Thirty years late, this white guy comes to the belated recognition that the SIMPSONS character, Apu, has always been a hurtful force in our time.
I am human enough to confess that I always liked him. No, he wasn’t used much except for five minutes at a time, but there were a couple of stories, here and there, where he was at the center of the action, an actual driving character instead of a cameo-appearance font of jokes, and I liked those stories. I liked him, and I recognize this is damned easy for a white guy to say.
It is insufficient counter to the number of voices coming forward, people of similar ethnic background, who argue, persuasively, that Apu has always been a negative influence on their lives, an engine of abuse in schoolyards and workplaces.
And this is not because he was the only indian character on the show. The Simpsons had a handful of black neighbors, and in no case were those characters defined only by their blackness. Dr. Hibbert was black in large part because he was a riff on Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable, but the real joke as far as he was concerned was that he pushed the limits of medical avuncularity to a creepy extent. He could have been white and done the same thing. Krusty the Clown is Jewish. And he’s all the negative stereotypes of a borscht-belt Jewish comedian. But he’s a lot of things other than Jewish.
Apu is a negative force. He does have to go.
No argument. He has to go.
And the question becomes: how? What is the best way to perform this surgery after 30 seasons?
Assuming that he should not be cut out of every past episode where he appears, which would be a straight path to madness, the question becomes what to do with him NOW.
Do you simply ban him, have him disappear from all future episodes without comment, as sad real-world tragedy required the show to stop using all the characters once played by Phil Hartman?
I think that’s sweeping the problem under the rug.
Do you kill him off, as several characters have been killed off?
That’s grotesque.
No, here’s my suggestion.
Give us one final Apu episode. Make it the best Apu episode ever. Make it funny, make him funny in the same way that all SIMPSONS episodes are funny, make it at least in part about the racism that he faces, and have it end with him selling the Kwik-E-Mart and leaving Springfield for some kind of alternative destiny. You can both acknowledge his problematic nature and make us sad to see him go. Because THE SIMPSONS is nothing if not reflexive, have some dialogue explaining why he must go. But make us sad when he does.
That is the elegant solution, I think.
Having a shoulder-shrug from Lisa is…not.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 8:17 am
Or hire some Indian writers for the show and deepen a stereotype into a real person.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 8:17 am
The problem with that, Tim, is that EVERY character on THE SIMPSONS is a stereotype who exists within the boundaries of that stereotype. That is part of what makes them funny. You run into problems, largely, because Apu is a *racial* stereotype.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 8:17 am
You could likely introduce another character of that ethnic background later, and give him/her some other quirk, as per Dr. Hibbert. But Apu is toxic.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 8:17 am
Stereotypes are part if humor but Jewish stereotypes can still be funny in mass media because there’s enough humor to recognize the humanity, often because many smart Jews are writing these stereotypes (not that this is a get out of jail free card. Assimilated Midwestern Jews who think fake yiddish accents are comedy gold should just stop). You can use stereotypes without sinking into racism as long as it isnt outsider stereotypes. Crazy ex-girlfriend takes a lot of humor from stereotypes but the diverse writers room keeps them from being hacky and lazy.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 8:17 am
All good points, and this CAN be addressed once Apu is gone.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
They addressed so I two seasons ago with an episode where one if the chief critics if apu came in as his nephew. They can make apu more than a stereotype and they have made him more than a stereotype but now they just go with lazy dismissal. Getting rid of apu is also a lazy solution. None of the people interviewed in the trouble with apu are asking to get rid of him, just stop being so lazy with the Indian stereotypes and maybe give the 8 kids some personality. But chiefly hire some Indian writers as well as writers who aren’t white dudes.
Comment By: Jaime Levine
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
I disagree that it’s lazy to get rid of him. He’s a secondary or tertiary character at best. He’s not fundamental to the series. If he was, then I’d say absolutely they should hire the right people and do everything with more nuance. But he could never be written in another episode and the show would go on just fine. He doesn’t match the other satirized characters because he’s satire purely on race. And to make him more of a character and more nuanced wouldn’t fit the show. He’d stick out in a different direction.
Maybe hire all those guys from the documentary for a special couple of ep arc to develop and tell a real Apu storyline, then retire the character.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
Jaime Levine It was once unimaginable to think of THE SIMPSONS without attorney Lionel Hutts.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
But they have made him more nuanced already. We should at least listen to the Indian Americans who hate the stereotype but love the show when it comes to representation and what to do with apu. Lack of representation comes from Hollywood not wanting to offend and leaving it there so they just stopped putting minority characters in movies and television. Except as bland personality free characters. This allowed them to keep the status quo but it is a terrible solution to white supremacy.
Comment By: Jaime Levine
April 10th, 2018 at 10:17 am
Tim W. Lieder you make a good point about representation. Also, I’m not up on what’s been done on Simpson’s in later years because I haven’t watched it in more than a decade.
This article gives some options. You are right that they need to do something about Apu. By the end of the article it sounds like they very nearly did. And then backtracked.
http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/simpsons-apu-episode-is-what-happens-when-youre-on-air-too-long.html
Comment By: Jaime Levine
April 10th, 2018 at 10:17 am
One thing I think we all can agree on, The Simpsons is failing to live up to their own brand and their recent episode was a giant ‘screw you’ to criticism. Which is basically the white liberal who is with you until it hurts or is challenging to them, then they aren’t with you.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 10:17 am
Yep. And seriously they got to get beyond framing the argument around people being offended, that’s part of it but not the totality,
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
A good contrast to Apu is the show’s gay character, Waylon Smithers. Smithers is the epitome of a self-denying assistant to a wealthy and powerful man, who — it gradually came out, if you will permit the phrase — was that way in part because he was madly in love with his boss. By the time that was clear it was just PART of him, a part that has fueled further stories, involving his relationships with people who were not Montgomery Burns.
