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After Cal’s most famous student squeezed through a throng of admirers at a dormitory recently, one woman turned to a friend and whispered, “I touched him.” The I’ll-never-wash-again pronouncement wasn’t directed toward the great hoopster Leon Powe, famous for stalking around the court like a giant tree from Middle Earth. No, it was aimed at William Hung, famous for singing like you or me in the shower. Stanford had Chelsea Clinton, but Cal now possesses the prince of pop culture. Hung, a bookish Hong Kong native who likes Pokémon and the greasy chow on Durant Avenue, was once a typical civil engineering major. But last September he cut classes and tried out for American Idol. When the show aired in January it was clear that Hung--with his Chinese accent and his offbeat moves--had been used for chuckles. “You know, I have no professional training of singing,” Hung graciously explained to the show’s three judges after they cut him off midway through Ricky Martin’s She Bangs.  Then a strange thing happened: America fell hard for Hung. He received more than 100 supportive e-mails the very night of the airing. Within a few days a real estate agent in Humboldt County created a fan website; DJs stocked it with audio remixes of Hung’s performance, and women uploaded marriage proposals. Saturday Night Live did a parody, and Ellen DeGeneres invited Hung to sing a duet. The only thing left to do was sign a record deal--and “The True Idol” was scheduled for nationwide release April 6. Hung’s ascent says a lot about the hyper-speed of the Internet and the grip of reality television. But Cal anthropology and folklore professor Alan Dundes says the real feel-good story is about Hung as the underdog--what people in his field would call “the unpromising hero.” America’s fascination with underdogs has led it to embrace characters from Horatio Alger to Seabiscuit, not to mention the stream of walk-ons that Cal basketball coach Ben Braun has thrust wide-eyed onto the hardwood. “No one wants to be the frontrunner, and no political leader wants to be ahead in the polls,” Dundes says. “We like people who give it the old college try.” I spent several hours with Hung as his cult celebrity was mushrooming. Cal students are smart, and so he granted me an interview in exchange for a ride to San Francisco, where he had errands to run. When we sat down for coffee, he took long pauses between sentences, explaining, “I want to get this right.” He concluded, “I see this as a learning experience of how to succeed if I was to become an American pop star someday--regardless of fame or infamy from this audition. Because a person has to put his heart into what he wants in order to have a chance to succeed.” America loves Hung because of his unstoppable sincerity. Anyone can sing a song badly once. But it takes to a real star to sing it over and over again, in front of bigger and bigger audiences, and with a pure heart. The young woman Hung touched as he walked by was being ironic. But, then again, there she was; she couldn’t resist going to a dormitory open mike to hear him belt out She Bangs. And when Hung reached the chorus, she joined in. Everybody did. --Demian Bulwa ’96 |
 April 2004
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