Speaker 1: Cool Media. Hello everyone, Jamie. Here just a few quick
Speaker 1: housekeeping things at the top of this episode. First off,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to say that I'm doing my first proper
Speaker 1: taping of a special of mine on December fourth in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It is called The Tiny Man Is Trying
Speaker 1: to Kill Me. I'm so excited. If you've been following
Speaker 1: my work for a long time, I really love building
Speaker 1: shows like this and it's cool to finally be making
Speaker 1: kind of a proper production. So there's going to be
Speaker 1: two tapings on December fourth at the Lyric Hyperion. It
Speaker 1: is a mix of some of my newer stand up
Speaker 1: and a performance about the titular tiny Man Who's trying
Speaker 1: to kill me. And it's all kind of about the
Speaker 1: tendency to bastardize every part of your life for material
Speaker 1: and hashtag content. Working some shit out, if you will.
Speaker 1: But it's also very silly and very fun, and there's
Speaker 1: brief nudity. I'd love to see you there. Tickets are
Speaker 1: in the description. Second, I wanted to plug another show
Speaker 1: that I produce on iHeartRadio called We the Unhoused with
Speaker 1: Theo Henderson. It's a long running podcast about issues that
Speaker 1: face the unhoused from unhoused perspectives, there aren't really shows
Speaker 1: that do that, and it's especially important to be informed
Speaker 1: on right now given the recent Supreme Court decision called
Speaker 1: Grant's Pass that makes it all but illegal to be
Speaker 1: unhoused in the US, which will get worse in the
Speaker 1: coming administration. For more on that, the link is also
Speaker 1: in the description. And finally, today we are talking about
Speaker 1: part two of Volume Hung, as the title of the
Speaker 1: episode indicates, but I wanted to give you a heads
Speaker 1: up that in December we're going to be doing a
Speaker 1: multi part series on the main characters of the Manusphere.
Speaker 1: Obviously a big conversation right now, and I'm looking for
Speaker 1: sources for that episode. So if you are or know
Speaker 1: someone that was interested in The Manusphere and then got
Speaker 1: out of interest in the Manisphere, I would.
Speaker 2: Love to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It can be anonymous, and the email to reach out
Speaker 1: to is small Ice resurfacer at gmail dot com. Okay,
Speaker 1: I hope everyone's hanging in and enjoy William hum American
Speaker 1: Idol is guilty of a lot of things. It's guilty
Speaker 1: of letting Ryan Seacrest wear jeans with a blazer like
Speaker 1: he's Kamala Harris giving a pep talk at an elementary school.
Speaker 1: It's guilty of burdening us with Chris Daughtry, But if
Speaker 1: you watched early American Idol, you'll know it wasn't just
Speaker 1: guilty of millennium kitsch. But damn there was a lot
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And there were also a lot of pernicious elements, elements
Speaker 1: of racism, of sexism, of xenophobia that you could literally
Speaker 1: hear on the show, often from Simon Cowell. But there
Speaker 1: was a diverse pool of American Idol winners in those
Speaker 1: early years. In the first six seasons, three winners were
Speaker 1: white and three were black. But there are also full
Speaker 1: half decades where the winners were truly profoundly random white guys.
Speaker 1: A winner named Philip Phillips. You're joking, And this has
Speaker 1: been called out throughout the show's history. Elton Goddamn John
Speaker 1: called it out all the way back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four when future e goddter Jennifer Hudson was eliminated
Speaker 1: from the show. On wait for It, Barry Man Alone
Speaker 1: Night from the La Times in two thousand and four, the.
Speaker 4: Three people I was really impressed with and they just
Speaker 4: happened to be black, young female singers, and they all
Speaker 4: seemed to be landing in the bottom three, said John,
Speaker 4: commenting on the tally in which the lowest vote getter
Speaker 4: is eliminated. They have great voices, the fact that they're
Speaker 4: constantly in the bottom three and I don't want to
Speaker 4: set myself up here, but I find it incredibly racist.
Speaker 1: While it did feature a diverse array of contestants, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to argue that American Idol was a truly inclusive show,
Speaker 1: and not just because of the very existence and concept
Speaker 1: of Barry Mandel Knight. There were elements of discrimination that
Speaker 1: you couldn't see as a viewer, and once that went
Speaker 1: all the way to court. In early twenty thirteen, news
Speaker 1: broke that ten black contestants had filed a suit against
Speaker 1: the show with the Equal Opportunity Commission that alleged that
Speaker 1: they were quote deliberately exploiting black contestants to improve the
Speaker 1: show's ratings unquote. The suit is an extremely long one,
Speaker 1: but the summarize I'll quote from this Guardian piece from
Speaker 1: Amanda Holpuch at the time, speaking here about filing lawyer
Speaker 1: James Freeman. Freeman said he noticed something was awry when
Speaker 1: Jermaine Jones was kicked off the show in March twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Producers said at the time that Jones was disqualified because
Speaker 1: he had not told the show there were outstanding warrants
Speaker 1: for his arrest.
Speaker 5: Freeman also said in the letter that he saw that
Speaker 5: only nine other people had been publicly disqualified from the show,
Speaker 5: and they were all black. Freeman claimed in that letter
Speaker 5: that by asking potential contestants if they had been arrested,
Speaker 5: producers violated California employment law, under which employers are not
Speaker 5: allowed to ask potential employees about their arrest history, and
Speaker 5: the letter, he said that the show perpetrated destructive stereotypes
Speaker 5: about black people by using their answer to that question
Speaker 5: and employing private investigators to examine their arrest history, allowing
Speaker 5: them to disqualify the contestants, and from the lawsuit itself.
Speaker 4: A staggering thirty one percent of every American Idol semi
Speaker 4: finalist contestant who happened to be a young black male
Speaker 4: was disqualified from this singing competition for reasons wholly unrelated
Speaker 4: to their singing talent, even though there were three times
Speaker 4: as many white or non black contestants featured on American Idol.
Speaker 4: Over the course of ten years, there has never been
Speaker 4: a single white or non black contestant disqualified from American Idol.
Speaker 1: Not Ever, nine out of ten complainants were black men
Speaker 1: who said they were disproportionately focused on with speculation to
Speaker 1: their criminal history, then punished for it. A similar discrimination
Speaker 1: case had been brought the year before by black contestants
Speaker 1: of The Bachelor, and the case was thrown out on
Speaker 1: the ground that casting isn't the same thing as hiring,
Speaker 1: and that rejecting black applicants was fair under the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: What But things didn't go much better in the Idle
Speaker 1: lawsuit in late twenty fourteen. It was revealed that the
Speaker 1: statute of limitations didn't apply for nine out of ten
Speaker 1: contestants who sued, and the other got dismissed on a technicality.
Speaker 1: But there's no doubt that American Idol has a history
Speaker 1: of racism and discrimination in the treatment of their contestants.
