It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack confidence with women. Raj can’t speak with women without the use of alcohol, the show constantly mocks his accent, worshipping of cows etc.
> It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack confidence with women
The whole show is about males lacking confidence with women. Did you even watch the thing? The only male there that has any screen time and doesn't have problems approaching women is Zack, I think. And he's a walking stereotype too and dumb as a ton of bricks.
> worshipping of cows etc
If you think Raj saying "I swear to cow" is supposed to be a portrayal of a real Indian person, as opposed to obviously completely ridiculous comedic gag, lampshading its own ridiculousness - maybe you shouldn't be watching comedy, it's not good for you. Stick to anti-harassment videos from HR, there's no comedy there.
I'm a slav and from the balkans, we're either portrayed as tracksuit wearing thugs, drunks or in some relation to the balkan wars. So what?
We even have our own comedy tv series playing with the stereotypes (eg. Kursadzije), where all the stereotypes are used all the time (serbs and croats have historic "issues", montenegrins are lazy, bosnians are stupid and slovenians are femboys)... people like this, they laugh at this, and watch it, in all of the mentioned countries and wider.
Somehow it's always "someone else" that gets offended... same for 2balkan2you subreddit, where a (probably american) admin doesn't get the difference between romanians and roma/gypsy people.
Even with games... stuff like gta 4 just makes people trying to guess what Niko tried to say, because his serbian/serbocroatian accent/pronounciation is horrible in the game.
If we can joke about cops (reno 911), bar owners (it's always sunny in philadelphia), rural americans (king of the hill and many, many other), canadians (south park), italians (euro trip), gingers (south park), nerds (pretty much every college movie), french girls (malcolm in the middle), middle managers (basically, every office-based movie), bodybuilders (brooklyn 99), "aspiring actresses" (working as baristas), student cooks (usually by gordon ramsey), .... why not us? Oh and let's not forget blondes.
Do you assume all italians wear stockings and molest other guys on trains if you've seen Eurotrip (movie)? Nope. Do you assume all french girls don't shave? Nope. So if the whole of the balkans, including bosnia has many many jokes with "Mujo and Haso" (they represent a "stupid" couple of guys, where the pun is in their stupidity, why do you (I assume you're not from the balkans) get to be offended for other people? There's even a movie just with jokes about them... made by bosnians of course - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5085118/
We also have regional jokes, where in slovenia, people assume that people from gorenjska region are stingy (in serbia, it's people from pirot).
A joke is a joke, you don't have to get offended for other people.
edit: also, we don't start wars because we thing the others are subhuman, we just stereotipically hate eachother (as groups, not as individuals), due to historic reasons, mostly war-related.
ps: What you americans would call racism could only be mentioned maybe against gypsies here (eve though they're techncally the same race). And even that is mostly by assuming, that if someone stole your gutters around the house (or basically anything metal), that it was the gypsies. Usually it's even true.
But what do I know I'm just a PC SJW you know how we are, constantly bitching about "no more violence", incredibly naive because of course there will always be pogroms, "it's just human nature". [canned laughter]
Or if you're going the SJW way, are we only alowed to joke about american white men?
Only people overly and unnecessarily obsessed with race could say such a thing. Rest assured, the rest of us just see a person. It's almost like you can't even imagine that there could actually exist a man who has problems speaking to women and just happens to be Indian.
Edit: and in case it escaped your attention, all the main characters lack confidence with women, this just manifests differently in each character. Raj's background is relevant only in your mind.
> Raj can’t speak with women without the use of alcohol
Sounds consistent with the previous character trait, but this doesn't sound consistent with the stereotype you're so concerned about. It's almost like Raj is not just a stereotype character.
> the show constantly mocks his accent,
It's almost as if accents cause humourous misunderstandings in real-life that people can relate to. Weird. Not sure why that's "mocking" exactly, but I've surmised that you're pretty sensitive about this stuff so I'll chalk it up to that.
Aren't all the male characters in the show this way?
Is the show doing "Character who is Indian male lacks confidence with women" ?
Or is it doing "Character lacks confidence with women because he's an Indian male"?
There's a world of difference.
Sheldon is a white male who is desexualized.
Leonard is a white male who is desexualized.
Harold is a white male who is oversexualized in creepy ways.
And I'm not even sure "desexualized" is the right word. With both Raj and Leonard, at least, I remember there were many plot points about their difficulty with women. "Desexualized" to me would mean that they weren't even seen as people who are interested in sex or relationships -- that is, their status as having sexuality at all was minimized and never touched upon -- which was clearly not the case for either of them.
