5/4 Bui

The Pan-Asian Idol was a collective show that was meant to demonstrate the progress of socioeconomic assimilation for third-world countries. However, it misrepresented them because it only highlighted the transformation of idols and not the lives of the workers themselves. Although, it did not represent the Vietnamese people accurately, the show Idol gave the Vietnamese people hope in authenticating themselves culturally. According to Bui, third world countries “use Idol as a way to make their mark on the global cultural economy” (Bui 904). I argue that this experience is similar to Filipino Americans, from Tiongson’s “DJing as a Filipino Thing”, who tried to authenticate themselves through Hip-hop music. The parallelism is that DJing/Hip-hop was originally an African American thing, while the show American Idol originated in America; and in the process of trying to identify themselves, Filipino Americans and Vietnamese people, took what was someone else’s pop culture, and authenticated it by adding their own cultural influences and bringing up a generation of young people to identify with it.Thus, although it did not fully represent the westernization process of third world countries, the show Idol did give momentary spotlight to countries such as Vietnam to mark themselves in the emerging global music culture.