Source: KoreaAm August 24, 2012
After more than two years of anticipation or dread,
depending on which way you sway, the K-Town reality show, also known as
the “Asian Jersey Shore,” has arrived.
by OLIVER SARIA
Truth be told, back in 2010, when I first
heard rumors about this alleged “Asian Jersey Shore” reality show, my
immediate reaction was one big eye-roll. Like the plastic-wrapped Coach
handbags my aunt used to sell, I thought, the Asian knock-off of
anything had to be inferior to the original. After all, how could any
show possibly out-Jersey-Shore Jersey Shore? Little did I
know two-and-a-half years later that I’d be chilling with the producers
and cast members of the “Asian Jersey Shore” reality show, K-Town, at an
informal viewing party July 11, the night the first episode premiered
on YouTube’s Loud Channel.
The fact that the series ended up on YouTube felt telling. Despite
whatever biases I initially had about the project, I couldn’t help but
feel disappointed that it had apparently been relegated to the land of
cat videos and Asian kids on webcams. In a sense, YouTube is the perfect
vehicle for it. The New York Times reported that while there’s a
persistent dearth of Asian American representation in Hollywood, “it’s
an entirely different story, however, on the democratized platform of
YouTube, where a young generation of Asian-Americans has found a voice
(and millions of eager fans).”
But this phenomenon of Asian Ams blowing up on YouTube often reminds me
of one video in particular. Search “Asians” and “wave pool” on
YouTube, and you’ll find a clip from Tokyo, Japan, where waders have
literally taken up every square inch of a wave pool. The floating horde
starts to undulate as the waves desperately try to crest under the
weight of all that humanity. There are times when Asians on YouTube, to
me, seem like that overcrowded wave pool. Everybody in the pool all at
once, bobbing in the water, making a bit of a splash, but ultimately not
really going anywhere.
Initial eye-rolling aside, I was secretly hoping K-Town would break
out into open water, where it had a chance to ride a more mainstream
wave. What I discovered that night, talking with the producers—Eugene
Choi, Mike Le, and Eddie Kim—is that they got tantalizingly close.
Closer than folks may realize.
If you read the comments section on YouTube, where detractors
gleefully express their schadenfreude, the assumption is that the
networks passed on this doomed project: “No network would wanna carry an
Asian Jersey Shore type show. One Jersey Shore is already enough for
the networks,” said a viewer self-identifying as the TheRaginNation.
According to Le—vice president of HQ Pictures, Tyrese Gibson’s
production company, which produces the series—that wasn’t the case. “The
[networks] didn’t pass on it. We had a bidding war from two networks.
That’s a dream scenario for anyone that pitches in Hollywood,” he says.
Ultimately, though, issues of creative control and shifting network
dynamics scuttled the project. As reported by Jeff Yang of the Wall
Street Journal, “According to Le, a combination of ‘regime change’ and a
refusal by the net’s new guard to let the producers make the show
they’d had in mind led to the show going on an extended hiatus.”
Eventually, the show found a home as the tent-pole series on Loud, a new
YouTube channel launched by Electus, a self-proclaimed “next
generation studio” founded by Ben Silverman (former NBC Entertainment
co-chairman who served as executive producer of The Office) in
partnership with IAC, broadcast media and internet tycoon Barry Diller’s
digital powerhouse.
With Electus, the producers found a forward-looking approach to
new media and the freedom they had always wanted. “It’s been pretty
awesome that [Electus’] stamp of approval is in line with our original
vision,” says Kim. In addition, says Choi, “I’m very proud of being able
to participate with this experiment that’s going on with YouTube and
all these Hollywood studios, which is, I think, the future.”
So what did they ultimately create? Based on the teaser, which
declared K-Town “the reality show no TV network could show you,” and the
two episodes that were screened at the viewing party, “K-Town,”
compared to other shows of its ilk, delivers sufficiently trashy and
mind-numbing, but largely paint-by-the-numbers fare. The characters have
their stock personas: Jasmine, the Jokester; Young, the
Entertainer; Scarlet, the Troublemaker; Steve, the Party Animal; Violet,
the Drama Queen; Joe, the Bad-Ass; Cammy, the Sweetheart; and
Jowe (pronounced like “Joey”), the Heartbreaker. Add booze and
testosterone-fueled chest-thumping, girl-on-girl tonguing, body-shots
and booty-wiggle, sprinkle some manufactured conflict, and cue the
obligatory thrown drink and subsequent hair-pulling. It’s like, well,
every other reality show out there, except Asians are doing it.
According to Le, the depictions of Asian behaving badly serve two
purposes: 1) That is what people expect from this type of reality show.
He adds, “If I could make a scripted TV show about Asians Americans with
an all-Asian-American cast, I would in a heartbeat, but, you know what?
