Let me tell you, I have an almost supernatural (some would say neurotic) capacity for remembering the most embarrassing moments in my life. Walking into a women's bathroom by mistake when I was about 7 years old and lost at the mall, crying for mommy. Bursting into tears of hunger at Taste of Minnesota when I was 10. In 4th grade I sat next to one of the few other Asians I saw at a class assembly because I thought she was so friendly, cool, and cute – then being told I couldn't sit there because it was for student council members only. I can't remember my own parents' birthdays, or which days to put out the recycling. But that time I walked face-first into a brick pillar in broad daylight on a busy shopping day? Yep.
My extreme discomfort towards public embarrassment is why I avoid reality television like the plague. I don't get any pleasure or joy from watching humiliating public spectacle, even when it doesn't involve me. Shame is something I have in spades, but is not something I enjoy.
Shows like American Idol are horrifying to me. Because if someone embarrasses themselves or does poorly, I feel terrible for them. However, I've been watching the pop phenomenon in recent years because my partner, who doesn't enjoy reality television either, happens to enjoy watching American Idol: not to laugh at people, but because there's always a chance that someone unique, and with genuine talent (hello Adam Lambert) will make it on the show. I've been trying to watch it with her. It's only fair. If I ask her to watch trash like Ninja Assassin and Iron Man, I can suffer through some bad singers and mangled songs with her.
Someone I always think about when I watch American Idol is William Hung. A Berkeley student, Hung auditioned in 2004 with a pretty terrible rendition of Ricky Martin's She Bangs. Even though I wasn't watching much television at all during that time, I couldn't escape the notoriety of this pop culture disaster.
Most likely, you couldn't either. In the internet age, public spectacle has even more venues for participation than ever. You know what happened: William became something of a famous figure despite his mangled performance. Much of this was credited to Hung's unabashedly positive attitude: after being laughed at and humiliated by judges Randy, Simon, and Paula, William famously stated, "I already gave my best, and I have no regrets at all."
Despite his admirable pluck, many of us Asian Americans, especially Asian American men, shuddered whenever we got sent that link of William warbling his way through Ricky Martin, or someone mentioned it at work or at school. It was a collective cringe weighed down by a ton of racial and gendered baggage. I'm going to say this: America loves humiliating Asian men. Whether it be racist assumptions about the, shall we say, relative size of certain parts of our anatomy believed to be true, to the mockery of stereotypical accents, to the continued belief that we are short, backwards, nerdy, and unattractive, Asian American men have a very specific history and experience in regards to gendered race dynamics here in the States. And what makes it worse, is that there seems like there is very little discussion, criticism, or challenge when these racist stereotypes of Asian men rear their ugly heads. I'm not saying we have it worse than others. But I know I'm not alone when I say as an Asian man, it sometimes feels like we receive the brunt of racist hatred while having few avenues to defend ourselves and having even fewer allies and defenders willing to have our backs. Hurt our feelings, ridicule us, insist that all the stereotypes are justified because they're at least partly true – sometimes as an Asian American man, you sometimes get the sinking feeling that you're alone out here with a target on your forehead.
Added to that, there are few opportunities for Asian women and men to speak out about any gendered racial stereotypes, whether they target women or men. We have little access to pop and mass media outlets to discuss such things. For those of you who, at this point, think I am a hypocrite because I have this blog on the Twin Cities' largest paper to talk about these things, my reply would be: why do you think I said "yes" when they asked me to blog for the Strib, even though I knew full well that the vast majority of commentators would lash out at me for doing so? Because there are so few opportunities for Asian Americans to publicly challenge racism – often we take those opportunities even when we know people will hate us for it.
Those of us who face challenges of representation in this country (people of color, women, and LGBTT's) know very well the burden of stereotype-laden imagery: marginalized people have very little say or control about our image, and representations of us are so few that one image is applied to all of us whether it resembles us or not. And no, it's not the same for everyone. I don't go around thinking all straight white men are like Fred Durst. No white dudes are expected to apologize for his existence. But when, for example, William Hung rose to fame, many of us Asian men couldn't help wondering who would shout his name out of their window at us. How many people would see us and start shaking their bodies and belting out their accented impersonation of William singing She Bangs. How many people would see us and unconsciously and wordlessly shape us into his image.
And unfortunately, instead of speaking out and challenging this racism, we often turn on the ones closest to us: ourselves. Instead of having an informed discussion and exploration of William Hung and exactly why America is so comfortable embracing and selling such a (perceived) cartoonish caricature of an Asian man, many Asians dissed William Hung. Joined in on the mockery. Forwarded the links, perfected their own impersonation of him, laughed loudest at him. Because in dissing him, we hoped to distance ourselves from him. As if to say, I'm not that clueless Fresh Off the Boat Asian like William Hung, man - I'm American. Clowning William Hung was a familiar survival tool for Asians.
