WNYC takes Apu down (updated)
I went down to WNYC, the NPR affiliate in New York City, this morning for the most sympathetic airing of the Simpsons / 7-Eleven issue to date. It was the Brian Lehrer show; Jen Chung of Gothamist was on right before me. After the Ultra psychoanalysis of Apu and his Kwik-E-Mart, several desis who dislike the 7-Eleven promo clogged the phone lines. Listen here, the callers begin around 6:15:
The studio is located in One Centre Street, one of those buildings with a street running through it (now a pedestrian passageway) that New York so loves. It’s a colossus which reminds me of Moscow University.
Update: Turns out that impression was a lucky guess (thanks, blackie):
The Municipal Building… impressed Josef Stalin so much that the Moscow University main building… was later based on it — as well as, in general, the whole grandiose public building style in the Soviet Union… The Municipal Building was based on the Giralda Tower in [Seville,] Spain… [Link]
The host himself:
More comments are raging over on the WNYC site.
on Thursday, July 26th, 2007, 2:26 pm in Issues, Photos, Radio, Simpsons, TV › 
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I absolutely love Brian and it’s one of my favorite shows on WNYC. I also think Brian is seriously partial to desis because he runs a lot of desi segments and has call ins. I call in regularly and wanted to so badly today because you were on but was couldn’t find a conference room to talk from :-)
By the way 1 Center Street is one of the biggest Government buildings in the world, houses a ton of government offices including the city’s marriage bureau and also a popular spot to film a lot of the Law and Order episodes :-)
I have been following your commentary with great interest, as someone who came to America 6 years back and has lived all my life in India, I have never heard anyone talk with that accent in India or here. Do you find it baffling that most everywhere people have the same line of defence to everything you say. It is almost like no one is paying attention, all they have to say is “Simpsons make fun of everyone” etc. I think it is funny that the white commenters imply that there are no racial undertone when they don’t have the faintest Idea how it feels to be on the other side.
My first year of grad school, I was asked everything from Elephants, knowledge of English to if there are buildings in India.
well done… very articulate Manish!
I cringed when he said “…hindu accent…” (and Vig…!) but besides that Brian was a gracious and level headed host who orchestrated the show well. Awesome job holding back, not correcting him, and staying on topic…
Thanks for the clip Manish. You were very articulate in making your point.
There are very few people in the Indian community who take up such issues. Stereotyping is rampant in American culture, and Indians are almost always on the receiving end. There are a lots of “positive” stereotypes too (if there is any such thing), but the majority of them are negative and outright disgusting. Most of my friends brush off such negative stereotypes by saying things like “I don’t care” or “he/she’s ignorant..they’ll learn soon”. Only a handful of people confront such stereotypes and make a point to “educate” those “ignorant” beings.
Way to go man.
Honestly Apu never bothered me. I always found the accent annoying, it’s done by Hank Azaria who by the way learnt it when he lived with a bunch of Indian roommates and complexmates when he was a struggling actor 20 years ago. I’ve heard his interview on NPR before where he spoke about that experience with so much warmth and humility.
But I adore the character of Apu and his wife. They are hard working contributing citizens of their town and more American than so many of the other stereotypes. I was telling someone today that Simpsons stopped being funny to me a long time ago and I really just lost interest. It was funny once.
nicely done, dude.
was a fan of the brian lehrer show when i was living back east. still try and catch it once in a while online.
the “hindu accent” and “vig” was disappointing, but i guess it was the end of the show, so we can let it slide…
The Municipal Building, topped by “Civic Pride” (the 2nd largest statue in NYC which commemorates the joining of the five boroughs) so inspired Josef Stalin that he had Moscow University’s main building built to look like it.
Tammy sounds hot! Anyone got her pic or digits?
Nice interview, Manish. I hope the fact that you’re my friend allows me to pick on a few points without animosity:
Did you really hold up Kal Penn as an example of “positive” desi characters in the media? He’s played some pretty negative characters (ie terrorist) especially compared to the character Apu. If you meant Kal Penn himself the successful actor, OK, but the brown characters he plays don’t exactly shine. (And his performance in the Namesake, which I finally saw, was unforgiveable, but the screenwriter and director share the blame. That was some stinky dialog.)