Speaker 1: And it's not like this was Idol's idea. For my money,
Speaker 1: this just reflected the amount of permissible discrimination that was
Speaker 1: acceptable at this time. I'm not saying it's much or
Speaker 1: at all better now, But the post nine to eleven
Speaker 1: era was rife with casual xenophobia, with shaming women into
Speaker 1: eating disorders, to closeting queer people by threatening retaliation or
Speaker 1: shaming for being out at all. This was the world then,
Speaker 1: an idol was reflecting it, and when it came to
Speaker 1: reinforcing existing stereotypes around marginalized people, no one was safe
Speaker 1: and no contestant picked off the questions about how race
Speaker 1: was treated within the show, like William Hung. In part
Speaker 1: one of this year, we revisited how William's infamy rolled
Speaker 1: out and spoke with the man himself, and today we
Speaker 1: are looking at his cultural impact and what we can
Speaker 1: learn about representation and reality TV by taking a closer
Speaker 1: look at his story. So let's start Ebanging Baby. It's
Speaker 1: part two of William Hum. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's
Speaker 1: main characters and learn how their moment affected them and
Speaker 1: what it says about us and the Internet. And this
Speaker 1: week we're delving deeper into the saga of William Hung. Sir,
Speaker 1: she bangs himself.
Speaker 6: Cheep bags, cheap begs, oh baby, but she moves, She moves.
Speaker 1: Getting to speak with William was really wonderful, and his
Speaker 1: huge cultural moment was so impactful that it became literally
Speaker 1: impossible to get everything I wanted to talk about in
Speaker 1: the space of a single episode, because one issue in
Speaker 1: particular is so significant in the discussions that surrounded William
Speaker 1: at the time, and since that, I wanted to give
Speaker 1: the topic its own space. That's what we're doing today,
Speaker 1: because there's framing an audition as bad, and framing an
Speaker 1: audition as bad while referencing and capitalizing on racial stereotypes
Speaker 1: to make the audition seem even worse. For example, here's
Speaker 1: how a mediocre white contestant might be rejected.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Victim.
Speaker 7: Should we just do this together?
Speaker 6: You guys are on the count of three, one, two, three.
Speaker 3: No, you are.
Speaker 2: A terrible singer.
Speaker 4: You are a terrible dan So you have no charisma,
Speaker 4: I mean everything.
Speaker 1: I've seen some of those people that you sent through there,
Speaker 1: and I know I'm a lot better than that, Victor.
Speaker 1: You know what, it doesn't matter what we think, is it?
Speaker 5: All that matters is what you think anyway, terrible, It's.
Speaker 1: Definitely what America thinks.
Speaker 2: America, Victor, America would hate you.
Speaker 1: And here's how William was treated. Yeah, he's not great.
Speaker 1: But listen to how he's spoken about.
Speaker 3: What's your last name?
Speaker 4: Hung Hu and g Hu?
Speaker 3: Yes, brothers and sisters. No, I don't.
Speaker 8: I'm the only child, the only child.
Speaker 9: Yes.
Speaker 1: Do your parents tell you.
Speaker 2: Have a great voice?
Speaker 6: No, they don't realize actually great?
Speaker 1: And they are they excited for you that you're here.
Speaker 8: Actually they were.
Speaker 6: They were not like it. If they hear that, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm missing school for two days in a row.
Speaker 10: So they wouldn't like it if you go through.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 10: They wouldn't be happy if you go through.
Speaker 8: No, they wouldn't be happy if I go through. They
Speaker 8: wouldn't be heapy if I don't go through.
Speaker 1: School.
Speaker 8: Yes, that's a big sacrifice, William.
Speaker 6: It's one of actually the worst auditions we've had this year,
Speaker 6: if I'm being honest.
Speaker 9: Seriously, I mean everything about it was grotesque.
Speaker 2: Oh stop it grotesque?
Speaker 3: It was you stop it already.
Speaker 1: You can hear the judges leaning into common early odds
Speaker 1: tropes around Asian American people and more specifically East Asian men.
Speaker 1: He's hyper focused on academics. He should be doing homework.
Speaker 1: His parents wouldn't approve of a career in entertainment and
Speaker 1: would rather he excel in school. In subsequent media appearances
Speaker 1: William made, he would often be asked how he's doing
Speaker 1: with the ladies, or in his own music video, would
Speaker 1: be surrounded by conventionally attractive white women who were only
Speaker 1: into him because of his fame.
Speaker 3: I'm Tony the record company guy.
Speaker 2: I meet you, I want you to meet you new girlfriend.
Speaker 1: And did that boy yoyoy owing sound happen over the
Speaker 1: image of William's eyes bouncing out of his head horny
Speaker 1: cartoon wolf style. Yes, of course it was making the
Speaker 1: idea that women would be interested in William into a joke,
Speaker 1: reinforces another long standing media stereotype against East Asian men,
Speaker 1: that they are somehow less masculine or worthy of any
Speaker 1: sexual attention. This is an extremely complicated topic and one
Speaker 1: that I'm going to get into with our guest Nancy
Speaker 1: Wangian today, and I just want to add already that
Speaker 1: these stereotypes being thrown at William here are just as
Speaker 1: tied in the Western tendency to turn Asia into this
Speaker 1: big monolith in their minds, when, of course that's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and the bad faith that we're seeing here revolves around
Speaker 1: stereotypes rooted in East Asia in the West, and yes,
Speaker 1: William Hung is framed to embody many of the tropes
Speaker 1: that Americans had embraced around Asian men at the time.
Speaker 1: But William Hung is also a real person. As you
Speaker 1: heard in our interview last week, William's feelings towards the
Speaker 1: role anti Asian racism played into his moment are complex
Speaker 1: and have changed over time. For him and many, the
Speaker 1: message of perseverance and positivity is what he feels catapulted
Speaker 1: him to success on Idle, and he's generally said that
Speaker 1: he doesn't think the Idle production itself was discriminatory, but
Speaker 1: he has been critical of how the media treated him
Speaker 1: in the two thousands. Here he is in twenty twenty.
Speaker 8: I remember when I auditioned for American Idol back in
Speaker 8: two thousand and four. I had a lot of fans,
Speaker 8: but I also had quite a bit of probably a
Speaker 8: big number of haters. Some people say that I portray
Speaker 8: Asian stereotypes. Other people say that I shouldn't be an
Speaker 8: entertainment business. That's all these negative things. But let's take
Speaker 8: a step back. Why are we being so negative? Does
Speaker 8: it help us to improve our lives by taking our
Speaker 8: anger on people like that. Not really, And in the.
Speaker 1: Same talk, William discusses how he was upset by the
Speaker 1: massive wave of anti Asian racism that came in the
Speaker 1: early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaker 8: It really bothers me that there are people locally in
Speaker 8: the Los Angeles area getting shamed, getting attacked, getting sped on.
Speaker 2: It's not right.
Speaker 1: So of course he's well aware of the cultural stereotypes
Speaker 1: that he's being judged by, and he's also just being himself.
Speaker 1: So what do you do. First, Let's focus on that
Speaker 1: media reception, because American idol couldn't make a star without
Speaker 1: the interest and cooperation of both the media and the public.
