D’oh!
In the surreal world of The Simpsons, Hindu shopkeeper Apu is the hard-working epitome of the American Dream. But now he’s been killed off – because joyless zealots say he’s a racist caricature. To which even his Asian fans say...
GOODNESS gracious me! The Simpsons is most surely missing the point. Apu, the Hindu shopkeeper at the Kwik-EMart convenience store in the longrunning cartoon series has, reportedly, been dumped from the show, following complaints that his character is a racist misrepresentation of South Asians.
In particular, he’s got a ‘funny voice’. Condemned as a stereotype, Apu has become the target for a campaign of handwringing and virtue-signalling.
The faux outrage completely ignores the fact that, in the fictional town of Springfield – a place not noted for its intellectuals – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is well-read and armed with thoughtful opinions.
Top of his class (of seven million) at technical college in Calcutta, he also has a PhD in computer science and is a member of Mensa. He is unfailingly polite to his customers, always wishing them well with his catchphrase, ‘Thank-you-come-again’.
Apu is devoted to his wife and eight children, even if he’s too busy to always show it. When his wife Manjula once asked if he still found her attractive, he assured her: ‘Of course, my darling. You are beautiful, silky and manageable’ – before guiltily admitting he was reading the compliments off the label on a bottle of hair conditioner.
Most of all, Apu is hard-working. His marriage suffers because of the hours he puts in at the store, to keep his family clothed and fed. That’s a direct contrast to the show’s central character, Homer Simpson, a slob so lazy that his motto is: ‘If you can’t reach it, you don’t need it.’
When Apu was granted an American passport, he celebrated: ‘Yes, I’m a citizen! Now which way to the welfare office? I’m kidding, I work, I work!’
So who had it in for him? Step forward an obscure New York comedian, Hari Kondabolu, who has led the campaign to see off Apu. He describes Apu’s accent as ‘a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father’. Last year Kondabolu made a documentary called The Problem With Apu, about his attempts to confront actor Hank Azaria who does Apu’s voice.
AZARIA (who sensibly refused to meet the comedian) also voices grumpy bartender Moe and greedy police boss Chief Wiggum and he stands accused of that heinous unPC crime known as ‘brown-face’ or playing a character of another race. The four Emmy awards that he has won for his voices count for nothing, apparently.
Kondabolu, virtually unknown before starting his campaign in 2017, has whipped up a controversy that simply did not exist.
There has been no groundswell of protest over the years from viewers of South Asian origin or ancestry, or from viewers in South Asia, where The Simpsons has been shown for years, no representations from angry immigrant groups. But once Kondabolu had claimed that immigrant Asian children were being bullied in America’s playgrounds, and taunted with the ‘Thank-you-come-again’ catchphrase, Apu was doomed.
The truth is he has been singled out for a manufactured and insincere campaign of racial pointscoring when the idea that any fan of The Simpsons could be offended by a silly accent is ludicrous beyond belief.
This a show that is rooted in stereotypes and comic voices.
Bumbling, dim-witted dad Homer sounds like a reel-to-reel tape machine running at half speed and has ping-pong eyes and yellow skin – are we meant to be outraged now at the insensitive portrayal of jaundice and those unfortunate thyroid conditions that cause the eyes to bulge? His long-suffering, blue bee-hived wife Marge is so tight-lipped that she speaks through her nose.
Neighbour Ned is the epitome of the Mid-West happy-clappy Christian, all Scandinavian vowels and stupid grin.
Evil Mr Burns, who runs the nuclear power station where Homer works, cackles like a goblin who has just inhaled a balloon-full of helium. Nobody in real life speaks like that, but these characters are all instantly recognisable stereotypes. Which is the whole point of the satire.
All caricatures must be identifiable before they can be exaggerated. There has to be a germ of truth. Nasty bosses, annoying God-botherers, and wives who are cleverer than their dozy husbands – we all know people like that.
The Simpsons would make no sense if its lampoons didn’t hit their targets. So it is with Asian shopkeepers. There are millions of them throughout Europe as well as the States and English is not their first language. What’s wrong with poking friendly fun at them, along with everyone else?
Even the most virulently righton critic could not claim that Apu is sending up Asian shopkeepers in a malicious fashion. There is no cruelty or meanness in the joke.
Azaria claims he based it on the Indian characters played by actor Peter Sellers in Sixties films such as The Millionairess and The Party.
Movies like that would be impossible to make today – and even Sellers’s greatest comic character, Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther films, would be frowned upon. Clouseau has a ridiculous accent. He strongly implies that all French detectives, and by extension all Frenchmen, are pompous, vain and incompetent.
And even (sacre bleu!) if that were true, today the role would have to go to a Frenchman. Anything less is cultural appropriation, and highly offensive... to the PC brigade, at least.
How have we arrived at such madness? So much great comedy is based on caricature. Fawlty Towers wouldn’t be half as funny without Manuel the hapless waiter from Barcelona (actually played by Andrew Sachs, of German Jewish extraction).
How could we laugh at Borat, the oafish TV presenter from Kazakhstan (the creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, born in London to another German Jewish family) if he spoke impeccable English?
Kondabolu and his supporters must be ignorant of that entire comedy tradition. The shopkeeper is being sent up with affection and if that is deemed unacceptable because Asian issues are too sensitive to be the subject of humour, our society really is in trouble.
I am sorry that the creators of The Simpsons and their production team haven’t had the guts to stand up to their critics, or even to announce their intentions. Yesterday, Al Jean, a producer of the show, suggested that reports of Apu’s demise are exaggerated.
Possibly. But Apu hasn’t appeared on the show for months now, and the writers have actually addressed the controversy in an oblique exchange between Marge and her smart daughter, Lisa.
‘Something that started decades ago,’ laments Lisa, ‘and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?’ She looks at a picture of Apu. ‘Some things,’ Marge adds, ‘will be dealt with at a later date.’
That’s a small tragedy, not least for South Asian people in America – the very ones that Kondabolu claims to speak for. Apu might have been a flimsy stereotype, but he was a positive one.
LIKE many immigrants, he was a devout patriot... so much so that, in one episode, he changed the names of his eight children to Lincoln, Freedom, Condoleezza, Coke, Pepsi, Manifest Destiny, Apple Pie and Superman. The children were octuplets, conceived after an overdose of fertility drugs, (though some ultra-sensitive souls saw in this a satire on the population explosion in India).
It is pitiful that The Simpsons, a series once so audacious and ground-breaking and properly
funny – a series that made us all laugh at ourselves as much as anything else – has been reduced to shame-faced grovelling before the shrine of political correctness.
It’s still the biggest cartoon series in the world but it has crumbled in the face of one bogus accusation of racism. Instead of standing by a much-loved character who has made people laugh for decades, it has caved in.
The Simpsons was named by Time magazine as the greatest TV show of the 20th century.
In the 21st century, it appears to have lost its heart, while America has lost its sense of humour.