Scripted TV is too expensive. Reality TV, because it’s cheap to
produce, it allows the networks to take more of a risk.” 2) The
producers adamantly believe, in the long run, it is better for
Asian Americans. “There’s a belief within the Asian American community
that there’s a good stereotype,” Le says. “I’m of the philosophy that
there is no good stereotype. So Asians embrace this good stereotype—that
we’re smart, that we’re hardworking, that we’re studious. Because we
embrace that, it’s being applied directly through mass media. And that’s
why we see in mass media a one-dimensional type of Asian American.”
Christine Balance, assistant professor of Asian American Studies at
the University of California, Irvine, who has written about Asian Am
YouTube celebrity, welcomes more representations, good or bad. “I
personally would like to be able to teach a class where we can move
beyond the model minority or the dragon lady or whatever. I want to have
different conversations with these students,” she says. “We’re
so contained in that way of talking about things that we can’t imagine
things any other way. With YouTube, everybody is talking about it
changing the game. Well, maybe we can just simply think about it as a
different way of being in the world, making us think of other [Asian
American] representations.”
Others, however, aren’t completely sold. Abe Ferrer, director of
exhibitions for Visual Communications, the organization behind the Los
Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, notes, “If you shoehorn genre into
Asian American things and stuff, and wind up with something that people
will most likely laugh at and blow off, like an Asian American, um, Tila
Tequila show or something, which on its face K-Town looks like, how are
you going to grow an audience out of something that has already
invited a lot of scorn even before it’s started?”
That scorn, in fact, has often gotten personal, according to Kim, who
is also the founder and executive producer of Projekt NewSpeak, an
entertainment company focusing on independent Asian Pacific
Islander multimedia arts. “I had people defriend me on Facebook … and a
lot of weird talk behind our backs about us selling out,” he says. The
backlash was so intense he took to defending himself on the popular
blog, Angry Asian Man, asserting his commitment to supporting different
Asian American and Pacific Islander voices. Still, Kim is adamant that
he has no regrets. “I wouldn’t change anything. I would go through
it all over again,” he says. “This has been an eye-opening experience.
The journey, however, may have taken too long. The constant
comparison to MTV’s Jersey Shore that initially helped fuel early hype
around K-Town now hampers it. There’s a distinct been-there-done-that
feeling to the early episodes. In the more than two years “K-Town” took
to launch, Jersey Shore has finally begun to recede back to the basement
tanning bed whence it came. And since the producers who once prodded
a-now-pregnant Snookie to behave badly have apparently drawn the line at
fetal alcohol syndrome, there is a definite sense that the party is
over—and K-Town arrived a tad too late.
But all is not lost. So far, the first episode has drawn over 160,000
viewers, which doesn’t sound like much, but is by far the most viewed
video on Loud channel. In addition, one character in particular shows
promise. The most interesting character in K-Town is the town itself.
There’s a moment in the first episode when newbie, Scarlet Chan rides an
elevator in a staid office building to the fourth floor, where the
doors open to reveal a bumping nightclub/restaurant. To the extent that
the show can replicate that sensation of opening a door to a corner of
Los Angeles, hidden in plain view, I’ll keep watching.
Similarly, in Balance’s opinion, the show begs the question, “Why
is Koreatown like this? I think that’s also interesting because growing
up in L.A. in the ’90s, K-town wasn’t like that at all.” She concedes,
however, “This is a completely different show, but you can add those
layers to it. Now that they’re on YouTube, I hope they play up
the cultural aspect.”
Maybe diving into the cultural deep end isn’t such a bad idea.
As scholar and media critic Oliver Wang noted on KCET’s Artbound blog,
cable television is rife with shows about little-known subcultures, like
the History Channel’s hit Swamp People and Bravo TV’s Shahs of Sunset.
He writes: “Each respective show is either subtly or explicitly premised
on a voyeuristic window into communities that seem starkly different
from ‘the rest of us.’”
I’m also eager to see if the cast members develop more dimensions.
Scarlet, for example, is a former erotic dancer with an
undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. She confesses, “I’m addicted to the money I
was making. It’s definitely addicting.” But she has since
stopped stripping because, “in L.A., it’s tough to really make a profit
for yourself without crossing that line. And I feel stripping is the
gateway drug for any kind of dancers to start with stripping and
then you start seeing clients outside the club and then from there you
might start doing porn. A lot of girls fall into that
pattern.” Hopefully, this works its way into the show because compared
to her label as “The Jokester,” “Feminist Ex-Stripper” sounds way more
compelling, though admittedly, not something you’re likely to see in the
opening credits.
Choi acknowledges, “We’ve kind of been straddling the fence.” The
ultimate goal is still to sell the series to a network. So the producers
know they must ampup the antics, make the characters relatable, while
acknowledging Koreatown’s distinct culture. To the degree that the show
can strike this delicate balancing act may be the difference
between whether the project sinks or swims.
I, for one, am hoping for the best.
(Disclosure: Eugene Choi, one of the K-Town producers, has in the past and currently does marketing work for
KoreAm Journal.)