Speaker 1: I can't cover this subject comprehensively in the space of
Speaker 1: an episode, and I am not the ideal person too,
Speaker 1: but I want to give you an idea of the
Speaker 1: attitudes towards Asian men, specifically when William Hung first came
Speaker 1: into the American spotlight. For further, I would recommend the
Speaker 1: making of Asian America a history and serve the people
Speaker 1: making Asian America in the long sixties, which takes special
Speaker 1: care in analyzing how Americans were conditioned to see Asian
Speaker 1: people as a monolith in the back half of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. You can find those at the links in
Speaker 1: the description. In brief, racism against Asians in America is
Speaker 1: long standing and far reaching. There's unfortunately no shortage of violence, harassment,
Speaker 1: and discrimination against Asian Americans in recent years, particularly around
Speaker 1: the time of the pandemic. There were tremendous waves of
Speaker 1: propaganda demonizing Asian countries and people during both the Korea
Speaker 1: and Vietnam Wars, and the eighteen eighty two Chinese Exclusion
Speaker 1: Act in the US made it all but impossible for
Speaker 1: Asian people to integrate into American society at all. And
Speaker 1: much of the violence toward Asian people is elevated and
Speaker 1: reinformed by the pop culture that portrays them in the West,
Speaker 1: including truly horrific yellow face performances from white actors that
Speaker 1: would have been remembered by many older IDOL viewers in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. Major examples that audiences might have
Speaker 1: known about included, of course, Mickey Rooney's trash performance as
Speaker 1: mister Junioshi and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Speaker 2: I wrote this, Oh, Darling, I am sorry, but I
Speaker 2: lost my.
Speaker 6: Key what what wikesable?
Speaker 3: You cannot go on or keep her in in my
Speaker 3: bill You just stob me.
Speaker 2: You must have a key mate.
Speaker 1: But there is more where that came from. John Wayne
Speaker 1: played Genghis Khan, Katherine Hepburn in a movie called Dragon Seed,
Speaker 1: the white actor who played Charlie Chan in sixteen movies
Speaker 1: entire career. The list goes on, and part of this
Speaker 1: was related to the Hayes Code, an extremely restrictive policy
Speaker 1: in a American movies from the nineteen thirties into the
Speaker 1: sixties that explicitly banned any sexual contact between different races
Speaker 1: on screen. So if you did cast an Asian actor
Speaker 1: in an Asian role, they couldn't have a love interest
Speaker 1: who was of any other race. But this isn't the
Speaker 1: sole reason this happened. It's also just mask off American
Speaker 1: racism and a vested interest in affirming negative stereotypes around
Speaker 1: Asian people, and this continued after two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: more recently with the casting of Scarlett Johansson as a
Speaker 1: Japanese character in Ghost in the Shell in the twenty tens.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, teen Vogue interviewed Keith Chow, founder of
Speaker 1: the pop culture blog nerds of color.
Speaker 4: He says, it's all connected. Chow tells teen Vogue, it
Speaker 4: all results in the dehumanization of people of color, and
Speaker 4: in the specific case of yellow face, in the dehumanization
Speaker 4: of Asian people.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say that there were not impactful
Speaker 1: Asian stars that broke through in the West in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Stars like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan experienced
Speaker 1: global success, and movies that centered Asian characters and culture,
Speaker 1: like The Joy Luck Club had a big moment upon
Speaker 1: its release in nineteen ninety three. But that's not very
Speaker 1: much good representation and certainly isn't proportional to the Asian
Speaker 1: American population. That's one mainstream movie for an entire generation,
Speaker 1: while other Asian characters in popular movies were most often
Speaker 1: relegated to side roles to mainly white protagonists and even
Speaker 1: more often embodied these racialized stereotypes. And if you've taken
Speaker 1: a media studies class, you might know where I'm going
Speaker 1: with this. For gen X, and that's none of my
Speaker 1: business due to my radiant youth, But for gen X,
Speaker 1: one of the most prom in portrayals of an Asian
Speaker 1: man came in John Hughes's nineteen eighty four movie Sixteen
Speaker 1: Candles in the form of a character named Long Duck Dong.
Speaker 1: And not only was his character's name written as a
Speaker 1: joke by a white guy, this character embodied basically every
Speaker 1: cultural stereotype we've discussed so far. He is literally introduced
Speaker 1: with the sound of a gong repeatedly.
Speaker 7: What's happened in the hot stuff.
Speaker 1: He's a quote unquote good boy, a model minority stock
Speaker 1: character with an over emphasis on good behavior and academics.
Speaker 7: I love a visiting with a grandma and a grandpa
Speaker 7: and writing letters to parents and pushing lawnmowing machine so
Speaker 7: Grandpa's hyena don't get disturbed.
Speaker 1: And later on when he has a white girlfriend, it's
Speaker 1: presented as ridiculus.
Speaker 10: I've never been out with Oh neither.
Speaker 1: And maybe you saw this coming. But the actor you
Speaker 1: heard performing Getty Wantanabe. He's of Japanese descent, but he's
Speaker 1: from Utah, and the fact that he had to take
Speaker 1: this role on has everything to do with the kinds
Speaker 1: of parts that were available to Asian American actors at
Speaker 1: this time in a white dominated entertainment landscape. In front
Speaker 1: of and behind the scenes, there was very little imagination
Speaker 1: to see Asian men as anything but caricatures. Long Duck
Speaker 1: Dong is indisputably presented as the butt of the joke,
Speaker 1: and studies found that this happened more often than not
Speaker 1: throughout Hollywood's history. Here's our guest today, Nancy wang Yin
Speaker 1: talking about Long Duck Dong in an interview with NBC
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. Anything he said was something you
Speaker 1: laughed at, not with. He kind of defined Asian characters
Speaker 1: for decades, and this kind of representation makes a difference.
Speaker 1: In the early twenty twenties, the Geena Davis Institute on
Speaker 1: Gender and Media studied the top grossing films of the
Speaker 1: twenty tens and how AAPI people were represented in them,
Speaker 1: and the study found that over half of these characters
Speaker 1: were the butt of a joke in the opinion of
Speaker 1: a number of Asian American writers in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: it's this Long Duck Dong playbook that is being weaponized
Speaker 1: while portraying William Hung on reality TV. This is a
Speaker 1: trope specifically weaponized against East Asian men, and you can
Speaker 1: hear echoes of it in the way that William is
Speaker 1: spoken to at the peak of his fame.
Speaker 9: And how about the girls.
Speaker 4: Have you noticed a big difference with the attention from
Speaker 4: the girls?
Speaker 8: I noticed that I get a lot. I make a
Speaker 8: lot of friends in general, not just girls, a lot
Speaker 8: of girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah. By two thousand and four, around thirteen percent of
Speaker 1: the American population were people of Asian descent, but the
Speaker 1: representation was still nowhere near proportional then or now. As
Speaker 1: recently as the late twenty ten's, only four percent of
Speaker 1: speaking roles in Hollywood films came from Asian actors, and
Speaker 1: so this meant when an Asian person appeared on American TV,
Speaker 1: the way they were framed disproportionately mattered, something that is
Speaker 1: entirely the fault of American media. And while William was
Speaker 1: often presented as unaware of the conversations around Asian representation
Speaker 1: taking place, of course that's bullshit. He was well aware
Speaker 1: and genuinely struggled with it. Here he is during his
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen TED talk discussing why it was challenging to
Speaker 1: accept a record deal in the first place.
Speaker 6: Now, I know what you're thinking, how how can this be?
Speaker 6: Take the money for But for me it wasn't easy
Speaker 6: at all. You see I was aware that I was
Speaker 6: made the laughing stock for Asians on American Idol. In
Speaker 6: my heart, I felt like there were magnetic forces pulling
Speaker 6: me in different directions. But these forces graduate disappeared when
Speaker 6: I realized that perhaps I have the power to bring
Speaker 6: smiles to people's faces.
