Ok I am exaggerating. And that was shameless click bait as a title. Having said that..
WHY make this decision /announcement, Hank? (I mean the decision to stop voicing the Indian Character, Apu, in The Simpsons; announced via fanfare to rival Harry and Megz..).
- The character has been there, on and off, for YEARS, right?. Did your morality change THAT much suddenly? Did everyone else’s?
- On various threads, funnily enough, I have seen objections to Hank’s decision from INDIANS!
- As in and I paraphrase rather than quote, directly..‘this helped me when I was a kid’; ‘Apu is not depicted negatively’ and ‘doing an accent is NOT racism!’. Common sense, in other words, from those who represent Apu’s real life cultural counterparts, no?
- Simpsons = SATIRE. Therefore, even if one DID take offence, even as the actor playing the role in question, it could have been rationalised as a send up OF racial caricatures? Post-modernism like that is a favoured weapon of the left / double standardised comedy. You cannot joke about being gay or disabled..but you CAN joke AROUND it..those awkward scenes where a David Brent /Alan Partridge (easily confused /swapped, btw)..happen upon an actual gay /disabled type (maybe even BOTH: Controversial!) and make some comment trying to be PC, only to end up being more insulting. That sort of thing, no? Apu is perfectly INNOCENT by contrast.
In any event? This is a show on its last legs. So it’s like jumping before the ship is retired / hits an iceberg. In short, an entirely empty gesture that arguably adds to our communication problems in the modern idiom, as much as reflecting those difficulties. It certainly does not help matters.
Well done, Hank.