In any case, "relying on a stereotype" does not make something racist. When I watched the show (admittedly not for long; I probably got tired of it after a season or two), yes, there were certainly jokes that only worked because Raj was Indian, or Harold was Jewish, or Sheldon was neuro-atypical, but for the most part it was the stereotype "nerdy people are awkward in all sorts of social situations, especially when nerdy heterosexual men interact with women". Being Indian, or Jewish, or probably-autistic were secondary characteristics that gave them more color as people.
Sheldon could be more accurately diagnosed as "a total pain in the arse".
Raj embraces the role-playing sex game with scientist woman. The scene fades out implying they have a night of sex and wine.
Where exactly is your "desexualisation"?
I wasn't even aware that was a stereotype, after knowing (very closely, with some!) and interacting with hundreds of Indian males in my life.
Lacking confidence with women is a pretty standard "nerd"/"geek" stereotype, though, which, given the title and subject matter the show deals with, is what I would assume they were going for. Were you ever upset that Leonard was often awkward with women? Sure, he didn't have the "unable to talk to women without alcohol" bit, but Leonard wasn't exactly a ladies' man. So it's ok to portray a white man as being awkward around women, but if it's an Indian man, it's racist?
Re: accent mocking: accents are fun and the confusion that they can cause can be funny!
I do recall references to cow worship, which was a bit insipid and not that funny, but... c'mon, racist? Gimme a break.
Weak.
> It is affirming the stereotype Indian males
Is your claim that there are no Indian males who lack confidence with women? Or that there are no nerdy, geeky men who lack confidence with women?
What's an example of the show mocking his accent? You do understand that's his normal speaking voice, I hope. Kunal Nayyar (the actor) grew up in India.
I am not sure whether you are Indian or not, but if you fail to see why many Indians consider this portrayal problematic then we really need more anti-racism training in this country.
Yes, I am sure there are Indian men who lack confidence with women, but given India is 1.5 billion strong, I am sure men who are confident outnumber Raj Kuthrapalli types.
Not when it comes to his accent. It's wholly unsurprising that someone who grew up in India speaks English with an Indian accent. That isn't "mocking" his accent. That's just what his accent is.
> I am not sure whether you are Indian or not, but if you fail to see
Weak. If you can't demonstrate where this supposed racism is in the show then I'd suggest you need to start considering the very real possibility that it's not there.
> Yes, I am sure there are Indian men who lack confidence with women
Well, there's some small progress.
The only ignorance and bigotry that's been exposed here would appear to be your own. Work on that.
eg David Tennant uses his Scottish accent for jokes in a show where he normally sounds English
may i ask that you clarify this point?
tennant made a personal choice NOT to use his native/normal scottish accent for Dr. Who. he discusses this with Jodie Whittaker (also someone with quite a strong native accent) in an episode of his podcast, he TL;dr said it didn't feel quite right for him to use his native accent for the role [1].
whenever tennant does TV "as himself" (for example the voiceovers he has done for various shows or charity events like comic relief etc) he uses his own/native accent, is he doing this for laughs/jokes? surely he is doing them with a scottish accent because that is actually his literal normal voice?
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/jodie-whittaker/id1450...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOW1Wjb_oEI
Though I have to admit the reason I think of him when it comes to doing accents is his American accent that's supposed to be NorCal but sounds like it's everywhere else at the same time.
It isn't. You might as well say that because Matt Smith's sonic screwdriver was bigger than David Tennant's that's mocking David (but it, too, isn't):
As to your examples, they need work.
> It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack confidence with women.
That's a behaviour that is not linked to race.
> Raj can’t speak with women without the use of alcohol
That's an exaggeration of a character flaw, standard fare for a sitcom.
> the show constantly mocks his accent
The actor provides the accent, what does he think about it?
> worshipping of cows
Americans are - in theory at least - allowed to mock religion. That is not racist, that's rational.
I will both agree and disagree. The show frequently oversteps what can be thought of as parody, so calling it racist is a fair assessment.
On the other hand, we also have to be careful. Think of the video clip in the article, the one with Sheldon's mom. The article makes it sound like it was censored since it was disrespectful to the Chinese people. While I can understand how that interpretation can be made, it is far more likely a commentary on racists tendrils that infest parts of America. Of course, Chinese viewers may not realize that so their interpretation would likely be different.
As for affirming the stereotype of Indian males lacking confidence with women, I didn't know that such a stereotype existed. If it does, I can see how it could (perhaps should) be labelled as racist. The "joke" runs too deeply throughout the show and it rarely appeared to be handled critically.
I believe the ultimate bar for judgment should be: does the joke reinforce stereotypes or does the joke force the viewer to reexamine their beliefs. Humour shouldn't be used as a carte blanche justification for racism. On the other hand, a lack of a sense of humour shouldn't be used as an excuse to label everything as racism.
Having watch the show, the show never mocks his wealth but his dependence on his parents wealth (and even has an arc where he strives to be independent for it).