Speaker 1: Because remember, there was criticism of William's success on American
Speaker 1: Idol coming from within the Asian activist community, citing the
Speaker 1: sting of feeling like these stereotypes were once again being
Speaker 1: lifted up by the American media for the purposes of
Speaker 1: mocking Asian men, the same way they had with Long
Speaker 1: Duck Dong. One of the most influential critics was s
Speaker 1: F Gate writer Emil Gierma in his piece William Hung
Speaker 1: Racism or Magic from two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: It wouldn't be so bad if we saw positive images
Speaker 4: of Asian American males in the media, but for the
Speaker 4: most part, we've been invisible, and the images have usually
Speaker 4: come with martial arts enhancements. Bruce Lee's combative persona has
Speaker 4: been the most virile and most enduring icon for Asian
Speaker 4: American males, but the stereotypes that predominate are the sinister
Speaker 4: and inscrutable or ineffectual and effeminate. One thing that can
Speaker 4: be said for those who seek to exploit William Hung.
Speaker 4: He has not been asked to demonstrate any karate moves
Speaker 4: or threaten the American way of life. Hung doesn't see
Speaker 4: himself reinforcing stereotypes with the lame dancing and the accented
Speaker 4: rhythmlessness of it all. He's proud of his badness.
Speaker 1: And Guermo revisited this critique over a decade later. In
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, when William Hung made a return guest appearance
Speaker 1: on Idle Publishing, this time in the Asian American Legal
Speaker 1: Defense and Education Fund, he wrote.
Speaker 4: Besides, here was the all too willing Hung, glad to
Speaker 4: extend his fifteen minutes of fame under the guise of good,
Speaker 4: clean fun, reveling in his accented, unmusical oddness. Only it
Speaker 4: wasn't all that fun, because it's not just Hung up there.
Speaker 4: Given our relative invisibility, we are still in a US
Speaker 4: society that believes if you've seen one Hung, you've seen
Speaker 4: them all. Asian Americans that is at five percent of
Speaker 4: our nation, around twenty million strong, with a population that
Speaker 4: is two thirds immigrant, many with accented tongues, hearts, and minds.
Speaker 4: To trot Hung out there as a joke in primetime
Speaker 4: is still offensive.
Speaker 1: However, as Guierromo acknowledges in both of these pieces, there
Speaker 1: there were also Asian American people that enjoyed and embraced
Speaker 1: William's persona in message. The reaction to William Hung was
Speaker 1: not monolithic then or now. So I was excited to
Speaker 1: speak with a media critic who had seen and reflected
Speaker 1: on Hung's journey from its beginning. And there's no one
Speaker 1: better than Nancy Wang Yun. We'd met before when she
Speaker 1: appeared on my other podcast, The Bechdel Past Shout Out,
Speaker 1: and she's wonderful. She's the author of Real Inequality Hollywood
Speaker 1: Actors and Racism, and I was really interested to hear
Speaker 1: her thoughts on this two thousand and four wormhole. Here's
Speaker 1: our talk.
Speaker 10: I am Nancy Wang Yun. I'm a sociologist and currently
Speaker 10: I'm also teaching ethnics. I write on Hollywood and representation,
Speaker 10: especially Asian Americans, but I write on representation in general,
Speaker 10: and I've written a book called Real Inequality Hollywood Actors
Speaker 10: and Racism.
Speaker 2: I think about Asian American.
Speaker 10: Representation as an Asian American immigrant myself having come here
Speaker 10: when I was five and growing up here and understanding
Speaker 10: that there's a world out there, even though Asian Americans
Speaker 10: are about seven eight percent of the population. Having grown up
Speaker 10: in Taiwan, I remember what it was like to see
Speaker 10: lots of different kinds of different Asian Americans who look
Speaker 10: maybe similar to people who don't know Asians, but are
Speaker 10: quite distinct and different. And we have multitudes, and so
Speaker 10: I think it's really weird to be in a country where,
Speaker 10: you know, people tend to lump us all together when
Speaker 10: we are quite distinct and different.
Speaker 1: I hate to bring you back to two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately that is my sacred duty.
Speaker 3: Do you remember this moment?
Speaker 1: How did you receive it at the time.
Speaker 10: So I think I was a little disturbed by the
Speaker 10: popularity of it at first, because I think my instinct
Speaker 10: on why William was so popular was that because he
Speaker 10: had fit a pre existing stereotype of the kind of awkward,
Speaker 10: nerdy Asian guy like Long Duck Dong from sixteen Candles.
Speaker 10: You know, William himself is a real person, right, He
Speaker 10: is not a character. No one invented him. He is
Speaker 10: himself authentically himself. But I think the fact that I mean,
Speaker 10: American Idol auditions was just part of so many American
Speaker 10: Idol episodes, and there's a lot of people who audition
Speaker 10: and are not good or are not not not good whatever,
Speaker 10: not up to par in terms of what a pop
Speaker 10: star is supposed to sound and look like.
Speaker 2: There's that too.
Speaker 10: There's the kind of racialization of, you know, what American.
Speaker 2: Pop star should be.
Speaker 10: I think black and white usually are the you know, winners.
Speaker 2: Predominantly of American Idol. Asians are really such a minority.
Speaker 10: And so here comes William Right who comes and becomes
Speaker 10: this phenomena.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of Asian.
Speaker 10: Americans were perplexed because he really fit into a stereotype
Speaker 10: that we wanted to distance ourselves from, the kind of
Speaker 10: that Asians can't sing, can't dance, and are only nerdy.
Speaker 10: So he fit into what people thought of as Asian American.
Speaker 10: I think I was already in graduate school at the
Speaker 10: time studying Asian American representation and thinking about it in
Speaker 10: that context. Was Okay, he's popular because he fits into
Speaker 10: a stereotype, not because he is a stereotype necessarily, but
Speaker 10: what about you know, all the Asian young folks who
Speaker 10: are auditioning, who actually you know, could sing and dance
Speaker 10: in a way that was, you know, conforming to pop
Speaker 10: music standards. They didn't seem to enjoy the same popularity,
Speaker 10: so he went viral for the wrong reason.
Speaker 2: That was what I thought at the time.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, what is Asian American representation
Speaker 1: in media?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 10: Yeah, so there wasn't very much. I think Margaret chose
Speaker 10: All American Girl was a pretty big I mean it
Speaker 10: wasn't a huge show. I don't think everybody knew about it,
Speaker 10: but Asian Americans did.
Speaker 2: It was about her family set in San Francisco.
Speaker 10: It was essentially one season and then canceled, And it
Speaker 10: did show Margaret as someone who was the antithesis of
Speaker 10: maybe Asian American stereotype. She was very kind of rebellious,
Speaker 10: more quote unquote Americanized, more westernized. There was racism, that
Speaker 10: was sexism that she experienced. She was told to be
Speaker 10: more Asian, which maybe you know in that time was
Speaker 10: thinking be more like William Hung.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it was like what does that mean? Yeah,
Speaker 2: what does that even mean?
Speaker 10: Because she is definitely herself that was probably one of
Speaker 10: the few TV shows about Asian Americans. And then of
Speaker 10: course I mentioned Long Dut Dong, which was a John
Speaker 10: Hughes movie, and that that basically was a stereotype, that
Speaker 10: it was more akin to who William was, and I
Speaker 10: think that was why people were pretty disturbed. But I
Speaker 10: also think, yeah, I think it's because we had such
Speaker 10: a dearth of Asian American representation that anyone who goes
Speaker 10: viral or becomes popularized becomes a stand in. Of course,
Speaker 10: there was also a Pooh who was South Asian, also
Speaker 10: a stereotype based on Peter Sellers's performance in The Party,
Speaker 10: which was brown face performed.
