Television Who needs the Qwik-E-Mart?

[Jason]

'The Simpsons' reportedly dropping Apu amid debate over character

 

 

[RedSoxFan9]

 

Not the best way to sweep this under the rug

[Brick]

Shame this is how they're going to deal with the character, but it's understandable. 

[ALIEN-gunner]

They want to drop him because he's a stereotype? The whole fucking show is one big stereotype! 

[SimpleG]

16 minutes ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

They want to drop him because he's a stereotype? The whole fucking show is one big stereotype! 

 

[HGLatinBoy]

FUCK WHOEVER IS FOR THIS. This show is meant to be  joke and stereotype of everyone. 

[CitizenVectron]

45 minutes ago, HGLatinBoy said:

FUCK WHOEVER IS FOR THIS. This show is meant to be  joke and stereotype of everyone. 

 

Getting rid of him was the wrong move...because the correct move was to remove the stereotype and just treat him like a normal human being who happens to be Indian. It used to be okay to have people walk around and spout off stereotypical ethnic/cultural lines, but it's not anymore, and for good reason.

[Spork3245]

14 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Getting rid of him was the wrong move...because the correct move was to remove the stereotype and just treat him like a normal human being who happens to be Indian. It used to be okay to have people walk around and spout off stereotypical ethnic/cultural lines, but it's not anymore, and for good reason.

 

TBF, Apu’s “stereotypical line” for Indians originated from Apu, didn’t it?

[Keyser_Soze]

It only took them 30 years to get rid of this highly offensive character.

[CitizenVectron]

15 minutes ago, BlueAngel said:

Political correctness at it's finest... smdh...

 

Do you agree that having offensive stereotypes is okay? What if Apu was a crooked-nosed Jew whose catchphrase was "my precious sheckles!"? 

[Jason]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Getting rid of him was the wrong move...because the correct move was to remove the stereotype and just treat him like a normal human being who happens to be Indian. It used to be okay to have people walk around and spout off stereotypical ethnic/cultural lines, but it's not anymore, and for good reason.

 

Apu is voiced by Hank Azaria, so other than maybe switching to having Apu voiced by an Indian voice actor I'm not sure what would have satisfied people. They would have still been unhappy about his being voiced by a white guy.

[DarkStar189]

I haven't watched The Simpsons for quite some time now so my opinion is probably worthless. Just dropping the character all together seems like a quick and lazy end to such a well recognized TV character. They could just have him retire from the Kwik-E-Mart and make him a "normal" person. But I guess he wouldn't serve much of a purpose to the show then. 

[Scott]

46 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Do you agree that having offensive stereotypes is okay? What if Apu was a crooked-nosed Jew whose catchphrase was "my precious sheckles!"? 

Do you think that your example is anywhere comparable in tone to the character of Apu?

 

I get that we're trying to morph into a more culturally sensitive society, but good lord, we're going to sanitize ourselves to death.

 

Somehow we all survived shows like All in the Family and Married with Children. Are we really so stupid that we can't recognize prejudiced behavior without adopting the behavior? Is it our goal to make sure that we are never exposed to this stuff ever, anywhere, for fear that a sizable portion of the population will instantly adopt the behavior on display?

[Keyser_Soze]

41 minutes ago, DarkStar189 said:

I haven't watched The Simpsons for quite some time now so my opinion is probably worthless. Just dropping the character all together seems like a quick and lazy end to such a well recognized TV character. They could just have him retire from the Kwik-E-Mart and make him a "normal" person. But I guess he wouldn't serve much of a purpose to the show then. 

 

Maybe they'll give him a sendoff. Remember when the voice actor for Maud died, they just killed her off on the show.

[EternallDarkness]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Do you agree that having offensive stereotypes is okay? What if Apu was a crooked-nosed Jew whose catchphrase was "my precious sheckles!"? 

 

Mort from Family Guy says hi 

[Hurdyb1]

Not happy about this but I get it. I do think something could have been done to educate people on the idea of the stereotype while preserving the character. 

[Brick]

I think we all need to seek out the movie "The Problem with Apu" and watch it.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

2 hours ago, Scott said:

Are we really so stupid that we can't recognize prejudiced behavior without adopting the behavior? Is it our goal to make sure that we are never exposed to this stuff ever, anywhere, for fear that a sizable portion of the population will instantly adopt the behavior on display?

(gazes across the Potomac River towards the White House)

 

Yes and yes.

[Spork3245]

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Maybe they'll give him a sendoff. Remember when the voice actor for Maud died, they just killed her off on the show.

 

The VA for Maud didn’t die, the VA moved away and at the time they didn’t have the tech to do her recordings (at quality) remotely. She asked for a raise to justify traveling but they decided to just kill her off instead.

Anyway, you may have been thinking of Mrs. Krabappel.

[Keyser_Soze]

11 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Anyway, you may have been thinking of Mrs. Krabappel.

 

Yeah probably. In any case, you can get rid of a cartoon character pretty easily.

[HGLatinBoy]

Why can't they make apu hit the lotto and magically transform into a normal Indian American, I'd rather him be a normal indian dude than be  a stereotype but also not disappear entirely.

