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The problem here are the bullies, not the show.

South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy and all the greats are packed full of racially-adventurous humour and that's part of what makes these shows great. Scottish, British, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, Muslim and virtually everyone is picked on.

They're equal opportunity offenders.

If you don't like it, that's your prerogative, but don't force your preferences on the rest of us.

I don’t support hank azaria voicing the character, and i believe an indian writer should be deciding what apu says. I’m not saying things should be cancelled, we just want representation. You can make fun of cultures and people, but just recognize when jokes are having a negative impact on their targets in the real world. it’s incredibly disheartening that so many other problematic representations and things like yellowface are being addressed, but apparently nobody cares about this.

> and i believe an indian writer should be deciding what apu says

This seems to belie the entire concept of fiction writing. Must that writer also be a straight married male with children and own a convenience store? Can a male writer write a book with female characters, or vice versa?

https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/98899180972331827...

Hank literally agrees with me. Of course I'm not saying that in general, but in this specific case its absolutely the right thing to do.

I understand Hank as saying there that there ought to be south Asian voices in the writers room, not that they should have complete control over what Apu says.

I don't know what's special about this case. I mean I understand what's of special importance to you, but if writer <-> character matching is required here, I don't see what would prevent it from becoming a universalizable rule that would turn "write what you know" from a piece of hackneyed advice into a moral principle.

Because many prominent Indian-Americans share a similar opinion. Vivek Murthy (previous/future surgeon general), Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, were all in the film and have had similar experiences to mine. Most famous Indian Americans have in fact spoken out about it, and we do care, unlike 'the indians you know' who you implied had the opinion of most of us.

How do you feel about Chabuddy G as a character?

I know dang likes to tell us that Hacker News turning into Reddit is an illusion, but sometimes it really does turn into Reddit. Like this comment, right now.

In the interest of good HN commenting spirit I'll assume good faith on GP and elaborate on my snarky post. I'm sure that many people are tired of comedian's incessant refrain of the importance of "punching up." It's pretentious and tired, but before that the tired phrases were "I just want to make people laugh" and "I make fun of everyone equally." GP's first ethnic group cited were the Scots, so let's go there in the context of North America. Depending on your view, Scottish people are either part of or closely related to the dominant ethnic and racial group. They are not recent immigrants and share language, accent and given names with the majority of the population. By contrast (and especially in the 90s when the Simpsons enjoyed its prime) South Asian immigrants are a visibly different recent minority ethnic group. They have distinct languages, accents and generally don't use western given names for their children. So the Groundskeeper Willie/Scottsman argument is creating a false sense of fairness. To make a tired youth reference, making fun of the grunge kid with the long hair and the weird pale kid with the sweatpants and long fingernails aren't the same thing.

As to why not have whites play Asians even in a cartoon when they can just as easily play space aliens and pink unicorns? The same reason we all hate Big Bang Theory, it leads to tired and insulting jokes based on shallow stereotypes. This is why Asians don't like Apu, because most of the jokes around him are based on lazy and frequently negative stereotypes. The jokes about space aliens and pink unicorns could also be lazy, but there's no space aliens or pink unicorns to get affected by them, fortunately. Remember that Nahasapeemapetilon isn't even a name in any culture, it's made up to sound funny to western audiences.

Nonsense.

Apu is on the whole a very positive stereotype - a successful and responsible small business owner who's respected by his and contributes to his community.

Compare him to someone like Cletus who is a negative stereotype of white Southerners, portrayed as an extremely low IQ ignoramus. Or Kyle's cousin in South Park who's a negative stereotype of a Jew, portrayed as a hypersensitive money-grubber. And so on.

Your injury is nothing more than an imagined grievance.

"This is why Asians don't like"

Speak for yourself. You aren't a spokesperson for South Asians, and not all of them are on the same wokeness bandwagon.

The problem wasn’t Apu or if he was played by a white actor or not, if he didn’t exist the kids would have made fun of you for anything that made you stand out. Skin, what shoes you wore, what you brought home for lunch, do you like a girl, or heaven forbid a boy (back in the day). Kids are vicious.

adults have done it too, including some teachers. people think it’s cool to do because they heard it on the Simpsons. not much stood out, we had uniforms. you get made fun of for the most fundamental and unchanging identity, your race. It absolutely destroyed my self worth at the time, and made me embarrassed of my skin color, and I know that others experienced the same thing.

I had a similar experience in middle school (many “thank you come again” comments), but the conclusion I’ve drawn was that it was due to Apu being the only Indian-American character middle schoolers saw on TV at the time. If there were others (and there are now), the Apu/color-of-my-skin association wouldn’t have been so strong.

I think that's something many people miss in these discussions. Bad/negative/stereotyped portrayals are one thing - those being the only ones is another.

EDIT to ask: how do the Dr. Seuss books fare in that regard?

Another Indian here who is tired of Apu jokes.

I didn't even grow up in America, but it's irritating when your coworkers think that they are meaningfully connecting with you based on what they "learned" from some hackneyed stereotype in a mildly funny adult cartoon. Doubly so when that coworker happens to be in a management position above you.

My advice: if you have a South Asian coworker, put away the Apu jokes unless they like it and bring it up for some reason.