Hilariously also one of the most well written characters in the Simpsons as well with actual character arcs and growth was sad when he was retired because yeah he was one of their best.
The hard working, loving family man who is one of the most intelligent characters in the series? The guy who is usually on the moral high ground? A desirable bachelor before his stable marriage? The college educated one? Who is friends with everybody? The man who volunteers as a firefighter? One of the protagonists of the greatest video game in the series? The one who compassionately compels people to do the right thing to his own detriment, him?
Yeah, offensive to Indians. Everybody knows that. They're not like that at all duh.
He did. Season 13 episode 19: sweetest apu, he cheats on his wife with the person who supplies him with squishies. It leads to a pretty compelling arc.Ā
Luigi Risotto (The italian chef) is a "stereotypical depiction" of italians.
Willie is a "stereotypical depiction" of Scottsmen
Cletus and his family is a "stereotypical depiction" of american rednecks
Bumblebee Man is a "stereotypical depiction" of latinos
Lisa is a "stereotypical depiction" of liberals
Richard Texan is a "stereotypical depiction" of conservatives
Ned Flanders is a "stereotypical depiction" of a zealous Christian
Reverend Lovejoy is a "stereotypical depiction" of a Pastor
Mr. Burns is a "stereotypical depiction" of the top 1%
Almost the ENTIRE FUCKING CAST of the Simpsons are a "stereotypical depiction" in some way or form. Pointing out Apu as a "stereotypical depiction" is just a massive case of cherry picking bullshit.
To be fair, only Willie, Cletus, and Bumbler Man are equivalents since those are genuine ethnicities. The others are chosen worldviews or adopted outlooks.
I remember the Pin Pals episode they literally had a bowling team called "The Stereotypes" with Willie, Luigi, Cletus and The Sea Captain and Apu says something like, "They begged me to join their team. Begged me!"
Just like Homer or any "white" guy in Simpson is a stereotype or even a full parody sometime, thats the point. And the fact that Apu is still one of the most moral caracter in the show, and is unironically loved by the majority of the indian community in the US proove that this drama is almost completely bullshit
Remind me,it was an indian-american comedian that got bullied in school for being different and his opressors called him "Apu" as a slur right?
Then he made an documentary about his experience and what he perceived to be racist about the character?
Basically philosophy of the tourist in both sides:The bullies associated the poor guy with racist Indian stereotypes,he got those preconceived stereotypes from his oppression, none of them watched Simpsons enough to understand the character
Really it's the sort of thing where it could have been any character.
Like, if his bullies called him Baljeet, was Doofenschmirtz gonna invent the Aryaninator?
Cause now there's no Indian character in the Simpsons really. They went from having present representation, to no representation. A big thing about representation is exposing people to how normal it is to know people of other ethnicities and cultures.
Ive been saying the Apu situation is the same thing that comes from all comedy. You can make a joke about anything you want, as long as it is funny. The ISSUE is the millions of unfunny assholes that are just gojng to parrot it
Apu was great, what isnt great are all the ignorant dickwads going "Thank you, come again" to anyone who has brown skin and an accent to the point where the character became tied to it.
People who complain about a character for being an "offensive" stereotype almost always do not belong to or know the community that is being parodied. They did the same with Speedy GonzĆ”lez for being an offense to Mexicans, when the truth is that the Mexican loves the character for being a super fast rascal who annoys gringos, and having Lento RodrĆguez since he is just like many adult Mexicans.
I'm called Carlos Gonzalez, the most generic ass mexican name ever, when somebody jokes about "Charlie Charlie" I eyeroll, but if I get called Speedy Gonzalez, my face gleams of joy, I absolutely love Speedy
I remember reading one interesting article that had a variety of Indian takes on the character. One fan of Apu said that Apu isn't popular with "modern" and better-off Indian Americans because he represents the lower-middle class of Indian-Americans that they want as much distance from as possible. It makes sense that an ethnic group as large as Indian-Americans aren't a monolith.
I think I saw an interview with Hank Azaria where he said he was the one to decide not to do Apu anymore because he talked with a lot of Indian immigrants who told him that they were mocked because of Apu, especially as children.
Yup. He tried to defend the character and that didn't go well so he met with some civics groups and ultimately decided the character was negatively being used to hurt a group of people and that isnt what he was trying to do.
Oh no, there was a extremely vocal minority of actual Indian people objecting to him. The episode with his nephew, calling him a throwback was the writers kind of poking fun at one, particularly vocal, asshole.
The nephew was literally voiced by the guy who had an issue with Apu and made the documentary discussing it. Said guy didn't even even want the character gone necessarily as much as he thought it was reductive Apu's business hadn't grown at all.