Also, on the web site, did you really say jewish accent? Your argument is based on the theory that every character except Apu represents a minority that most Americans are familiar with. Yet a phrase like “jewish accent” indicates very little experience with Jewish Americans. I don’t think that’s actually true - I think you made a mistake with the phrase “jewish accent,” or were as “lazy” as you accuse Apu’s writers of being (did you mean a Brooklyn accent? A Yiddish accent? An Israeli accent?). Regardless, your comment gives Krusty’s minority status parity with Apu’s, and undermines your context argument that desis alone are misunderstood in America.
Manish, nice interview, you made your points well.
And Brian got your name right, at least the first time he said it, and that’s always remarkable.
I didn’t catch where you might have said ‘Jewish accent’, but if you did, Nina has a point.
Just heard the podcast; Manish, very well done! Thanks for raising the issue. I think it is important that the mainstream media portrays Indians as what they are and not as a misrepresented character in a cartoon show.
How about Faiz in Seventy’s show? Shouldn’t someone point out that he is a misrepresentation too?
Abhi-az -
I thought it was Fez (as an abbrev. of Foreign Exchange Student) and that he was also simply ambiguously ethnic… actually checking wp….
I’m not sure if that makes it any better… but it was kinda funny to me that you thought he was ethnically brown and therefore thought you heard his name was Faiz… not funny like a clown… because I’ve done many similar things before :-)
hey Manish, i’m really glad you were on NPR otherwise i might not have known about your blog and all the interesting dialog taking place here. i agree with a lot of what you said on Brian’s show, but i thought it was curious that in making your points about Indian stereotypes that you used the term Hindu interchangeably with Indian. isn’t that furthering the confusion and stereotypes? you know better than most that Hinduism is a religion, and being Indian does not mean you are Hindu. c’mon, such details are important esp. when you are making a point about racial stereotypes.
y’know, i think we are hypocrites.
We’re ok with some dude on MTV “yo’mamma” bringing up his false desi accent, but not fine with anyone else trying to do it.
Apu is a funny character, just like the brown-bag people on fandango with “chitra my queen….” (which really makes me cringe), but hey, its funny, and you’d hope that the audience is wise enough to understand the difference between a stereotypical potrayal as a joke, and an actual humiliating mockery.
I dont think Americans mock bollywood dancing and all the indian stuff. Its amazing to them, because it is different.
The 7-11 thing might be an issue (even something that can be legally fought) if the stores were forced into participating. America is about Commercialism/Capitalism. If those store owners agreed to it willingly, then thats their perogative.
Just wait a few years and an Indian like Nooyi will be the CEO running the 7/11 chain. Its inevitable. Then what?
meera, good point, but it was a live show, so slip ups happen…i don’t think manish would use hindu and indian interchangeably all the time.
nina, kal penn is a positive example b/c of the fact that he plays a variety of roles and he’s not a two-dimensional, singular character…you can’t pin him down to a caricature. it’s like saying that meryl streep is a “negative” example to women if she ever plays a prostitute in one of her movies…that in itself is not demeaning. if those were the ONLY types of roles that hollywood wanted to see her in, and all that she was getting, then you have a point. kal’s acting ability isn’t the point. the fact that he’s played a variety of characters in a diverse array of films humanizes him and indian-americans.
oh, and krusty having parity with apu? give me a friggin break! there are tons of jewish actors and actresses playing a variety of roles…very, very few people would look at krusty and say, “is that how jews are? is that how jews talk? are all jews clowns?” because there have been so many jews playing so many diverse roles that you can’t pin it down. same cannot be said for apu. yeah, stereotypes exist for jews in hollywood, but there are also tons of counter-examples…can’t say the same for indian-americans. and jews aren’t too far off from the number of indians in america.
It actually makes things easier because you’re arguing against people with a knee-jerk mainstream reaction who aren’t thinking too deeply about it. With a fixed target you can sharpen and refine your arguments with every interview.
Yup, it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Thanks guys!
I linked to an NPR interview with him in the news column, is that the one you mentioned? Regardless he doesn’t seem to have an ear for the accent, it sounds closer to Sellers than any real-life desi I’ve ever heard.
Harold and Kumar was absolutely groundbreaking in having Asian Americans with regular American accents, who were just regular dudes, and placing them in a pretty funny comedy. I don’t particularly like terrorist/cabbie/doctor niches, they’re limiting, but I’m glad Penn, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Sunkrish Bala, Navi Rawat, Aasif Mandvi, my buddy Kiran Rao and all the other desi actors out there are finally getting decent roles.
This joint asked me how to pronounce it twice before the show, so there was some measure of care to it. They’re audio junkies.
