what they really believe is that William is just another misguided foreigner trying to be like us and failing (laughably).
William Hung is less "the Hong Kong Ricky Martin" and more "the American Idol Charlie Chan." It's not his fault. And I don't begrudge him for running with his fame on this one. But I have to keep returning to my initial dilemma: Why is this talentless dweeb any more interesting / funny / entertaining / full of kitsch value than any other?
10:47:05 PM 
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