 

BUT LETS BE REAL NO ONE HERE WATCHES OR CARES ABOUT THE SIMPSONS ANYMORE

 

[ALIEN-gunner]

Apu was stereotypical because he's based on real characteristics just like the idiot Homer everyman and the super rich evil guy Mr. Burns etc. His antics were funny not offensive, not really. He was a smart guy and had a heart just like pretty much everyone else on that show who are also equally stereotypical.  If he gets axed because some dipshit out there claims to be offended then the creaters are caving into fakery. 30 years go by and suddently someone's offended yeah right. Fine axe him but then who's next? And then what's the end goal because social justice warriors are never satisfied. Give and inch they take a mile. They only look for ways to be offended by something. Soon everytyhing will be sanitized to the point where even that will offend someone. It's ludicrous. Thanksfully though some companies are getting smart and seeing that when you pander to the always offended crowd you lose money because these people aren't customers they're only complainers. 

[darkness35]

And you're assuming that it's all because of the SJWs, not because of PR issues that would otherwise affect viewership, or perhaps that the show is a decrepit relic of something that should have ended long ago? Every narrow-minded autistic post you've made in the past was something, but ever since you becoming such a chud it's really magnificent  how you still continue to exhibit such pathetic behavior.

[darkness35]

3 hours ago, Hurdyb1 said:

Not happy about this but I get it. I do think something could have been done to educate people on the idea of the stereotype while preserving the character. 

It was certainly a missed opportunity.  Though, how the show is going to replace Qwik-E Mart is another story... no less with another stereotype.

[Jason]

_echoecho^echo

[darkness35]

Oh fuck my Chinese ass

[number305]

So there is an Indian family that owns a small convenience store in my city... should I be picketing them for being a stereotype? 

[SaysWho?]

@Jason I give you grief sometimes, but not here: this is one of your best thread titles.

 

For this, I'm pretty sensitive to offensive stereotypes, but the reason Apu didn't bother me was because he was a fun character. When they had the immigrant referendum episode, the good guys were fighting for him. I wish they could have kept him in some form.

[ort]

I mean, as (what i'm assuming) a bunch of white males, it's easy enough for us to say this annoys us.

 

Before the recent controversy I honestly had never really thought about Apu being offensive at all... but I watched the documentary "The Problem With Apu". It does a very good job of explaining exactly why many Indian Americans find the character to be troublesome.

[number305]

Here is a fun game.  Name one (recurring non real person) character from the show that isn't a stereotype.  

[ort]

I might care about this more if I had watched a single new episode of the Simpsons in the last decade.

[Greatoneshere]

Wow, a lot of ignorant posts (and some good ones!) in this thread.

 

Apu is offensive, and comparing him to other "stereotypes" on the show is not analagous because many of the other stereotypes are not a minority and the bigger issue everyone seems to be ignoring isn't that there aren't real life Indian Americans who have thick accents, it's that Apu is voiced by a white guy doing an aggressive Indian-accented English.

 

This is the equivalent of a white dude putting on black face. I would have had no problem if they just replaced Azaria with an Indian American voice actor, and then phase out the accent. It's strange to me that people think the issue is that the Simpsons have a stereotyped minority character rather than the fact it's a white guy voicing him. That's the bigger problem.  I'm not a fan of censoring humor but there are red lines and this is one of them. Indian Americans don't like Apu, and we should defer to them on this issue. Do all Indian Americans have a problem with him? No, but enough do that what's the harm in being more culturally sensitive for them?

[ort]

If you watch the documentary, they go over the origin of the character. To sum up...

 

In one of the early table reads, there was a convenience store clerk who had to deliver a few lines that in no way were jokes or meant to be funny in any way. In the script, it specifically said NOT INDIAN. So when they were doing the read, Hank Azeria just read the non-joke lines in the thickest most ridiculously over-the-top indian accent he could muster and the room full of white people all cracked up. That's how Apu was born.

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, number305 said:

Here is a fun game.  Name one (recurring non real person) character from the show that isn't a stereotype.  

 

Lenny? 

 

48 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Wow, a lot of ignorant posts (and some good ones!) in this thread.

 

Apu is offensive, and comparing him to other "stereotypes" on the show is not analagous because many of the other stereotypes are not a minority and the bigger issue everyone seems to be ignoring isn't that there aren't real life Indian Americans who have thick accents, it's that Apu is voiced by a white guy doing an aggressive Indian-accented English.

 

This is the equivalent of a white dude putting on black face. I would have had no problem if they just replaced Azaria with an Indian American voice actor, and then phase out the accent. It's strange to me that people think the issue is that the Simpsons have a stereotyped minority character rather than the fact it's a white guy voicing him. That's the bigger problem.  I'm not a fan of censoring humor but there are red lines and this is one of them. Indian Americans don't like Apu, and we should defer to them on this issue. Do all Indian Americans have a problem with him? No, but enough do that what's the harm in being more culturally sensitive for them?

 

Aziz Ansari should be Apu’s VA.

 

[Spork3245]

This or changing the VA of the character is likely the right move, but, as I haven’t watched the Netflix doc, I just want to clarify: it’s the white VA using the accent that is the main problem/issue, correct? Would this really be solved by an Indian-American doing the accent instead?

Not the same at all, obviously, but, I remember seeing a “behind the scenes” with The Daily Show awhile back with Ronny Chieng. Ronny has a very thick Chinese accent and was talking about how he has been attacked by people on the internet for it with things like “I get you’re a Chinese immigrant, but do you have to do that over-the-top accent? It’s really offensive” and in the interview/video, Ronny’s response to everyone is “I’M NOT DOING AN ACCENT! THIS IS REALLY HOW I TALK!”.