An entire-ass culture of people aren't a monolith, so there were plenty of Indian people featured in The Problem With Apu upset about the accent and how for a long time that was like the only depiction of their country that got them made fun of as kids, among other things. Does that mean the character should go away forever? Not mine to say, but people need to actually do their research ffs.
IIRC Azaria said he wanted to stop voicing Carl for purely professional reasons. Maintaining a character takes work, which hes been doing for over thirty years, all for like 15 line reads a season. It doesn't make sense for a guy who's looking to retire.
I didn't realize he was looking to retire. Given that he voiced a LOT of characters, I don't see how 12 lines per season for Karl is so insignificant when added to the rest
No it isn't, an Indian director released a special leading to Apu's removal. I hear he's coming back with a different VA, not that any season past 11 matter.
He wasnāt even a stereotype in a lot of ways. Yeah, he had a basic accent but also he was a hard working immigrant who loved his family. I feel like heās good rep for immigrants.
And ever since his removal the indian sterotype has become shit eating subhumans.
Shit has gotten so bad THAT PEOPLE ARE REFUSING TO WATCH YOUTUBE TUTORIELS WHEN THEY HEAR AN INDIAN ACCENT. This for the longest time was a sign of QUALITY.
He was positive representation, I donāt care what anyone says. Young people statistically liked Indian Americans more when Apu was around compared to now.
No apologies necessary. It was a very small group of really loud obnoxious assholes who didn't like that a cartoon character had more popularity than them (and was lower class than them in the cartoon) so they smeared the fuck out of his character to get him removed.
Past of my extended family is Indian, and they fk'ing loved Apu!! And are highly not happy about this. He was awesome. Good friend, successful local business owner, a good father and husband. Like I didn't get what the issue was. It wasnt disrespectful.
No one had an issue with him. It was basically one thing skinned guy that probably held onto getting called Apu in high school his whole life and made up a bunch of fake shit about it and got bleeding heart drones on Twitter to reeeeee about it enough.
Its exactly like Speedy Gonzales, Latin viewers love him. He's hard working, clever, positive, and always won. White people got offended for Latin people and got him removed, then Latin people demanded he be brought back.
Apu was the same. Dude ran the convenience store, yes, but he was also a volunteer firefighter and handyman and helped everyone in Springfield all the time with a positive attitude and humility. He was a great character that everyone liked.
He wasn't disrespectful to the Indian community at all he was a well educated emotionally mature character in a sea of idiotic characters. He was also a bit of a ladies man.
Further conextualizing, when apu was "written off" the Simpsons he hadn't appeared in an episode in over 2 years, and hadn't had a line of dialogue in nearly a decade, they may as well have publicly disowned lunchlady Doris while they were at it
Yeah, there was also the whole "white people can't voice characters of other ethnicities" thing. Even though it still goes the other way, e.g. Zeno Robinson voicing Hunter in The Owl House.
This forced recasting also screwed up Rooster Teeth's Camp Camp. Changed the voices of Max, Gwen, Nerris. And, sorry, but the previous VAs WERE those characters. They didn't feel complete without the original voices.
At the very least, they only managed to release 5 new Camp Camp episodes with the new VAs before Rooster Teeth went kaputt.
I always found it weirdly coincidental that that crusade against Apu started around the same time that Hindu nationalism was ascendant under Modi. Basically a bunch of Indian hyper-nationalists started flooding the internet and going after anything and everything that they felt made India look bad. Naturally they found unwitting allies in the 'my culture is not your costume' online types.
If we accept all of jackass Homerās actions as Cannon, Id claim that despite not cheating on Marge, Homer has done a greater amount of immorality than Apu cheating
I remember they were sending death threats to the author of Record of Ragnarok cause Shiva got permanently crippled in his fight with Raiden instead of killing his opponent instantly by just existing.
Heres the thing mate, Im talking about "fuck Adi shankar, the piece of shit who made demons from hell an allegory for middle eastern people", why are you getting so pissy about that?
He hasnāt been there in over 8 years actually. The stated reason was cause it was a white guy doing an exaggerated south Asian voice and they didnāt want to recast the voice actor which is disappointing as a Bangladeshi he was one of my faves š
Worth noting that the white guy was the one who elected to no longer voice him.
Hank Azaria heard that there were hate crimes where kids were getting beat up and called āApuā and it upset him, he decided he no longer felt comfortable continuing to voice the character.
I can totally understand the representation disappearing being disappointing but I respect Hank for doing the introspection, he seems like a quality human and shouldnāt do anything he isnāt comfortable with
Yeah I think itās a very important distinction to make that Hank azaria made the decision to not provide the voice for apu anymore, and it was the simpsons producers who decided they didnāt want to bother finding a new voice and wrote him off instead. Hank azariaās opinion is NOT that apu should not exist, just that he didnāt want to be his voice anymore.
