Why the racist portrayal of Apu from The Simpsons needs to be called out
One of the longest-running television shows is the popular, animated comedy The Simpsons. Barring the fact that the show kind of lost its charm and steam post season nine, episode two, it continues to be one of the most watched shows in the world. There are many things about the show that can be criticised; perhaps starting with the fact that it has ceased to be funny. But another thing that has bothered many for a long time, but never really managed to create massive outrage is the depiction of one character on the show: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.
If you are not a regular viewer of the show, Apu is an Indian immigrant in the town of Springfield who also happens to be the proprietor of Kwik-E-Mart, a convenience store (a parody of Wal-Mart or 7-Eleven). While a recurring brown character in a late '80s TV show can be called oddly progressive, all that changes when you realise that the voice behind Apu's character is white actor Hank Azaria's. That and the fact that Apu’s character is the manifestation of every “desi” stereotype a white person can imagine.
Apu holds a PhD in computer science, and graduated first in his class of “seven million” at “Caltech”, Calcutta Technical Institute, not California. He runs a convenience store, something that is a common brown stereotype in the United States, after the ubiquitous "desi" taxi driver, of course. Apu has eight children. And finally, Apu has a horrible accent. You know that accent that almost every brown person used to have on American TV and cinema? The one that comedian Russell Peters loves to parody. The one that The Big Bang Theory’s Raj Koothrappali sports; or one that Jimi Mistry has in many, many movies. Apu is quite possibly the birth of that widely derogatory racial stereotype: what all brown people sound like when they speak in English, commonly known as “Patanking”.
But this is 2017. People, at least a small section of them, no longer like the fact that there exist bad stereotypes with hugely racial undertones and they are calling it out. And the frontrunner in this fight to eradicate bad portrayal of “desi” men and women are actors like Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreations, Master of None), Mindy Kaling (The Office, The Mindy Project) and Aparna Nancherla (Bojack Horseman), and more, who have successfully avoided playing into the usual stereotypical tropes employed by white writers on TV and cinema. There is a new warrior now, one who doesn’t just try and create an alternative image for brown men and women, but actively chooses to attack the ones perpetuating it, especially for the past 28 years.
Hari Kondabolu, an American stand-up comic and writer born to immigrant Indian parents, has created a new documentary called The Problem with Apu, where he describes Apu’s voice as “a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father”. While there has been no official release date for the documentary, the trailer gives us a good idea of what one can expect. With Indian-American entertainers like Kal Penn, Aasif Mandvi and Hasan Minhaj discussing this problem of racial stereotypes in the entertainment industry.
Actor Utkarsh Ambudkar of The Mindy Project describes it quite succinctly: "The Simpsons stereotypes all races; the problem is we did not have any other representation." And that hits the nail. What happens when the only representation brown men and women on American television is limited to a mixed bag of offensive notions? It becomes a trope. In the first season of the critically-acclaimed Netflix show Master of None, actor Aziz Ansari addresses this.
He points out how, in an episode titled “Indians on TV”, how actor Ashton Kutcher dons “brownface” and a fake Indian accent to play a Bollywood producer named Raj in a 2012 commercial. He also calls out actor Fisher Stevens for donning “brownface” make-up and playing an Indian character in the 1988 sci-fi film Short Circuit 2. The episode additionally addresses how white writers and producers are reluctant to move beyond the acceptable brown tropes in television and cinema.
Raj Koothrappali, a lead character in The Big Bang Theory is, no doubt, a result of these tropes becoming commonplace. Despite the fact that Raj is one of the four lead characters in the show, he is easily the most pathetic one the writers could create in an ensemble of already socially awkward geeky men. Despite being the only recurring person of colour in a white-majority show, he is often the butt of several racial stereotypes — all lampshaded.
Speaking to HuffPo about this documentary, Kondabolu says that the only reason why he could make it today is because of the age we live in. According to him, “Ten years ago, I don’t think it wouldn’t have been possible. Not to say it wasn’t relevant. Ten years ago, I would have said it was even more relevant. But this is the opening and the time period we got.”
As writer and YouTube artist Jonathan Macintosh points out in this video essay “The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory”: “Most comedy writers know that retrograde style bigotry is no longer acceptable on primetime television, but they still want to use sexist, racist and homophobic jokes as an easy way to get cheap laughs.”
At some point, one has to ask the creators of The Simpsons: when do they plan to retire the Apu trope?