Well said, DSeid.
( I brought up “Much Apu about Something” earlier)
Thoughtful posting, except for one thing there is no white bubble. There is a culture of the majority. Always has been always will be. The majority will change and the culture will change along with it. If you have ever seen portraits of whites in Indian cinema, you would be suitable offended. People love being offended, it is our national pastime, Apu is just another example. As far as I am concerned this is a non-problem. Go ahead be offended, rail against the injustices in Springfield. See how you change the world. It comedy if you don’t find it funny don’t watch it. I think comedians and by extenstion comedy writers should do whatever racist, sexist, politically incorrect material they choose. If they advocate harming that group or limiting their rights as human beings they should be sanctioned. And they need to accept responsibility for their comedy and the fact it could be construed as offensive. But other than that, I say, freedom of expression, especially for the things I don’t agree with. I think everyone agrees that the Simpsons ceased to be a relevant cultural force a looong time ago. So just ignore it and as an early poster said it will go away…
Yes, sorry for the brain fart using “East” when I meant “South”. (Or is “Desi” the better term? Or given my mistake “D’oh-uth”?) and thank you both for understanding what I meant to say and for the factual reply
So indeed there was at least one other on Head of the Class. That show and that character leading the way should be recognized. Maybe there was even another that someone can find. Apu was not the only character of that ethnicity at that time. There was at least one other and that portrayal beat them to it by three years. The Simpsons was not alone in leading the way in recognizing this population as part of our American hodgepodge stew. Just the most visible to the most people for the longest and among the very first.
Indeed. And while I’ve addressed “Much Apu About Nothing”, you would have thought that the writers that did that episode would have responded to a documentary somewhat saying similar things in a better and more respectful fashion. Heck, Hank Azaria (the white dude who was doing Apu’s voice) responded in a far better fashion to TMZ when asked about it (something that has also been referred to in this thread).
[Moderating]
Sigh. Apparently I should have done more than just a skim before. I really wish that we didn’t have a culture in this country capable of turning “bless your heart” into an insult. But we do, and they did, and it’s hard to see this post as meaning anything other than the insulting sense. This is a Warning for personal insults.
Oh, and on a non-modding note, am I the only one who was confused by talk of the racist portrayal of the main character in Short Circuit 2? I might not remember much about that movie, but I remember who the main character was.
Google “short circuit 2 fisher stevens” - a white guy* in brown face in that movie.
*who was married to Michelle Pfeiffer!
“Starring character” is not exclusively singular–there were several starring characters in Short Circuit, amongst them a racist character (who had an even more central role in the sequel.)
It’s actually pretty famous, I’ve seen it mentioned a few times. They are of course referring to the human main character Indian scientist Ben Jahrvi played by Fisher Stevens in brown face.
Oops. Just saw the mod note at the bottom of the last page. I will not post more in this thread.
I think I’ve managed to watch one Simpsons episode.* I’ve didn’t bother watching the show mainly because I grew out of watching cartoons in Junior High School. From reading all these threads, I’m getting the impression that the show evolved from a cartoon about a proud underachieving anti-hero whom parents and teachers loved to hate into a cartoon about a pathetic loser whom viewers hate to love – an animated rendition of All In The Family.
Yes. Another thread around here discusses Molly Ringwald’s reconsiderations of stereotypes and sexual harassment as depicted in the movies she’s famous for. In it, she notes that Mr. Yunioshi (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) was poorly stereotyped cheap comedy. Transferring that to this thread, I’d note that Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi, the portrayal of Hop Sing on Bonanza, and even the Charlie Chan mysteries set up horrible stereotypes through which Movie and TV viewers learned expectations and characteristics of people they rarely met. And the Asian character in Pretty In Pink was a pretty egregious example of several ugly stereotypes rolled into one.
Not now, at least.
Indeed they couldn’t have. The period which saw the mass emigration of Italians and the massive influx of Irish was well before the mass ownership of Televisions and largely prior to the widespread patronage of movie houses. So while those foreigners with their funny accents were considered low-status foreigners in the U.S. during and following their mass immigrations, the available mass media at those times did less to propagate the negative (or limited) stereotypes so fewer consumers of those TV shows and Movies went out to replicate that stereotyping and abuse – in the name of “fun.”
I thought Sendhil Ramamurthy played Dr. Mohinder Suresh quite nicely in the Heroes TV show – even in spite of the disjointed writing that occurred during the Writers Guild strike. I thought it was great that he started out as an intelligent character and eventually gained super powers and eventually those superpowers made him, well, less-than-saintly.
Yes.
I used to watch a late night series called Saturday Night at The Apollo (I have no idea if it’s on TV any more). The Apollo is a nightclub (in New York, possibly?) featuring African American comedians. Even back in the 1980’s I would see the comedians satirize Chinese, Vietnamese, and middle-easterners. I tended to find the imitations confusing because I couldn’t identify the stereotypes; I figured the people being mocked were that way on the east coast but not the same as in California. I eventually stopped watching the show because I couldn’t identify well will the themes of African American perspectives, either. It’s not that I was offended, I just didn’t understand the jokes as funny.