Speaker 2: So this is the kind of the representations were pretty bad.
Speaker 2: And of course, if.
Speaker 10: We think about the predecessor to Long Duck Dung, played
Speaker 10: by Geddy white Nabe was essentially yellow face performances of
Speaker 10: Asians like Mickey Rooney and Breakfast at Tiffany, who was
Speaker 10: also you know, had buck Te.
Speaker 2: Was nerdy, was awkward, very massive fortunate Willim Hung.
Speaker 10: I think if you watch the audition, the judges except
Speaker 10: for Paula Abdul, laughing at him, and he becomes kind
Speaker 10: of a clown and a buffoon, but he's a real person, right,
Speaker 10: And I think that people are also drawn to his
Speaker 10: sincerity and his positivity and really kind of confidence.
Speaker 2: Despite the fact that he, you know, wasn't as skilled.
Speaker 10: As maybe some of the other people who auditioned, he
Speaker 10: didn't seem to let it bother him, and I think
Speaker 10: that people were drawn to that.
Speaker 2: It's possible to be drawn to that.
Speaker 10: And to the stereotypes that he invokes, right, So it's
Speaker 10: like it's complex, and I think that if he were
Speaker 10: to audition today, the post post crazy rich Asians post
Speaker 10: everything everywhere at once, where we have someone like Keith
Speaker 10: Wei Kwan, who is who plays both kind of an endearing,
Speaker 10: awkward kind of person, but in another universe he's like
Speaker 10: one car wide.
Speaker 2: Cool with you know, his tuxedo. I think William Hung
Speaker 2: today wouldn't.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't see him as problematic because we have so
Speaker 10: many more representations of Asian Americans that we can say.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, William is a real person. He's cool, you know,
Speaker 2: I know people like William.
Speaker 10: So it wasn't like a stereotype in the sense that
Speaker 10: someone like him, many people like him exist.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think the fact.
Speaker 10: That there was a dearth of representation back then made
Speaker 10: his stardom much more kind of cringey for those of
Speaker 10: us who didn't see a multipitude of representations to balance
Speaker 10: out William's kind of stardom. I felt like William Hung
Speaker 10: fit into the model minority stereotype, something that we really wanted.
Speaker 2: To push against, I think during that era.
Speaker 10: Actually, I feel like we're always trying to push against that,
Speaker 10: So we definitely were cringing because he fit into the
Speaker 10: model minority stereotype as well.
Speaker 1: You can sort of feel the author real hand presenting
Speaker 1: you with a stereotype that a lot of Western people
Speaker 1: are going to be familiar with and latch onto unquestioningly,
Speaker 1: and that is a problem when there's no other representation.
Speaker 3: In the twenty years that have.
Speaker 1: Passed, how has Asian American representation in Hollywood evolved?
Speaker 10: I think that there has been. There's always been independent
Speaker 10: Asian American filmmaking, even during the time and preceding the
Speaker 10: time of Voe Hung. But I think that only in
Speaker 10: recent years that Hollywood has elevated. I think Asian American
Speaker 10: stories more Minari and the Farewell you know Sundance movies
Speaker 10: now d D this year, so there's still a lot
Speaker 10: of independent movies, but I think it is because of
Speaker 10: Crazy Rich Asians doing really well.
Speaker 2: At the box office. People are more open and interested
Speaker 2: in more studios.
Speaker 10: So even you know, even yes, there have been so
Speaker 10: many more Asian American representation, but I think the majority
Speaker 10: of Americans are still unaware of those representations. It feels,
Speaker 10: at least for I think for Asian Americans who want
Speaker 10: to see themselves, we can actually see ourselves much more.
Speaker 2: Like when I was growing up. I'm a little bit older.
Speaker 10: Than Williams, so I would have, you know, experienced similar
Speaker 10: things to him, and I never saw myself.
Speaker 2: I think it was the Joila Club in high school.
Speaker 2: Was the first time I.
Speaker 10: Read the book, I saw the movie, and that was
Speaker 10: the first time I had ever seen myself. But it's
Speaker 10: not like the Jrola Club ushered in a whole golden
Speaker 10: era of lots and lots of representation.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until Crazy Rich Asian that we.
Speaker 10: Had another kind of epic movie, you know, that was
Speaker 10: a predominantly Asian American cast, and prior to this is
Speaker 10: again East Asian.
Speaker 2: Prior to Jola Club, it was The Flower Drum Song,
Speaker 2: which was you know, a movie in the.
Speaker 10: Sixties, right, So it's like you got the sixties in
Speaker 10: the nineties, then twenty nineteen. I mean, this is like
Speaker 10: generational differences, one movie per generation, which is.
Speaker 2: Just really terrial. I also wanted to tell a story
Speaker 2: before I forget.
Speaker 10: So I was part of an Asian American watchdog organization
Speaker 10: called MANA, and they got a phone call that someone
Speaker 10: wanted to protest William Hung.
Speaker 2: And guy Guy who is the head of Yes, this.
Speaker 10: Is in two thousand and four, and he had said
Speaker 10: to us, who you know, were part of the organization,
Speaker 10: He's like, we can't protest a real person.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 10: You can protest like negative representations of Asian Americans, but
Speaker 10: you can't protest a real person.
Speaker 2: And that always sticks with me. You know that William
Speaker 2: Hung is a real person. He's not a stereotype.
Speaker 10: He's a real person, right, And of course you know
Speaker 10: why they decided to highlight his audition.
Speaker 2: And the way that he was maybe treated by the judges.
Speaker 2: You know, although Paula.
Speaker 10: Abdul bless her heart, she was so encouraging and treat
Speaker 10: him at all like the stereotype, you know, and used
Speaker 10: her kind of stardom and maybe Yeah, her lift experience
Speaker 10: to connect with William in a way that the other
Speaker 10: two judges didn't as much.
Speaker 2: Simon certainly was the worst. I mean, Simon was always terrible.
Speaker 10: He called William grotesque, and I think that he didn't understand.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe he did understand.
Speaker 10: But the weight of those words I felt was there
Speaker 10: was racism in it, even if he didn't intend it
Speaker 10: that way. When you have so few Asian East Asian
Speaker 10: contestants and you call him grotesque, I thought that was
Speaker 10: over over the line and yeah, and definitely racist. And
Speaker 10: I do like the fact that the other two judges
Speaker 10: really pushed back on that. The other two judges who
Speaker 10: happened to be people of color, pushed back on that
Speaker 10: because I think instinctively they knew that that's not okay
Speaker 10: to call, you know.
Speaker 2: A young man of color grotesque.
Speaker 10: Yes, I do feel like, yeah, that audition it revealed
Speaker 10: more about I think America's perception of Asian Americans than
Speaker 10: William Home himself. It was a kind of mirror onto
Speaker 10: US racism against Asians, anti Asian racism. But he himself,
Speaker 10: as a real person, deserves to be who he is.
Speaker 10: So just because he wasn't bothered by it. It doesn't
Speaker 10: dismiss the fact that others were bothered by it, because again,
Speaker 10: one Asian shouldn't have to speak for all Asian Americans.
Speaker 10: So because a lot of times people will be like, well,
Speaker 10: what's the problem, William Hong himself doesn't have a problem.
