“Thank you, don’t come again.” Hank Azaria, the voice behind many classic Simpsons characters, has decided that now may be the time to move on from his time playing everyone’s favorite Kwik-E-Mart owner, Apu.
Appearing on the The Late Show Tuesday night, Azaria spoke with Stephen Colbert about coming to terms with the fact that his portrayal of the Indian stereotype might not be attuned to the current standards of political correctness. Apparently the topic of Apu’s insensitive stereotype has become a national conversation, ever since the 2017 debut of comedian Hari Kondabolu’s webdoc, “The Problem with Apu.”
Huffington Post reported that the documentary “shone a light on how Apu’s characterization propagated racial stereotypes about South Asians living in America.” Of course, since 2018 is ground zero for radical diversity and forced inclusion, Azaria backed down from a character he had played for almost 30 years, claiming that his “eyes have been opened.”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought, really a lot of thought, and as I say my eyes have been opened.” he told Colbert. “And I think the most important thing is we have to listen to South Asian people, Indian people in this country… and how they think about this character.”
For Azaria, that included the prospect of giving someone with a more authentic Indian experience control over the character. Addressing Colbert, he stated, “As you know in television terms, listening to voices means inclusion in the writer’s room. I really wanna see Indian, South Asian writer or writers in the room -- not in a token way, but genuinely informing whatever new direction this character may take.”
“Including,” he added, “how it is voiced or not voiced. You know, I’m perfectly willing to step aside or help transition it into something new.” He mentioned that he hoped the Simpsons team would take such a progressive route.
Good for the Simpsons. It’s amazing that a show, relying on almost all of it’s characters being cartoonish stereotypes, can make such sacrifices to its formula for the sake of PC. Still, I bet there’s hardly going to be any backlash against the white, Christian fundamentalist stereotype found in Ned Flanders. The left hates Christian fundamentalists, so they probably won’t ever bring him up.
The difference here is that normal, decent Americans won’t complain about the bumbling zealot that Flanders is, or really bat their eyes over Apu, because they can take a joke. The left can’t. In the end, they send out the PC police to censor anything they don’t like, and you get sensitive types like Azaria, groveling to save their jobs. But it’s Hollywood. What else is new?