I think the key is that, if the above discussions of the show are any indication, the creator and writers typically don’t stoop so low in their responses. “Hey, it was just a joke, don’t spoil the fun.” is a common defense from harassers – coworkers who might tell off-color jokes, sexual jokes, racial/ethic jokes, etc. Their game is to disrespect the targets of their jokes and, when called out for the rudeness, they use the excuse, “Hey, I was just being funny, take it easy!”
I’m not saying the Simpsons crew does this to mask an intrinsic rudeness. Again, if the discussions above are any indication, they use humor and contrived animated situations to highlight and disarm stereotyping, in general, via satire. But that means their recent response is uncharacteristically lazy.
The better response would be to skip the direct response (which appears defensive – and it’s too late now) and eventually add in more characters of Indian ancestry whose stories and characteristics reflect as much variety as any of the British or Italian or Scotch/Welsh/German or other characters. As the population of the Simpsons’ town grows, it could (eventually) easily be shown that there are a roughly equal number of reprehensible and laudable characters of all races and accents.
Or is that too much to ask?
–G!
[Japanese/Chinese male born in the mid 1960’s and raised in San Diego, FWIW]
*Homer and coworkers go to Tijuana to watch greyhound races and Homer ends up taking the losingest dog home as a pet. It seemed stolen from a Honeymooners episode in which Ralph Kramden ends up bringing dozens of dogs home from the City Pound.
This is the perfect response to both the “Hey, they make fun of everybody” and the “So what do you expect them to do about it?” dismissals. The creators of the show chose to have one Indian man, where almost every feature of his character was selected according to a stereotype. That is very different from having lots of white men, each of whom aligns to some stereotype, but where collectively they show a wide variety of attributes and characteristics.
I’m not a comedy writer, but there a lot of other responses than to reject the criticism. The show is (or at least was) very good at self-referential humor. Remember the episode where they broke continuity to insert an extra kid into the family to jazz up the show? They could suddenly, even as a continuity-break episode, reveal that Apu is deliberately playing the stereotype role because he is undercover, and behind the qik-e-mart there’s actually a crime-fighting lair, or an online business, or a criminal empire. They could introduce other Indian characters who all represent different Indian stereotypes. They could randomly substitute Indian characters for white characters for an episode without any comment.
They could do anything that acknowledges the criticism without sticking a middle finger in the air at the people making the criticism. I think sometimes comedy writers get so used to having the moral high-ground when they punch at privilege and draw offence, that they don’t realise the same defence doesn’t apply when they are the bullies.
Indeed at a time when apparently the only other South Asian character on tv was a kid on Head of the Class, The Simpsons chose to recognize the then new wave of Indian immigrants, all of who, as new immigrants, had accents, and many of whom were indeed following the same American dream path that many other immigrant waves had, of starting small businesses. In past times those were hardware stores and haberdasheries but times change.
Anyone who however thinks that “almost every feature of his character” was a stereotype has to be an even more casual viewer than even I am. Apu was less satirized than were the other characters interactions with him and was both treated with more respect and more complicated than most of the others.
For those of us who are of South Asian descent … many other second generation groups have gone through a period in young adulthood in which they are somewhat embarrassed by their parents’ accents and home culture affectations. (I know within my culture it was not uncommonly true with many of my dad’s generation embarrassed of the Yiddishkeit in the home.) Is that something that you have seen within your community? IF so, does that impact how Apu is reacted to today?
The show can still manage some amusing bits of self-referential humor. The week before the episode in question, Krusty was out of makeup for plot-related reasons. Homer noticed how much he and Krusty looked alike and then said something like, “Why does Maggie look like Lisa? Why does Milhouse’s mom look like Milhouse’s dad? Why is this universe so lazy?”
One of the funniest bits of recent years was when Bart and Lisa both realized they didn’t know where their skin ended and their hair began, and completely freaked out over it. “What are we?!”
I think you raise a good point. The second generation may bristle at Apu’s depiction because he doesn’t come across as mainstream and Americanized, which is how they see themselves and how they want others to see them. They don’t want to be represented by a heavily accented Indian-American working in the service industry, going on and on about Vishnu, for humor effect. Much like how many gay men bristle at effeminate characters, even when those characters have some depth to them.
That said, the cringe factor doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Recent immigrants are often subjected to stigma if they come from a place culturally and racially very different from their new nation; their accents, customs, and often low-status occupations often make them objects of mean-spirited humor and dismissiveness. So when the second generation grows up and sees this play out, it is understandable why they would want to distance themselves from the immigrant treatment.
I think it would be different if was our parents’ accent and not Hank Azaria attempting to mimic Peter Sellers’ idea of what an Indian man should sound like. Do some Indian people have thick accents? Of course. Do they have anything close to Apu’s accent? Not that I’ve heard. The strongest accent in my extended family sounds more like Ben Kingsley in Gandhi than Apu.