Speaker 2: He doesn't think it's racist or whatever.
Speaker 10: Again, because there's such a dearth of representation, he cannot
Speaker 10: speak for all Asian Americans who are perhaps being bothered
Speaker 10: by it because they themselves have experienced racism that was
Speaker 10: really painful.
Speaker 1: Now, twenty years later, what can we take away from
Speaker 1: this moment in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 11: I appreciate reality shows because there are are people that
Speaker 11: are represented on screen that we don't see in narrative
Speaker 11: film or television shows.
Speaker 10: Because those only come from the imaginations of a predominantly
Speaker 10: white male production team. Reality shows you can't predict who's
Speaker 10: going to show up.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know, we have.
Speaker 10: Casting and if you look at The Bachelor, and you
Speaker 10: know the Bachelorette, the first Asian American bachelorette, and we
Speaker 10: have so few Asian male contestants, which I was concerned about.
Speaker 10: So we're still dealing with some of the same problem
Speaker 10: of scarcity. How Hollywood decides not to kind of show
Speaker 10: the multitudes of Asian American men and women. Yet we
Speaker 10: have also YouTube and actually Wang Fu Productions came out
Speaker 10: with Asian American Bachelor kind of spoof and actually invited
Speaker 10: some Asian American contestants.
Speaker 2: In the past, Asian.
Speaker 10: American men and women, but especially Asian American men, have
Speaker 10: become celebrities in the YouTube world, much more so than
Speaker 10: I would say Hollywood in terms of being able to
Speaker 10: create their own content week after week and show different
Speaker 10: kinds of representations. And I think Asian American men as hot, sexy,
Speaker 10: whether it's leads, whether it's in music, if we want
Speaker 10: to talk about music. K pop has changed the climate
Speaker 10: of how people in the West perceive Asian American men
Speaker 10: because I think there's just a very very small band
Speaker 10: BTS in the US and in.
Speaker 3: The global group of people.
Speaker 10: So I think that, yeah, the perception of East Asian
Speaker 10: men have changed, I think for entire generations. So young
Speaker 10: people coming up now Gen Z I think probably see
Speaker 10: Asian men in a completely different light than two thousand
Speaker 10: and four. Looking at William Hung, right, I think William
Speaker 10: Hung probably represented.
Speaker 2: What people thought of of Asian men.
Speaker 10: There were you know, those studies that showed I think
Speaker 10: it was about was it Okaycupid or Match, that show
Speaker 10: that Asian men were the least desirable on those dating sites.
Speaker 10: And I think that that perception has shifted because of
Speaker 10: K pop, because.
Speaker 2: Of I mean, crazy rich Asians. John M.
Speaker 10: Chew worked really hard to make sure that there were
Speaker 10: lots of hot Asian men on screen.
Speaker 2: Showing their ass off.
Speaker 10: It was very successful, very successful. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 10: that perception has shifted, but it is very very recent.
Speaker 10: We need more variation. Twenty years later, we can look
Speaker 10: back on William Hung and see his sweetness and see
Speaker 10: his sincerity and not just see him as a stereotype,
Speaker 10: but we can see those other real aspects of him.
Speaker 10: And that's actually when I when I watched it again,
Speaker 10: you know, twenty years later today in preparation for this podcast,
Speaker 10: I did see those aspects of him, and I also
Speaker 10: noticed the racism of Simon cal So. It was like
Speaker 10: I was able to I think when he came on
Speaker 10: screen and knowing that he was, you know, representing us,
Speaker 10: that's all I could see at that moment and feel
Speaker 10: really scared that Oh my gosh, this is another you know,
Speaker 10: ding against us.
Speaker 2: But now I can see him as who he for
Speaker 2: who he is and for who.
Speaker 10: He was, and then also contextualize him in a way
Speaker 10: that you know, young Nancy back in two thousand and
Speaker 10: four was just more reactive. We all are protagonists of
Speaker 10: our own story, right, and so we are all the
Speaker 10: romantic leads of our own story.
Speaker 2: And I think that there are folks that look like
Speaker 2: Wim Hung, that look like Jimmy O.
Speaker 10: Yang and and and the fact that we can have
Speaker 10: stories about their lives and them as heroes is promise.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Nancy. You can follow her
Speaker 1: work online and buy her book at the links in
Speaker 1: the description. And finally, when we come back, we take
Speaker 1: a look at William's lasting effect on reality television. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to sixteenth minute. I personally believe that the connection
Speaker 1: between Jack Skellington and teenage mall culture should be studied,
Speaker 1: and today we're taking a closer look at the William
Speaker 1: Hung phenomenon of two thousand and four. When most people
Speaker 1: look back in the two thousands, they think of it
Speaker 1: as the peak of the reality TV genre because it
Speaker 1: was from Survivor in two thousand and one to peak
Speaker 1: Jersey Shore in the late two thousands. For nearly the
Speaker 1: entire decade, reality shows were the top rate on TV.
Speaker 1: But why was this such a big moment. The simple
Speaker 1: answer is it's traditionally cheaper than scripted TV, and if
Speaker 1: the American Idol debut to ten million people was any
Speaker 1: indication it got the same or better numbers when it
Speaker 1: came to viewers and advertisers. And as many hyper specific
Speaker 1: genre seargis tend to do, it was also related to
Speaker 1: labor strikes throughout the two thousands. Sag AFTRA, the Actress Union,
Speaker 1: was on strike for one hundred and eighty two days
Speaker 1: during the year two thousand, leaving the uni universe industry
Speaker 1: to look anywhere else for content. We see another bump
Speaker 1: in reality in the later two thousands for a similar reason.
Speaker 1: The WGA, the Writers' Union, went on strike then, which
Speaker 1: led to the late aughts renaissance of shows like Jersey
Speaker 1: Shore and sixteen and Pregnant. Of course, reality TV has
Speaker 1: remained popular and content traversial in the years since. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to speak with someone who had been there
Speaker 1: through it all and could speak to William's moment in
Speaker 1: the year since from inside the reality industry, and of
Speaker 1: course I wanted to talk to an editor. Steve Flack
Speaker 1: has been in the industry for a while and experienced
Speaker 1: every manner of ethical dilemma and massive media backlash that
Speaker 1: comes with working in the world of reality TV. You've
Speaker 1: seen his editing work on Real Housewives, Say Yes to
Speaker 1: the Dress, and, according to his IMDb page, something called
Speaker 1: my Husband's Not Gay. Here's our talk.
Speaker 9: Hi. My name is Steve Black. I'm a video editor,
Speaker 9: professional video editors, really been specializing in unscripted in reality
Speaker 9: for the last, oh god, twenty years. I started working
Speaker 9: in the industry in two thousand and three as an assistant.
Speaker 9: I was a full time editor by two thousand and six,
Speaker 9: and I've been doing that pretty consistently ever since.
Speaker 1: You've been in the industry for a while, it was
Speaker 1: it the preference to stay in New York that brought
Speaker 1: you into reality specifically.
