First episode of “Hey Yun – the Web Series” is pitch perfect on hipster racism

Screenshot from Episode 1 of “Hey Yun”

Here at Feministing we’re no stranger to the insidious nature of casual, aka hipster, racism or microaggressions, those small expressions of inequality that can sometimes be hard to pin down but whose aggregate effect is unmistakably racist. Enter “Hey Yun”, a comedic web series about a thirty something Avant-garde Korean videographer living in Brooklyn. In the series blurb, the title character is described as “a huge disappointment to her family…Broke and chunky, she toddles through New York City with bursts of rage and strange videos.”

Now to my ears this description contains elements of sly subversion, but I still didn’t know what to expect when I clicked through from a friend’s timeline on Facebook to watch the first episode. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the series jump right into a topic of great interest and importance to me: the meaning of allyship in the face of casual racism. In the video, the title character experiences a racial microaggression at the hands of an apparent hipster, and relays the incident to her white female host. What happens next is very much up for interpretation, but at the very least depicts compellingly the ways in which allyship, though hard, can make the difference between a racist act that’s perceived as socially acceptable and so becomes hegemonic, and one that turns into an anti-racist learning moment over brunch.

Anyway, I won’t spoil the episode too much with my words: just check out the video after the jump! And learn more about the series creator at www.heyheyyun.com. With production from friend-of-the-site and creator of The Line Campaign Nancy Schwartzman.