Interestingly enough I think one of the reasons that my first generation immigrant parents didn’t want me or my brother to watch the Simpsons when we were young (aside from it promotes bad manners) is that they found Apu to be a bit too minstrel-y (not their exact words)
I know I’m a bit late to the party on this, and problematic cartoon characters isn’t the type of subject I have a great deal of passion about to begin with (at least since King of the Hill ended), but I’ll try to add something to this conversation.
I understand what Hari Kondabolu was getting at, and I definitely sympathize with the crap he had to put up with, but the problem wasn’t a mildly iffy character on a cartoon. The problem was a culture that coddles repulsive, offensive, obnoxious, slimeball behavior to an absolutely freakish extent, especially in school. Which, I’ve noticed, is overwhelmingly an obnoxious white culture thing. (Try “getting a rise out of someone” in Chinese or Canadian school and see how willing they are to make endless mealy-mouthed excuses for you and never give you so much as a wrist slap.) In fact, I’d be insulted if anyone tried to use a cartoon character as an excuse for the endless, wall-to-wall misery I endured for nearly my entire childhood.
And as far as iffy characters go, personally I always found Gil vastly more offensive. I hate the one-note character whose sole purpose is to be an eternal punching bag. It’s just painful to watch and serves no purpose other than to satisfy the writer’s sadistic whims. One of the best moments in the Punisher Max series is when Detective Soap decides to stop being a wimp, hunts down and shoots the Punisher, and after failing to apprehend them, says the hell with it, quits the force, moves to Los Angeles, and becomes a successful gay porn star. After entire volumes of pointing and laughing, Garth Ennis said “Geez, enough already” and killed the unfunny joke dead, just like that, and this needs to happen with Gil. Oh, and Hans Moleman.
Now about Apu. Yes, I understand that there’s nothing especially repugnant about him. I think it’s a pretty big stretch to call him complex or well-developed or even sympathetic, but he makes a mostly honest living, he cares about his family, he does his best to stay cheerful when times get tough, and he’s not to proud to admit when he screws up. Nothing especially admirable, but at worst he’s always tolerable. But see, there are these things called “the real world” and “unforeseen consequences”. No, nobody ever INTENDED the character to harm people of South Asian descent, but it happened, and like it or not, he represents something very negative for a lot of people.
And don’t forget, this is a show that is well into its third decade. We were in the tail end of the Ronald Reagan era when the Tracey Ullman shorts aired. You’d better believe it was a vastly different world then, and there were a whole bunch of things our society refused to admit were offensive, or disgusting, or outrageous back then. So “We had no idea this would get such a negative reaction!” doesn’t fly with me. You do now, dammit, so there’s no excuse for sitting on your lazy butts and refusing to adapt.
Hey, it happened to me. I once made a comment a YouTube video comparing the sound of a digital voice to someone with a developmental disorder. Note that I didn’t say anything at all about any actual person with with a developmental disorder, I just made a comparison based on my own real-world experience with what people with, say, Down’s Syndrome sound like. That’s it. If you’ve spend any significant amount of time on YouTube, you will regularly find comments that are several hundred times more offensive than what I wrote. Well, guess what, a couple of respondents really didn’t like my choice of words and let me know in no uncertain terms. And at that point, it didn’t matter in the slightest that I didn’t have any problem with what I wrote, because I’m not the only damn person in the world. I didn’t think it was a problem, but it was, so I changed it. (“Singing backwards” worked better anyway. :))
So given that Apu has become problematic, at least to a certain demographic, why not just do the obvious thing and retire him? He’s a supporting character who’s never been a part of any really major storylines, and even when he was the center of the episode, it’s not like someone else couldn’t have taken the role. And there’s plenty of precedent for this. Bleeding Gums Murphy died. Dr. Marvin Monroe died with no explanation whatsoever. Herman showed up for a couple episodes, vanished for years, had a cameo, and vanished again. Groundskeeper Willie was deported (and later brought back without any real explanation). Hell, Maude Flanders died, and she had one of the show’s most iconic lines ever! Troy McClure simply never showed up again after Phil Hartman’s tragic murder; same with Edna Krabappel, who’s been a major player from season 2. It’d be easy for Apu: He finally gets completely disgusted with Springfield and leaves with his family, never to return. There are all kinds of ways this could be a memorable episode. Heck, I’d actually be tempted to watch.
And once again, I went on way longer than expected. Ah well, I’m on vacation, I’m in no hurry to anywhere.
Not that I don’t agree with you or your suggestion, but Apu is a far more sympathetic character than all of those and there’d be more backlash than for any of the others.
I was going to say you left off another ethnic-stereotype-character killed off: Dr. Nick Riviera. But on checking he apparently survivesbeing impaled by a giant shard of dome-glass so never mind.
I’m sorry that happened to you. As a white woman, I always found him a sympathetic character.
yeah, I think this is the real answer.
One of the staff writers is a close friend of my brother. He once told me that he thought the show jumped the shark ages ago, but it paid too well for him to walk away. I suspect that true if the show as a whole.
Sure. Trevor Noah does it all the time. Generally white ethnicities.