  Gisting "Can the Subaltern Sing? Or Who's Ashamed of William Hung? " / PopMatters Article written by Sharon Mizota Watching William Hung's determined flailing and flat-pitched delivery of "She Bangs" on his American Idol audition, you've just gotta give this kid credit for getting out here, on stage, and publically humiliate himself in front of the general American public. Now with a record deal, a music video, merchandising and trinkets, wouldn't you think this infamy has gone a little too far? Generally accepted good points of William Hung's celebrity: 1. Despite Simon Cowell's scathing remarks and Randy Jackson quivering like a bowl of jelly with uncontrollable laughter, he "took it like a man" so to speak: I already gave my best.
I have no regrets. Regardless of whether that's a lack of self-awareness or just plain delusion, we all wish we could sing that badly in public and have no regrets about doing so. 2. Naive or delusional as the case may be, ultimately he's a very real person as opposed to the personalities on "reality" shows (and I use the term loosely). More average than all the Average Joes combined. Critics, however, claim that his celebrity is flimsily veiled contempt and ridicule that revolve around the axis of RACE and MASCULINITY: 1. On a Today Show performance, some fans wore photocopies of Hung's face as masks with holes cut out for eyes. While perhaps unintentional, this "yellowface" roleplaying revives a "long tradition of co-optation and performance of race". Mizota argues that such a performance is akin to the paradigm of blackface ministry of classic cinema and silent picture shows, an "identification with a source of power and a means to control and contain that power... a sensitive barometer of white racial anxiety, longings, and guilt.
" 2. Asian American men have a historically emasculated media image as a result of white paranoia over the early "bachelor societies" that formed due to unbalanced immigration. Ming the Merciless anyone? William Hung with his awkward, earnest and most unmanly persona fits nicely in this prepackaged category. Furthermore, as Asian Americans, his weirdness allows the rest of us to feel good about ourselves. In other words, he represents all that is fobby and unassimilated about Asian Americans, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief that we are not like him.
In the end, Mizota suggests that "Hung embodies a new kind of male ideal". While agree with many of her points, especially the ones regarding the Asian American attitude towards William Hung, I don't think I would go quite as far to say that Hung is the new paragon of masculinity. urlLink [PopMatters] 
