I love Apu.
I love that he stayed at a difficult job to pay off the student loans for his PhD.
I love that he has a PhD.
I love his singing voice.
I love his optimism.
I love the way his optimism is challenged sometimes, because mine is too.
I really hope that the rumors that the show is going to stop writing him into storylines aren’t true.
In many ways, I don’t get to have an opinion about this–I’m white and have the privilege that goes with it, including the privilege of most TV shows showing people with my skin type and white characters not being asked to be representative of all the real people with the same skin tone.
But if he goes, I will miss him.
If the show were introduced today, I would object to the brown-face voice.
But I don’t know if making him disappear will fix the problems he represents. Hari Kondabolu has said his voice shouldn’t be recast, although he appreciates Azaria’s offer to step down.
But fixing the brown-face won’t fix the actual problem. If Apu had been played by an Indian (American) actor, it wouldn’t have meant that Apu wasn’t stereotypical–The Simpsons is a satire that trades in, to use Jonathan Gray’s term, hyper-stereotypes.
How would Apu exist in a world along with Chief Wiggum, Groundskeeper Willie, and Homer without being, well, Apu?
Having a different actor play Apu all along also wouldn’t have affected the two other big complaints–a) that Indian and Indian-American children are teased by being called Apu and b) that Apu is one of the few Indian (American) characters on television.
Apu is a beloved well-rounded member of the town–many episodes focus on him, and not all are about him being an Indian (American)–instead, he is a husband, a father, a businessman, a vegan, a community member, a workaholic.
I love Apu for many reasons, but it’s his workaholism I identify with. I understand how frustrating it is when people keep telling you to relax and spend time with them, how it hurts to know you’re neglecting your family. But it’s because when we do try to stop working, the guilt is intense.
(Today, I’m having trouble breathing because of the fires. The muscles around my lungs are sharply in spasm–I keep involuntarily crying out. But I’m taking a “break” to write this–after grading all day. It’s a problem.)
I don’t really get a vote about what’s going to happen to Apu. And I don’t get to tell anyone else how they should feel about it.
But I love him. And I’d miss him if he were gone.
Context: This page has a great history of Apu and a list of his appearances. Apu became an American citizen in “Much Apu About Nothing” (1996). The last episode centered on Apu was “Much Apu About Something” (in 2016). There was an episode about racial stereotypes in literature that referenced Apu in 2018 (“No Good Read Goes Unpunished”).
“In a rather high risk strategy, The Simpsons employs what we could call hyper-stereotypes. From Scottish Groundskeeper Willie and Quik E Mart owner Apu, to the show’s depictions of Japan, Australia, East Africa, Canada, and Brazil in family trip episodes, the show rounds up multiple stereotypes and jams them into one character or episode. The result, although admittedly this is a strategy that passes many by, and hence risks backfiring on itself, is to make the process of stereotyping the target, rather than the people themselves. Certainly, while many Australians were offended by a Simpsons episode set in Australia, for instance, the episode’s key targets were American behavior overseas and smalltown American mindsets that view other countries in one-dimensional ways” (Gray 64).