Speaker 9: I think it was just desire to work to pay
Speaker 9: off my student loan situation. It's like, I graduated film
Speaker 9: school and I wanted to get right to work, and
Speaker 9: I fell into working in unscripted television because that's again,
Speaker 9: that was the ninety percent of the industry in New
Speaker 9: York climbed through the ranks pretty quickly, and I was
Speaker 9: pretty set. Also, I'll be honest, when I started in
Speaker 9: the industry was a little different, a lot more homemakeover
Speaker 9: makeover shows, not as much through exploitation the way modern
Speaker 9: reality TV has become, but also as someone who grew
Speaker 9: up on basic cable, on MTV, on VH one, on
Speaker 9: you know, stuff like that at Comedy Central, I didn't
Speaker 9: really have a problem with it because it was stuff
Speaker 9: I was watching anyway, Like it's not foreign to me.
Speaker 9: Way I like to explain reality television editing, you have
Speaker 9: all of the positives of scripted with all the negatives
Speaker 9: of documentary. Basically you're not beholden to the truth. But
Speaker 9: you also don't have any of the stories already fixed
Speaker 9: in the script, so therefore you're making it kind of
Speaker 9: up based on what you have in the footage. So
Speaker 9: it's like being handed a puzzle and being told put
Speaker 9: it together, but not the way it's time to be
Speaker 9: put together.
Speaker 1: As an editor, it seems like you do have like
Speaker 1: a fair amount of, at least in my estimation, a
Speaker 1: fair amount of creative freedom about how the story is presented,
Speaker 1: But are you told, like, try to shape it in
Speaker 1: this particular way. Does that approach on the producer side?
Speaker 1: Very How does that work?
Speaker 9: Usually you try and shape it the way the producers
Speaker 9: want at first, and you put it together and it
Speaker 9: makes sense, and then you present it to the network
Speaker 9: and they don't like it at all and you have
Speaker 9: to do something else with it. Again, like I said,
Speaker 9: you're not beholding to the truth or the script. So
Speaker 9: therefore everything is kind of malleable until at Arizon Television
Speaker 9: because ninety percent of the time, the people the talent
Speaker 9: are one hundred percent aware that they're going to be
Speaker 9: messed with and shaped the way the producers wanted, and
Speaker 9: they think they're in on it, and then they find
Speaker 9: out it airs and they disagree. You said, this is
Speaker 9: this is mainly about William Home and William Hong was
Speaker 9: on season what American Idol wasn't season one? Season it
Speaker 9: was season three. Yeah, it was season three, So by
Speaker 9: the time you get to season three, people know what
Speaker 9: the gig is like. It was one of those things
Speaker 9: like I enjoyed watching season one of American Idol as
Speaker 9: a college student, but it was one of the things
Speaker 9: like I couldn't get to season two because I felt
Speaker 9: like by then the gig was up. Like, you go
Speaker 9: to the audition, do you know you're going to get
Speaker 9: made fun of? The talent kind of knows going in
Speaker 9: they're getting screwed with.
Speaker 1: Based on my conversation was William, it was like a
Speaker 1: little bit of yes, a little bit of no, Like
Speaker 1: where yeah, by two thousand and four, people who've watched
Speaker 1: TV are familiar with the ways that these are shaped.
Speaker 1: But it did sound like, just from his account, that
Speaker 1: it does feel different when it happens to you. Where
Speaker 1: he was like he was even though he was familiar
Speaker 1: with the cadence of even this specific show, He was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: as an editor, when you have to shape a person,
Speaker 1: where do you start?
Speaker 3: What are your instincts? Because I know it's like second
Speaker 3: nature at this.
Speaker 9: Point, this second nature. I think a big thing for
Speaker 9: me is that they're not I don't want to say
Speaker 9: they're not people, but they're not something like, especially in
Speaker 9: post production an editor, like even if I'm working on
Speaker 9: a show with hosts and recurring characters, like when I
Speaker 9: worked on Housewives shows, I didn't know any of the Housewives.
Speaker 3: Sure, you're just.
Speaker 9: People on my TV screen, Like, you know, none of
Speaker 9: these people are ever something I have to deal with.
Speaker 9: I think a lot of it is just kind of
Speaker 9: giving the producers what they want. Things that go through
Speaker 9: so many hands. You don't have any ownership of anything,
Speaker 9: so even if you start something, you don't necessarily finish it.
Speaker 9: Like I try and to the best of my abilities
Speaker 9: with the straits as white Man, try and be as
Speaker 9: ethically correct that I'm aware of. You know, of course
Speaker 9: you have your own unspoken biases that you're just completely
Speaker 9: unaware of. But even if you put something in, someone
Speaker 9: comes down the line and changes it based on network notes.
Speaker 9: Like there's there's a level of complete non ownership to
Speaker 9: the editor, but at the same time realizing like this
Speaker 9: isn't my baby, this isn't a piece of art that's
Speaker 9: mine that I need to stick to. I don't want
Speaker 9: to say like I'm a tool, but sometimes you are
Speaker 9: just a tool for the producers and for the editors,
Speaker 9: and if you're not going to give them what they want,
Speaker 9: they'll find another guy in the edit room. He'll do it.
Speaker 9: You have no idea where the notes they're coming from
Speaker 9: and everything, Like when I did Housewives, I got notes
Speaker 9: from Andy Cohen, but then you also get a rounded
Speaker 9: notes from Mandy Cohen's boyfriend at the time. Oh wow,
Speaker 9: who wasn't hired or anything. He just got to like
Speaker 9: give a passive notes because you know he watched him
Speaker 9: with Andy. You're completely disconnected from so much that you're
Speaker 9: not exactly sure who's asking for what or what's what.
Speaker 9: Like I said, ninety five percent of the people involved
Speaker 9: in unscripted reality television art I don't want to say
Speaker 9: they're in on it, but they're at least a way
Speaker 9: of what they're getting into. Everything's kind of fair game.
Speaker 3: It feels like, hey, so what you've told me.
Speaker 1: It seems like you've worked on a wide range of
Speaker 1: unscripted to how the approaches would vary on shows like Housewives,
Speaker 1: where people don't always come off well but they're cast members,
Speaker 1: and it's like it does seem like cast members versus contestants.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean it's people want their fifteen minutes a
Speaker 9: lot of times, you know, Like that's the I keep
Speaker 9: people keep always asking me where do you get these people?
Speaker 9: I Like, there's a website, do you know about realitywanted
Speaker 9: dot com. It's like a dating website for reality television shows.
Speaker 9: You make a profile, you say the type of shows
Speaker 9: you'd be interested in being on, whether the makeover competition, whatever,
Speaker 9: and casting people just go through it looking for the
Speaker 9: next pup. I mean, that's a thirty year old reference,
Speaker 9: but you know, like he's like one of the first
Speaker 9: reality TV show turned into celebrity type person. There's there's
Speaker 9: a good chunk of reality television that's just hey, what's
Speaker 9: the movie or TV show and how do we make
Speaker 9: it real? Like Laguna Beach was THEOC, or Housewives is
Speaker 9: Desperate Housewives.
Speaker 1: In my mind, William Hung while he does sort of
Speaker 1: kind of prominence at the time where reality TV is
Speaker 1: somewhat understood, it feels like a million years ago where
Speaker 1: it's like he stood in line for ten hours. There
Speaker 1: was no website component. I feel like the way that
Speaker 1: people interact with reality TV as contestants or as knowingly
Speaker 1: like was not quite there.
Speaker 3: So I would love to talk about the.
Speaker 1: Changes you have felt in the industry throughout your career.