The show still goes to Smithers when it wants to make a joke riffing on gay issues, but he is not JUST the gay guy, and that makes all the difference.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
And that’s what apu can be and at times has been. Also he has 8 kids who could be aged up.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 am
The one exchange with Apu that I will always consider genius is one where somebody mentioned “all the other little religions.”
APU: There are over a billion of us.
REV LOVEJOY: That’s just super.
Comment By: Paul Anderson
April 10th, 2018 at 10:17 am
I am not sure who enunciated the rule: Have at least two members of any particular group. That way you can tell what is characterization, and what if anything is being said of the group.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 10:17 am
In rl, that often means that the one member will try to ingratiate himself either with assimilation or making the differences into a “don’t mind me” joke. See also my rants about Jews telling holocaust jokes, can be funny but never funny when they are telling them to their gentilr friends.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 11:18 am
Tim W. Lieder It also depends on the target of the joke.
“There are over a billion of us, that’s just super,” is not targeting the indian guy.
The target of the holocaust jokes in TO BE OR NOT TO BE (at least the Lubitsch version) was always the Nazis, not their victims.
The family drama THIS IS US has as one of its dynamics the adult black son of a white family, and there is an episode where there’s a celebrity bachelor auction in which the white brother, an actor, participates. At one point he attempts to shame his black brother for not participating, and his brother says, gently, “No black person is going to enjoy standing on a stage and being auctioned to white people.” A nice moment. A racial joke that is not a racist joke.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 11:18 am
THE GOOD PLACE has a racially mixed cast, where only one of the four principal human beings is white. The black man is a fussy intellectual neurotic. The Asian is basically Spicoli. The woman of indian descent is a self-aggrandizing princess. The white woman is a shallow selfish user in the process of learning how not to be. Not one of their quirks is tied to race.
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 11:18 am
Crazy ex-girlfriend is also a great show and the stereotypes come from knowledge. Rachel bloom even did a song called Chanukah honey which I just lived because the Jewish stereotypes were relatively new and not run into the ground,
Comment By: Chris McCubbin
April 10th, 2018 at 12:18 pm
Serious question – is it desirable or even possible to do a hard working, family man entrepreneurial immigrant character without a strong and recognizable accent?
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 12:18 pm
The maker of the documentary that started this discussion notes that only having two images of Indian Americans was the big problem. If there were dozens if Indians on television in the 90s apu would have been easier to take.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 10th, 2018 at 2:18 pm
Way more now.
Comment By: Joanna Kasper
April 10th, 2018 at 6:17 pm
A strong and recognisable accent from maybe an actual, genuine, Indian man?
Comment By: Chris McCubbin
April 10th, 2018 at 7:17 pm
Well sure, that’s a legitimate issue. But Azaria’s tenure in the role is also a factor …
Plus Azaria is a second generation American from a Greek / Sephardic family … he’s not a WASP and he’s not an alien to the American immigrant experience
Comment By: Tim W. Lieder
April 10th, 2018 at 7:17 pm
Nut even he said that he was being purposefully offensive. There have been points when apu was a good character and points where he was just a stereotype. It still feels weird to remember that Harold and Kumar go to white castle was a hit because Asians were excited to see non stereotypical portrayals.
Comment By: Joanna Kasper
April 10th, 2018 at 7:17 pm
Chris McCubbin You do understand that non-WASPs are not interchangeable, right? That there is a fair amount of difference between a white and a brown immigrant experience, especially in predominantly white countries?
Comment By: Eric Cline
April 10th, 2018 at 9:17 pm
Sidenote: on IN LIVING COLOR in the 1990s, the Wayans’ had this family of Caribbean immigrants (I don’t remember where they were supposed to come from, but it was a very ” ‘ere you go, mon” accent) whose stereotyped characteristic was that they were incredibly hard workers, all of them having multiple jobs. It was done with definite love.
Comment By: Domenick E. Fraumeni
April 10th, 2018 at 11:18 pm
Oh…it’s so easy to do. Just have Apu suddenly behave like a normal Indian would. When asked he simply says ” got tired of playing the stereotype”. Do it Simpsons style. Problem solved. We all move on.
Comment By: Robert Hood
April 11th, 2018 at 12:17 am
My main client has been discussing a new character with me: an Nth-generation Asian-American woman who (a) has an Anglo given name and surname, (b) speaks with an accent typical of the part of America where she grew up, and (c) is So Damned Tired of being fetishized for her appearance, especially on dates. We’ve discussed not even mentioning her race until some jerk comments on it, but perhaps show a couple of people expressing surprise when meeting her in person for the first time.
I’ve suggested tying her heritage to the Chinese immigrants who worked on the first railroads, back in the 1800s. Plenty of time there for her (great-)grandmother to marry a white guy and take his last name, and it gives her a ready-made rant when well-intentioned dolts quiz her about “the immigrant experience.”
Comment By: Eric Cline
April 11th, 2018 at 7:18 am
Robert, you or your client may be interested in this (hard to get, I’m sure) non-fiction book. It was written by the grandmother of science fiction author William F. Wu. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/029275132X/comicmixatc-20/
Comment By: Eric Cline
April 11th, 2018 at 7:18 am
Well, actually, not *that* hard to get! 🙂 https://archive.org/details/mychinesemarria00portgoog
Comment By: Eric Cline
April 11th, 2018 at 7:18 am
For a sample of her grandson Bill Wu’s work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0o9xApAHi8