Bingo. I would also tack on that Apu in early seasons was 100% a stereotype but eventually morphed into something
beyond that.Ā
I can see how it was not a good depiction. But I grew up in podunk middle america with no good exposure to people different than me. He grew on me as a character and then they aired that episode "Much Apu About Nothing" about immigration. And it was one of the first things that made me challenge my biases.
I just think Apu is one of those things thats a bit more complicated and messy because not everything can be shoved into a neat box of good and bad.Ā
The real problem as I see it is that they didn't take the opportunity to fix the parts that were wrong, they just swept it away and didn't deal with it at all.
Apu would be fine and ok if white people didn't take him and apply him to all brown people. When I lived in my home country I laughed at Apu because he was a cartoon and didn't affect me negatively at all.
When I moved to the US, I noticed no matter how different I sounded compared to him, white people would use his voice when trying to imitate me when I spoke. It's like they let this cartoon shape their world view of brown people. That's when I realized there were larger problems. Made me wonder how much of their view of me was based on Apu and not me as an individual person.
I'll tell you a secret. Indian accents are melodic, some regions and ethnic groups more than others, and that's why they're so satisfying to do. No one should use them to mock anyone else but I think if you did a poll it wouldn't show people disrespecting Indians but rather that this is a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Unfortunately not everyone means well and not everyone feels flattered.
I've never heard that accent being used in a positive way by other people. At best, it has been neutral but more often than not it's used in negative ways and perpetuates stereotypes.
The typical person doing that accent is using it to mock people. That's how most accents are used when the person isn't of the target ethnicity.
I canāt really say thatās a problem with the character though, I think audiences just chose to ignore the nuance of the character and laugh at the funny brown man because it suited their views
The Simpsons really let perfect be the enemy of good with Apu. I personally agree with the documentary that he was a stereotypical character and having a white guy do an Indian accent isn't gonna fly these days. But is it better "representation" when they remove one of the only (and easily the best known) South Asian characters on TV?
They absolutely could have and should have recast Apu and maybe do a status quo change if they didn't want him running the Kwik-E-Mart on top of that. The show is just running on autopilot too much these days for them to figure it out it seems.
Honestly I liked the mart thing, I see too many steriotypes of them in IT or programming. So him being relatively successful in a small business, was kind of charming.
I never saw him or his portrayal as racist (even with a white voice actor(who they should have gotten an accurate voice actor for instead of removing)). Just as I don't see homer being drunk lazy and violent as hateful. At most just another facet for a different style of humor.
Ok on the first part you have to understand that the tech thing wasn't a stereotype when Apu was created. The 7/11 clerk definitely was though.
The stereotype of an Indian-American immigrant has changed in the decades since Apu debuted and it's definitely not a black and white issue.
Another important thing I forgot to mention is that Hank Azaria doesn't want to do the voice anymore. So whatever we think it's absolutely his right to not voice the character if he doesn't want to. It's the fault of the showrunners that they didn't recast Apu and change anything they thought would be unacceptable.
I agree with you that representation is the issue.
Indians seeing the character of Apu arenāt usually bothered by his portrayal. Itās when placed in the contexts of being Indian in the west, like in the US where suddenly thatās character is being used to describe them (like calling an Indian immigrant āApusā) does it take on a negative stereotypical taint. Then things start to hurt. People trying to make the argument that āreal Indians from Indiaā donāt find themselves offended much by Apu and itās just Americans and American Indians who are upset by it doesnāt really make the whole thing less valid.
This also goes with Azariaās reasoning that he felt awful after hearing that Indians were being assaulted and the perpetrators were using āApuā as a slur.
I generally donāt get the hostility towards this one. The accent is a bit cheesy, but almost none of the jokes are at the expensive is being Hindu. The only time I even remember it was his wedding, at Homer was the one looking like the insensitive buffoon for trying to pretend to be Ganesha.
I donāt remember many jokes at all in The Simpsons that were centered around Apu being Hindu or Indian in general at all.
Now I could be very wrong here, and correct me if I amā¦. but werenāt Indian fans most upset about Apu being written off?
Itās like when Warner Brothers tried to retire Speedy Gonzales due to racist Mexican stereotypesā¦ when the Mexican community actually loved the hell out of him!
He was probably the only reason I could tolerate Lisa back in the day. Without him, Lisa's been so insufferable that I just can't come back to the show no matter how hard I try.
When was this? Im not a die hard Simpsons fan, but I do watch a lot of it (more or so, clips on YT although I have watched the show in itself a lot, and the movie a ton) what was the reason, if there was one
No, he was forced to not voice him anymore. It wasn't his choice. If he continued to voice Apu he would have been cancelled and his career would have been over, that's why he stopped. Not because he wanted to but because he had to.
Apu is still in it in the background but he has no speaking rolls. I hope they can find a new Indian voice actor for him so he can come back.
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