Speaker 9: Big standout changes is Housewives and doctu soaps where nothing
Speaker 9: is real. When I broke into the industry, it was
Speaker 9: a lot of you know, homemakeover, makeover. I did what
Speaker 9: not to where I did while you were out, which
Speaker 9: was like kind of a companion pies to trading uh spaces,
Speaker 9: which everyone really was aware of us.
Speaker 3: It's like I remember all of these Yeah.
Speaker 9: MTV always had, you know, real worlds and whatever. Then
Speaker 9: the Housewives kind of changed everything. I feel like postwifestyle
Speaker 9: shows were like, there's literally not a real thing about them.
Speaker 9: The stories are fake, the situations are fake. Every single
Speaker 9: thing is not real. I mean, look, reality television has
Speaker 9: a lot in common with another one of my hobbies,
Speaker 9: which is professional wrestling. Like you know about the concept
Speaker 9: of kababe.
Speaker 3: Right of course, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9: I mean it's all cafabe. But the reality television, professional
Speaker 9: wrestling politics, it's all the same thing. Speaking of not
Speaker 9: being behold into the truth, and this is where I
Speaker 9: have the conversation a lot with documentary editors. Are you
Speaker 9: are you aware of the term frank invite? No, you're
Speaker 9: not aware of the term frank invite?
Speaker 3: No'.
Speaker 9: So it's one of the key things in reality editor's
Speaker 9: tool kit is the frank invite, which is basically, if
Speaker 9: they say it on camera, every word is available to
Speaker 9: be used to be recut into any way to make
Speaker 9: them say whatever they want.
Speaker 3: Oh. Oh.
Speaker 9: I once went into a gig started to start telling
Speaker 9: people like I don't I don't Frank Invite for ethics,
Speaker 9: ethical reasons, and people freaked out and I'm like, no,
Speaker 9: it hold time. Oh the most famous one is and
Speaker 9: it's not holding up in court. Is just the famous confession, right,
Speaker 9: the Confessions of Frank Invite. Look it up. Look, I'll
Speaker 9: be honest with you. If I'm an editor and I'm
Speaker 9: working on a show and I have a guy admit
Speaker 9: to murder on television, I don't hold it for the premiere,
Speaker 9: the season finale, the episode I go to the cops.
Speaker 9: They didn't go to the cops because he said something like,
Speaker 9: oh what did I do? What are they going to
Speaker 9: say that I killed them all? They cut out like
Speaker 9: a bunch of words and say, oh, this is his confession.
Speaker 9: You go back to the raw footage, you listen to
Speaker 9: what he says, and it's like, well, I didn't actually
Speaker 9: say he did it. He said a bunch of other stuff,
Speaker 9: and they manipulated it. The changes the whole true crime
Speaker 9: docudrama's things where they're just completely unethical. They're trying to
Speaker 9: edit things in the style of like reality television, but
Speaker 9: make documentaries and like, that's not how you make a documentary.
Speaker 9: Documentaries don't have cliffhangers every week. Documentaries don't say tune
Speaker 9: in for more. You just make your statement and you
Speaker 9: move on. They're not ethical.
Speaker 3: That is wow.
Speaker 1: As a former Jink said, that is I feel like
Speaker 1: such as dumbass.
Speaker 9: Oh it would just to bring it back to the
Speaker 9: Franken by and this brings in the future of like
Speaker 9: AI is now like that you can make people say
Speaker 9: whatever they want, because the whole drawback to AI was
Speaker 9: that it's not perfect. Like if you really, if you
Speaker 9: really critically listen, you're like, oh, this doesn't sound right.
Speaker 9: But like listen to most Franken bites, you don't sound
Speaker 9: right anyway, So it's now you're kind of beholden to nothing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think like reflecting on the William hunks story,
Speaker 1: I do feel like the way that like his narrative
Speaker 1: was presented was to be humiliating, was to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy bombs, let's edit it to make it look
Speaker 1: more humiliating than it even was at the time. Based
Speaker 1: on you know, William Hunk's account seems to be like
Speaker 1: a very intensely edited version of something that happened versus
Speaker 1: what you're describing, which is like it doesn't even need
Speaker 1: to have happened.
Speaker 3: To be aired.
Speaker 1: Part of what I find really interesting about Willyam Hung's
Speaker 1: story is that it happens at a time where TV
Speaker 1: and the Internet are starting to be in more regular
Speaker 1: conversation with one another. This was still wasn't a time
Speaker 1: where you could vote for American Idol online.
Speaker 2: But you know, when.
Speaker 1: William Hung was on TV, a lot of the reason
Speaker 1: it seems like he kept being brought back was because
Speaker 1: there were like forum posts about him, and there were
Speaker 1: online petitions to like bring William back. There was the
Speaker 1: sort of inklings of like what happens now in the
Speaker 1: space of two hours, like you're saying, happen over the
Speaker 1: course of two weeks in your industry. Has the way
Speaker 1: that the internet interacts with unscripted TV shifted? Do they
Speaker 1: feel more in conversation with each other?
Speaker 9: It just feels like I must churn, like and the
Speaker 9: people who came to fame on it, the Housewives, the Kardashians,
Speaker 9: are just trying to like hold whatever they have for
Speaker 9: as long as possible because they've made it a lifestyle,
Speaker 9: a career, and they don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Steve Flack for offering his
Speaker 1: experience in the industry, and you can follow him at
Speaker 1: the links in the description. And here we are at
Speaker 1: the end of our journey with our boy William. William
Speaker 1: Hung has mainly discussed today as a relic of pop culture,
Speaker 1: one who inspired conversation that ranged far beyond his first
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. You see, William become a focus of and
Speaker 1: by some people's standards, a perpetrator of cultural stereotypes. But
Speaker 1: when you talk to the guy, he was just having
Speaker 1: fun and capitalizing on this moment. It is not fair
Speaker 1: at all that his very existence was politicized from every angle.
Speaker 1: But as we see time and time again, that's often
Speaker 1: the nature of capitalizing on your moment in America. And
Speaker 1: in spite of the roadbumps along the way, William has
Speaker 1: remained adamantly himself, something that is extremely difficult to do
Speaker 1: with twenty years of public and internet opinions being hurled
Speaker 1: at you. It's pretty amazing. Now if we could just
Speaker 1: get them to stop working for the La County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 1: William Hung, your sixteenth minute ends. Now, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening to this two part series. I really
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed researching it.
Speaker 1: And again, a lot of what we've talked about in
Speaker 1: these episodes truly only scratches the surface. So please grab
Speaker 1: yourself a copy of Nancy Wongyan's book Real Inequality at
Speaker 1: the link and the description. And for your moment of fun,
Speaker 1: here's my full rendition of the national anthem in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, See you next week.
Speaker 3: The national anthem.
Speaker 7: You see by the teleology music.
Speaker 3: We're so proudly we.
Speaker 7: Have a light.
Speaker 3: We suta bird shots do.
Speaker 1: Fin over the land, but.
Speaker 10: So bad.
Speaker 1: Hallo long.
Speaker 9: The p.
Speaker 10: Gay pool they had at the see over.
Speaker 3: The same that same The.
Speaker 12: B sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media
Speaker 12: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lastus.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Sophie Lickderman and Robert Evans. Themason
Speaker 1: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is by Sad thirteen.
Speaker 2: Voice acting is
Speaker 1: From Grant Crater and pet shout outs to our dog
Speaker 1: producer Anderson, my Kat's flee and Casper and my pet
Speaker 1: rock bird who'll outlive us all Bye,