In the WNYC comments, I’m referring to the stereotypically Jewish accent in U.S. media, ranging from Dan Castellaneta doing Krusty the Clown to Mike Myers on SNL.
More groups are misunderstood than understood in America, but on The Simpsons Apu is unique.
More generic immigrant humor. I don’t watch the show much but sometimes he’s good, sometimes he makes me cringe.
Sorry for being unclear. The focus of the interview was Apu, who’s portrayed as Hindu. The line about a Hindu president was an oblique reference to recent polls about whether Americans would ever vote for Mormons, atheists and such.
Yes, desi actors in a vraiety of roles is good. But the question in the interview was whether you’d concede the character of Apu was positive - pillar of the community of Springfield, etc. Your criticisms of Azaria’s bad accent, misunderstood minority, etc. can still be valid while acknowldgeing that Apu is a positive character in the Simpsons narrative. The question wasn’t about whether Azaria is a postive desi actor - he’s obviously not - but whether the character Apu is generally positive, which he is. Moreso than even Kumar, who is a pothead.
Y’all are kind of proving my point here.
The point I’m trying to get across is that we have to look at the broader effects of Apu’s caricature. Yes, there are a lot of desis who will say that Apu is a positive character and that he doesn’t offend them, that they think he’s funny, etc. - and that’s valid. But I’m not talking about this group of people, who are usually in their 20s and 30s and post regularly on Internet message boards and who often work in professions where they are treated well by their white, etc. co-workers. People who can eloquently defend themselves and their sense of identity. I’m talking more about elementary school kids, high school kids, recent immigrants who don’t shrug off every instance of racism as a survival mechanism. And we cannot discount their opininos because their presence in the e-world isn’t as strong.
When I ask my younger cousins about the Apu accent, they almost always say that it is used “against” them, almost always with derision. When kids want to make fun of my desi cousins, they pull out the Apu accent to MOCK them. They don’t care that Apu is a smart guy, a hardworking immigrant with his own business, etc. Seriously, they don’t care.
So yeah, we can say that Apu is a standalone “positive” character, but why is it that the Apu character and accent has become an ICONIC and widely-known way to DERIDE desis? You honestly and sincerely cannot say the same for any other SImpsons character. Nobody goes up to overweight, lazy white men at work and starts calling them “Homer.” It doesn’t matter if Apu is a positive character to a 30 something hipster when his accent is being used to ridicule a whole lot of people.
What is your point? You said that Krusty’s minority status (which I’m assuming is that he’s a Jew, I don’t really watch the show enough to know, but I’m assuming that’s what you were getting at since we were discussing Jews) is just as misunderstood as desis’ status on the show b/c Manish said something about a “Jewish” accent, which is wrong b/c there is no such thing as a Jewish accent, just as there is no such thing as any “religious” accent. I give you that. But you can’t jump to the conclusion that all misunderstandings are created equal, just for the sake of dismissing the racism that is going on here and which seems to bother you.
I highly doubt that Krusty’s character is being lobbed against young Jewish students in the US as a way to deride them in the same way that Apu is being used against young desis. YES, there is persecution and misunderstanding about Jews in general, but we’re talking about the Simpsons here, not all forms of societal discrimination. I agree there are Jewish stereotypes on other shows that have and are being against Jews, but not the Simpsons.
Finally listened to the whole npr broadcast Manish, great job you focused on multiple aspects of this issue and your conversation skills and ease with which you spoke on different aspects of the issue are just impressive.
To me Apu’s accent doesnot matter that much, what bothered me was portrying Apu as someone who cheats, sells everything for higher price, picks up hot dog that fell on the ground and tries to resell it or Apu trying to get a fake greencard and the worst is seven 11 employees asked to dress like Apu and behave like Apu. To me all these are serious issues which can have impact on how indian americans are treated rather than the fake accent or the elephants or the traditional lifestyle that they show of Apu.
I don’t know UB, I think you’re going a bit overboard with this.
I personally love this line you said…..
“I’ve actually had white-collared colegues ask me wether people in India ride elephants to work…”
“The reality is they drive Toyota Camrys like {indians in} New Jersey.”
Hahah, who are you working with!!! And Thanks for reinforcing that stereotype Manish, As a Jersey Indian Im insulted!
Thank You Come Again.
Hey, didn’t Raj Bhakta take an elephant to the Mexican border? ;)
Haaha. Yes Sir he did, he shoudl of went brown-face as well :-o
http://www.pardonmyhindi.com/blog/?p=56