“Representation” is a loaded word in the entertainment world, especially in the last few years. Campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite have created a dialogue around the lack of diversity in Hollywood. But what if you grew up seeing only one character who looked like you on television? And what if he was a cartoon character who displayed every negative stereotype you and your family have heard for as long as you can remember?
Hari Kondabolu has faced this problem ever since the first time someone on the schoolyard called him "Apu." Yes, we're talking about Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the big-bellied, high-pantsed owner of the Kwik-E-Mart on FOX's eons-running The Simpsons. If you're not familiar, Apu lives to charge people insane prices for salty snacks or sugary Squishees, is unfailingly polite to even his worst customers (especially Homer), and closes even the most contentious conversations by saying "Thank you, come again!"
Kondabolu’s new documentary, The Problem With Apu, debuts on truTV on November 19. In it, the comedian examines how the character of Apu was created and how it managed to endure over the past 30 years despite being a terrible stereotype of South Asian people.
"The early [years of the] show were mainly Bart episodes. So the Apu stuff, it was just like, 'Whoa, there's a brown character. This is amazing, and we exist.' We went from not existing to this cartoon, which was more than nothing," he told me. “And then I went to junior high school or maybe high school—I don't remember the exact point—but at a certain point I realized that, 'Whoa they're mentioning Apu to me.' The kids are using that as a weapon."
It's a topic that Kondabolu has been interested in, at least publicly, since his days writing for W. Kamau Bell's first talk show, Totally Biased. The movie dives even deeper. Kondabolu speaks to a number of South Asian-American actors and comedians, including Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn, Aasif Mandvi, Aparna Nancherla, Russell Peters, and Utkarsh Ambudkar. He not-so-jokingly claims in the movie that now there are 14 famous South Asians, and he knows all of them—and all of them agreed that the Apu haunted their childhoods. Penn was so viscerally angry at the characterization that he tells Kondabolu that it ruined the entire 28 years of The Simpsons for him.
"Everybody has their line and also he's a little older than me," he says about Penn's enmity. It doesn't help Penn's viewpoint that his first movie role was as a heavily-accented student named "Taj Mahal Badalandabad" in the 2002 mediocrity Van Wilder.
As Kondabolu dug into the origins of the character, he started to become curious about its genesis. Did co-creators Matt Groening and James L. Brooks sign off on such a ridiculous character back when the show was created in 1989, despite their reservations? Or did Hank Azaria, the man who created Apu's voice, create it on his own and the writers just ran with it? The fact that Azaria, whose family is Greek and Jewish, is even doing the voice instead of an Indian or other South Asian actor seems to add insult to injury, according to Kondabolu.
"When you actually see [the person behind the voice], you realize the jokes are directed at you," he said. "They're not inclusive jokes. They're really from the lines of a white person looking at another culture, plus the voice is a white dude. Like the whole thing all of a sudden feels a little less... It doesn't feel like it's in good faith at all."
Azaria, of course, was someone that Kondabolu badly wanted to talk to on camera. He thought that, because the actor had expressed regret over the character in a Huffington Post interview, landing Azaria would be relatively easy. But as the pursuit of Azaria became more frustrating, it became the through-line the movie needed to propel it along.
"This isn't supposed to be an attack on Hank Azaria," said Kondabolu. "The Hank plot is a through-line. It's a device. If he ended up speaking and we had an open conversation, that's great. To me, that's more interesting." Off-camera, Azaria talked to Kondabolu on the phone about discussing the issue on a podcast where he wasn't subject to Kondabolu's edit, but he ultimately said no to that, too. "Part of me wonders if he really wanted it."
In fact, the only person associated with The Simpsons, past or present, who agreed to speak on camera was Dana Gould, who wrote for the show from 2001 to 2008. Gould was pretty blunt in his assessment about Apu: stereotypical voices are funny, and that's what they wrote toward. For his part, Kondabolu appreciated Gould's candor. "That's not negative. That's blunt and that's honest. What? Was he supposed to bullshit? He said like, 'This accent is seen as funny by most white Americans.' I was like, 'Yeah, that's true.'"
If he seems conflicted about tearing into a show he's a big fan of, well, he is. But he is not a subscriber to what other comedians label "politically correct" speech. When asked about how legends like Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have discussed how PC speech has been anathema to comedy, Kondabolu doesn't mince words.
"With all due respect, I will say what's the difference between saying that and [saying] 'the kids these days'? I'm only 35 and I don't always get it. But I do know that's the direction of people's thinking and the country whether I like it or not. So I either catch up or I don't. And so to me, political correctness doesn't mean anything. Maybe you're talking about ideas being spread faster and maybe faster than people are prepared to resolve them." When Babu Bhatt, a Pakistani character from Seinfeld's early seasons is mentioned, Kondabolu doesn't mince words, either, calling it a "one-dimensional shit character."
As far as he's concerned, comedy can be good without the use of stereotypes. And while Apu will never leave The Simpsons, he hopes there will be other South Asian characters that show more positive images. "Regardless of whether it's funny, regardless of whether it's entertaining, how does it shape the culture around you? I don't think this particular character shaped it positively."
Follow Joel Keller on Twitter.
from VICE http://ift.tt/2inM4jn
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment