William Hung, that toothy and hapless but chronically sincere student from U.C. Berkeley, found unexpected fame on American Idol. Having sung “She Bangs” out of tune in front of cringing judges who unanimously gave him a thumbs down, Hung nevertheless carved out a niche for himself. He was given a role in a Hong Kong movie, became the subject of a documentary, joined a band, enjoyed a global cult following and released three CDs.
As we go into the second month of the writers’ strike, think of William. After all, none of the scriveners picketing at Hollywood studios’ gates demanding revenues due to them in the “New Media” — Internet downloads, cable access, downloads to mobiles etc. — thought of him, nor could they have imagined his astonishing, if serendipitous, trajectory. Hence the irony: the New Media in which “reality” seems to play such a key role is gaining more money, and eyeballs, because of protesting writers and, therefore, TV reruns — and thanks in large part to real rawness and surprising resilience of the likes of William Hung.
With no writers, an onslaught of reality shows is scheduled for January. In Fox’s The Moment of Truth, something that mirrors Guantanamo, contestants are strapped to a lie detector and asked about their most intimate secrets (mercifully without waterboarding). American Gladiators is also back, apropos of America’s late Roman period. In Oprah’s Big Five, an ABC show sponsored by Oprah Winfrey, contestants will give away money for the greatest benefit of society. Next season, it seems now certain, will be the beginning of the non-fiction era of Hollywood, where documentary and “real” personalities rule the airwaves.
Thus minorities, in many ways, should rejoice. People of color gain strong footholds in terms of representation in the New Media. Reality TV — American Idol and Survivor top among them — is the programming genre in which real demographics are more fairly integrated.
Characters of color don’t just get on reality TV shows, many actually win them. Jun Song won Big Brother, Vecepia Towery and Yul Kwon won Survivor, Harlemm Lee won Fame, Ruben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino won American Idol. Asians, traditionally excluded in Hollywood, are winning quite a bit, considering they are a small population in the United States. Vietnamese alone counted for four. Chloe Dao sewed her way to the top in Project Runway, while Hung Huynh won on Top Chef using fish sauce as the base ingredient. Last Comic Standing had Dat Phan, a Vietnamese American who made fun of — what else — his mother’s accent.
There’s also A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila — originally Tila Nguyen, born in Singapore to refugee parents from Vietnam. As the queen of MySpace with a million friends, and bisexual to boot, Tila got noticed by MTV. Writers can’t come up with a line like this: “I was really confused then, ‘cause at first I thought I was black, then I thought I was Hispanic and joined a cholo gang.”
What to make of a bisexual, Vietnamese, ex-gang banger immigrant looking for love as the main character on TV? Reality is indeed far stranger than tired sitcoms, and it says the future, at least where the writers of Hollywood are concerned, is not bright. Because for so long, TV writers failed to conceive the likes of William Hung and Tila Tequila that these reality’s children invented themselves instead. Their rawness, their openness sans superficiality and their complexity are beyond anything imagined. And these New Media personalities are giving old Hollywood a run for its money, creating a kind of postmodern horizontal conversation that can often be raw, messy and raunchy, but full of surprises and always fascinating.
As the writers’ strike goes on (and barely makes a difference in anyone’s life outside Hollywood), it strikes this writer that, though it may not be the end of imagination, it might very well be the end of the entertainment business as we know it.
New America Media Editor Andrew Lam is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections of the Vietnamese Diaspora.