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This type of bs really grinds my gears. As an indian american I always found Apu to be a hilarious character. It's a damn shame all these woke people want to cancel things that they aren't even remotely attached too.
I made a separate thread for it, but will also post it here:
New Rule: you cannot be offended on behalf of someone else/another group
BTW, SA1, your comment that someone who’s Indian and says they’re not offended are wrong and should “introspect” on it, that’s more racist than the cartoon itself.
https://youtu.be/WIn-wKtiGNw
As also an Indian American, I have no issue with his portrayal of the character or the writers giving him a full character buildout.
That said, I also don't reject his apology. It come from the right place and this should end any further discussion about the character.
comes*
Apology accepted. Racism has ended! Thanks Simpsons.
LoL. As an Indian, I find this so insignificant. Chill, people, it's a funny cartoon show.
This change is long over-due. In fact, as a society we should just jump directly to the natural final step instead of dragging our feet with baby steps like this.
No actor should ever play a character that comes from a different background, period. This includes color, race, culture, gender, geography, sexual preference, political preference, mental capacity, profession, socio-economic situation, criminal past, education level (or lack of), marital status, parental status, caregiver status, religion (as long as it’s Islam; Christians and Jews are fair game), different first name, last name, nickname, eye or hair color, first grade teacher’s name. I could go on.
Characters in media, fictional or not, should only be played be actors who identically match the character they are playing. Every actor who has ever played a non-autobiographical role at any point in their career should immediately self-cancel, or we should cancel them forcefully.
SM1 just described the woke's wet dream! Love the sarcasm.
Rising Star
Next they’re going to apologize to my country for Groundskeeper Willie
Colour* you twit
I have been warned my account will be suspended if I say something so I am just here for the comments.
I’ve watched a ton of Simpsons. I’m gonna call on the folks who grew up watching this too. What do you know about Apu? Or his wife? Or his kids? What do you know about Moe? Likely more...
A comic (hari..?) criticized Azaria who doubled down hard. Now he’s changed his mind (he’s worked the whole time and had an awesome show; the simpsons is still making $$$$) No one cancelled anything. Stop turning things into a culture war and Partner 1, damn. You got a time out and still didn’t learn?!? And you’re proud of it??
This is 1987: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotbusters
This is 2001: https://www.sikhcoalition.org/images/documents/fact%20sheet%20on%20hate%20against%20sikhs%20in%20america%20post%209-11%201.pdf
This is 2021: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/06/an-uber-eats-drivers-killing-was-caught-video-it-showed-every-immigrants-worst-nightmare/?outputType=amp
This stuff doesn’t happen as often as it does to the black community. South Asians are like 1-3% of the population? It is real. Making things better isn’t a bad thing
I remember a South Asian student at my school would regularly do the apu accent and kwik e mart jokes to entertain classmates - really broke my heart, and made me appreciate how my parents raised me to be proud of where we come from and stand up to peer pressure
Rising Star
Hank Azaria has always seemed like a good guy
So he spent the next year speaking with Indian-American groups to educate himself - 'doing the work'.
Love this!
One key point that a lot of people are missing is that Apu was for a long period the single representation of Indians in American pop culture / entertainment.
The reason that Hank is apologizing is because he now realizes that while their intent was in the right place and while the show is known for satirizing all kinds of people, there was no “normal” Indian in media for these jokes to contrast against. There was no Indian American superhero or Indian sitcom lead or Indian celebrity. It wasn’t until Dev Patel started popping off that we had someone we could look to.
And while now, we do have more representation in media, it doesn’t change the fact that there was a generation of people bullied specifically using Apu. As an Indian-American, I was made fun of as a kid and teen with references to Apu (normally by a group of white kids). The jokes were now insults and the accent was coming from someone mocking it. This was happening in a diverse school in Texas in a middle class suburb.
And while it’s easier for me to shrug off as someone with an American accent, it doesn’t make it less racist. It just means I’m tolerant. And racism shouldn’t be tolerated. So I applaud Hank for taking this action, even though his heart seems to have always been in the right place to begin with.
Apu is a computer science graduate from university where he graduated first in his class, he owns a successful small business, and at one point was Springfield’s most eligible bachelor.
John Cleese gets it.
It takes Azaria's heartfelt, proactive statement and politicizes it with a cheap joke. That's dumb.
Rising Star
Its satire and should be treated as such.
At this rate he’ll have to apologise to the italians, irish, scottish, the chinese and every other ethnic group caricatured in this.
Not to mention the other groups - cops, politicians, school teachers and administrators, bar owners, clowns, mafiosos, nuclear safety technicians etc.
I was watching some early episodes recently. There were a lot of jokes at the expense of the french
As a kid, Apu was the only brown person on Aussie telly to relate to
Agreed. It definitely perpetuated the stereotype of “your parents must run convenience stores” 🙄
What about all the money he made by portraying an indian? Your apology means nothing if you made money taking advantage of another race and dont give it back
Pro
Yeah no. This ain’t it.
The problem wasn’t the role, or that he played it.
It was the general context around the role and how for years that was literally the only framework majority of pop culture consumers had for evaluating South Asians.
Apu and Hank Azaria are fine.
Indian American here who grew up on The Simpsons and got made fun of with Apu references. Azaria owes no apology for kids acting like assholes, they would have found something else to make fun of me for and The Simpsons made me laugh when I watched it.
I do like seeing more varied representation and actors of different ethnicities getting opportunities now.
Apology not accepted. Thank you for all the laughs. Come again. 🙂
Oohhh where’s that uplifting button. Next week I want to see Ronald McDonald apologizing for killing chickens and cows
He was playing a character, I don’t see why he had to apologize. That’s like saying Tom Cruise played “Ethan Hunt” badly and so he needs to apologize to every Ethan in the world. 🤷♂️
I agree there needs to be awareness of different races and the injustices that happen but cancelling everything because of that might not make too much sense. Especially in the entertainment industry, people struggle to makes ends meet and so they try to take up any character without looking at the consequences just so they can get some food on the table.
Lmao