https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/a...-simpsons.html
Worth reading the article and watching the trailer just for context. This dude Kondabolu really did his homework. (Plus, it's almost shocking to see this many famous South Asian American actors on screen together, something you don't normally see in mainstream entertainment.)
I’m excited that it’s finally coming out. He’s been talking about this for a long time. I remember last year when he called on all his fans to send a message to Hank Azaria asking him to be interviewed for it (I did it). Looks great.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
Didn’t Kal Penn kind of launch his career with Apu type characters?
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
With Taj from Van Wilder, yes. I can't imagine he enjoyed it, though.
That is exactly the character he's referring to in the article Irish linked when he said he was told to just mimic Apu's accent.
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Very conflicted on this movie.
Have been thinking about it all day and can’t make up my mind.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
My friend Kunal has done some acting. He loves/hates Apu. Apu was one of the few Indian characters in pop media, so cool, representation, but Apu was a bag of stereotypes. I never really noticed until he said something.
The show is full of racial and cultural stereotypes. All of the Italians are mobsters, the Irish are drunk cops, Asians all know karate, the only explicitly Jewish character has a father who is a disapproving Hasidic Rabbi, etc.
I mean, the argument isn’t wrong. But why pick out Apu in particular, when the show makes fun of and stereotypes everyone?
If anything, the people it makes fun of the most are fat, lazy, white Americans.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Exactly. Apu also has a personality - there are a number of episodes revolving around him, including his marriage.
I mean, The Simpsons has turned unfunny enough for external factors to try and make it even less funny on political correctness grounds. That's just sad.
EDIT: The article linked on the first post also accuses Peter Sellers's hilarious performance in The Party of "brownface". Facepalm.
Last edited by Grouchy; 11-14-2017 at 09:13 PM.
I think because there were more cultural pop media characters for people to latch on to in terms of Jews, Irish, even Asians (although much less so on that one). There's been almost no Indian-American representation in media up until recently, and so Apu took up a disproportionately large amount of the cultural imagination on what Indian people are like. It's more about options, and while that's not fair to The Simpsons (who, as you note, clearly should not be viewed as the gatekeepers of ethnic identities), that's probably what the underlying "problem" is here. Apu would be a mere annoyance to Indian-Americans if he weren't the only one for so damn long.
Well, isn't the why because it's personal? I feel like Hari and the people he interviewed in it explained it well enough. They have a complicated relationship with the character because they have been personally targeted for bullying because of and using Apu. This seems like such a common racial attack for Indian-Americans that even Harold & Kumar satirized it (the gas station scene where the white dudes mimic Apu to mock Kumar).
If any Italian guy wants to interview a large swath of Italian-Americans about how all of them share the common experience of being bullied using Fat Tony, I think they're entitled to do so also.
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For me that's the same as attacking Taxi Driver because someone saw it and tried to kill Reagan because of it.
For me that is not the same.
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Hari loves The Simpsons, btw. He has one pet peeve with a character based on his personal experience and decides to use it to have a cultural conversation about it. I don't see what is wrong with that.
I personally love Breakfast at Tiffany's. I have never hesitated to use Mickey Rooney's role in it as an example of how fucked up Hollywood is in representing asians. I hate the scenes with that character as intensely as I love the rest of the movie.
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Anyway, I'm not against the film being made. That would make me the same as the censorship mentality I don't like. I just think these things come off as too much of an attack sometimes. Comedy requires a target.
I'd completely forgotten Mickey Rooney played a Japanese neighbor in that.
If the character was still purely comic relief, but played by a Japanese actor, would that make it OK then?
I don't know. I'd have to see how this hypothetical Japanese actor plays it. I think what happened is that a white actor decided to adopt a weird broad caricature he obviously had no familiarity with and nobody at the time was around to tell him that it was a shitty thing to do. I'm not particularly interested in finding the argumentative loophole that would make a certain offense more or less OK. I'm not sure there is a point to that and to be honest, I don't know why people always try do that. There's no moral victory there.
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It would allow actors and directors to continue making comedies?
The trailer for the film does not at all communicate his “love” of the show.
Having one of the leading lines be Kal Penn saying how he hates Apu and The Simpsons, followed by footage making Azaria and others involved with the show look like racist asshats...none of that gives a “complicated love” feeling towards the show.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Exactly. The editing makes Azaria and the producer seem like culprits in some sort of cover-up. I realize that's just a way to sell something and the movie might not be like that, but... come on.
You're a country that has somehow managed to have Trump as your president. Use all that energy you're wasting on fighting artists and comedians on that, for crying out loud.
The editing in the trailer makes some of the creative people look a little clueless (to say the least) IRT to the subject of their characterization of a racial stereotype.
Because they probably are a little clueless.
It is especially awkward (to say the least) when Azaria starts doing the accent at the podium during a graduation at a University. That is entirely insensitive to the cultural problems the documentary is addressing.
It's entirely OK to address these issues, talk about them, and still like the Simpsons and comedy.
Believe it or not, many of us in the US are capable of being concerned about more than one thing at a time.
With these issues, I often think about this comic by Adrian Tomine about Sixteen Candles and Gedde Watanabe.
Not saying that at all.
Just this it might have been more poignant if they used Apu as a jumping off point for how The Simpsons uses racial and religious stereotypes in pretty much every single episode, and uses them as a quick way to establish character with the viewer.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
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