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Popular Culture Review
As a visually obvious minority, Jimmy Wang Yang would not immediately
fit the standards of the Redneck Ideal without these “credibility”-establishing
establishing videos. Like the Dixie Chicks, Yang’s status as minority places him
in an always tangential citizenship. But unlike the Chicks, he ameliorates his
position and guarantees his “naturalization” as American citizen through scripts
that reinforce his desire to be American and proves through actions his
willingness to be not not-American. Significantly, prior to assuming the identity
of Jimmy Wang Yang, the man in the role wrestled on Smackdown as Akio, an
“evil” Japanese wrestler whose unmediated Asianness proved his outsider status
and guaranteed his situation as bad guy. He also used to wrestle as part of a trio
of Elvis impersonators: there’s surely grand significance there, even if it
presently escapes me.
Certainly, race is strongly in play with the case of Jimmy Wang Yang, and
just as certainly, race is one of the most crucial issues in play with the Redneck
Ideal. While scholars like Lucy Jarosz and Victoria Lawson see the construction
of the redneck stereotype as a means for middle and upper class whites to deflect
the guilt of racism—white racism is explained as “redneck” racism (11)—the
self-assignation of Redneck that is so readily apparent in the case of Jimmy
Wang Yang serves instead as a way to manage racism, to allow for it without
accepting guilt. That is, the Redneck script exacts a strategic move that furthers
the agenda of white dominance without accepting blame. Characters like Jimmy
Wang Yang don’t so much reinforce stereotypes as maintain them, allowing
whites to both feel distance from “real” rednecks—since it’s Jimmy, after all,
doing the stereotyping—and to feel part of the group. The Redneck script
maintains the power and prominence of traditional white values. By adopting the
stance of “minority,” or by showing how a visually obvious minority can be
included in t