USA TODAY International Edition
Comic offers a no-thank-you for Apu of ‘The Simpsons’
Hari Kondabolu has been pummeled with the phrase “Thank you, come again” since he was a boy.
The much-mimicked sing-song salutation is part of the stand-up comic’s indictment of The Simpsons’ Apu Nahasapeemapetilon as an Indian stereotype in his truTV documentary, The Problem
With Apu (Sunday, 10 ET/PT). “The character is funny. It has nothing to do with the character being funny,” Kondabolu says of the convenience-store operator, who’s part of an arranged marriage and the father of octuplets. At the same time, “it’s insulting, it’s inaccurate, and it represents a larger problem where people don’t get to speak for themselves.”
Apu, which contains several Simpsons clips, chronicles the 35-year-old stand-up comedian’s relationship to the long-running comedy and how his feelings about the Kwik-E-Mart operator have changed.
“I was really happy about (Apu) initially, because we didn’t exist (on screen), so to exist was a hell of an accomplishment,” Kondabolu says, remembering Apu’s arrival in 1990. “When you get a little older, you realize that anything is used as a weapon when you’re a kid and we didn’t have anything else to contrast it with. We had one representation. That was all we were. It wears on your self-confidence.”
A serious message about the need for better representation is infused with the comedian’s engaging personality and humor, which can be seen in quirky man-on-the-street interviews, a fun conversation with his immigrant parents and a closing scene where he beats up a computer-generated figure of the Kwik-E-Mart operator.
Kondabolu, who tours doing standup and hosts the Politically Re-Active podcast with fellow comedian W. Kamau Bell, talks to a veteran Simpsons writer about the role of stereotypes in humor and how The Simpsons skewers many groups and types of people. He argues, however, that with so few media depictions of characters of Indian descent, just one can disproportionately shape how an entire culture is seen by American viewers.
“I wanted to connect this to a larger history of bad media representation of people of color,” Kondabolu says. The lack of diversity on The Simpsons writing staff and the voicing of Apu by actor Hank Azaria, a white man who voices many Simpsons characters, add to the problem, says Kondabolu, who in the film describes the voice as “a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.”
Kondabolu spends much of the documentary unsuccessfully pursuing an interview with Azaria. (The executive producers of The Simpsons and Azaria declined to comment on Apu.)
In a phone discussion not recorded for the film, Azaria “was very polite. … (But) he was uncomfortable with the idea of me having control of the edit,” Kondabolu says.
But Kondabolu still appreciates Fox’s animated juggernaut (Sunday, 8 ET/ PT), now in its 29th season.
“This is The Simpsons. It was a phenomenon. It was everywhere,” he says. “I loved it. I still love it.”
Not all his interview subjects, which include numerous actors of Indian heritage, feel that way. “I hate Apu, and because of that, I dislike The Simpsons,” actor Kal Penn (Designated Survivor) tells Konabolu in the film.
Is there a solution to Apu? Killing him off would be lazy, Kondabolu says, but how about making him upwardly mobile, perhaps a convenience-store franchise owner, as is the case with some people of South Asian descent whom he knows?
He hopes Apu leads to a conversation about representation in the larger society. He also knows The Simpsons is beloved, and he has weathered opposition online even before the film has aired.
“I’m already getting people saying they hate the film (and) that I don’t get
The Simpsons,” he says. “It’s not out yet. You have to watch it before you make a judgment, don’t you?”