I've been ignoring the documentary for whatever reason, but I got around to seeing most of it yesterday. I got to the part where Hank Azaria says he might be able to meet, so if he does, I don't know. But I wanted to jot down my thoughts.
There's the bit where Hari is in a room full of brown people and asks them if they ever heard the line as part of childhood bullying and they all raise their hand gives me a really strange feeling. I can't really describe it; it's just a weird way of framing the experience to me. This almost seems like a minor thing going back, and I can't recall every really talking to someone about the experience of Apu, but here are a bunch of people who have had the same experience and are just matter-of-factly acknowledging it.
When Hari Kondabolu and Kal Penn are both talking about Apu in context of their enjoyment of The Simpsons, I think I fall more on Hari's side. It didn't ruin The Simpsons at all for me. I'm not one of the more dedicated fans, but I enjoy The Simpsons and I appreciate a good Simpsons reference now and again.
But Apu just ruins my appreciation of Apu. I probably wouldn't ever think of doing a documentary on him, but I don't think I ever found him funny, and all the attempts to humanize him by showing how he's just like any other American do nothing for me. He's tainted at such a fundamental level that I'm not even interested in seeing him developed, and I'm not able to appreciate Apu's episodes as much as if they were another character.
The discussion with Oprah about minstrelry is also strange to me. I never thought of Apu as equivalent to minstrelry before. Granted, I'm from Canada rather than the U.S. and I think I became aware of the existence of mistrelry pretty late, perhaps as a result. But even though Whoopi doesn't seem to be taking the conversation too seriously, I can't really deny the connection.
One similarity that I don't think was discussed was that the reliance on stock characters. Minstrel shows were largely based on this; you can classify characters based on which stock character they match up to. Apu is also similarly the Asian grocery store owner stock character. So even just on a clinical, academic level, I think the two are mechanically very similar. Apu is fundamentally derivative in nature; he just takes aspects of culture or representation of Indian people that the audience might be familiar with or have tested well in the past and reproduces them, because what was funny before can be funny again.
The other thing is that the Apu situation isn't new, and minstrelry demonstrates that, I think. Like Apu was for many their first or only exposure to Indian or South Asian people, blackface minstrelry spread beyond the slave states. Dixie was Abraham Lincoln's favourite song, if I recall. It wasn't just a southern tradition, it was a beloved American tradition. And since the free states didn't have black people, minstrelry was how they became exposed to them and their culture.
Not to say that racism or blackface are exclusively American, to be clear. But there was a particular genre of blackface theatre that was, as I understand it, America's first theatre traditional all of its own. And it went on to influence later media trends that were distinctly American, such as vaudeville, or the coon song that grew into ragtime. That's what I'm referring to here.
The example she brings up of the art of little German babies wanting to lick the black babies invokes the story of Yasuke, where the first black person brought to Japan meets the warlord Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga asks if he can wash Yasuke to see if he really is black, because he's totally unfamiliar with black people and doesn't really believe that one exists.
I feel like a good comparison to Apu is Will from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I've heard Will compared to as a minstrel figure, since we're supposed to laugh at his zany antics and his black culture, but they also humanize him throughout. But what makes that more genuine is that even within the show, Will isn't the only example of a black person, so you can't point at him as the only example of one. Will and Carlton can have a conversation about what it means to really be black; who could Apu have that conversation with without creating a new character to have it?
Apu is pretty lame, but I think the real issue isn't with the character himself, it's the environment he's built into. I don't think you could fix Apu without either building a whole environment around him in The Simpsons or building a whole environment around him in order media that shows non-stereotype characters. There's basically nothing you can do with Apu himself aside from just having him disappear silently, which doesn't really resolve anything, it would just be a way for The Simpsons to avoid the issue.
As an aside, when seeing Hank Azaria, I suddenly remembered that he plays Phoebe's nerdy researcher lost love from Friends. I sometimes leave that show on for background noise when I exercise, so I know and like that character. It's uncomfortable thinking that such a seemingly likable guy is the man behind the "thank you, come again" that I grew tired of before I left the playground.
When Dana Gould appears, there's a tenseness in his facial expression and the topics he brings up that feels a lot more serious and uncomfortable than any other conversation in the film. Everything else is pretty lighthearted and jocular. Seeing things like that so many times has make me wonder if there isn't a totally different experience that some people have with regards to the subjects of ethnicity and cultural identity.
I'm not white, so I can't say for sure, but I feel as though white people in North America often have a much weaker sense of their particular identity being their particular identity. It certainly isn't all of them; there are certain white ethnic groups who are very aware of how they are distinct. But the point is that we're comfortable with being part of a particular culture. There are a lot of mixed marriages in my family and one of my oldest friends who I spend the most time with is Afro-Caribbean, so we our cultural experiences often come up in conversation, how they're similar and how they differ.
As an bit of an aside, food's always a great opportunity to see these differences. There's a certain range of spiciness which is too mild for me to even detect, but is too hot for some white or East Asian people that I know to be able to handle. I've been asked to taste test for people with disasterous results.
The sense that I get is that mentioning to a white person that they're white is often much more shocking and uncomfortable than mentioning to me that I'm Indian would be, to the point that the former might get a reaction equivalent to an ethnic slur in some cases. Or, that when faced with the topic of ethnicity, they start approaching the situation like they're in a minefield. Like, "how do I survive this situation without looking like a racist".
To be clear, neither of these are sins in and of themselves. I don't think we should be going up to Dana Gould and trying to entrap them or anything, I don't think Hari's doing that here. You just want people to relax and approach the conversation honestly.
But for some people, I do think that ends up being too much to ask, and that's why Dana Gould bringing up Mr. Burns seems so passive aggressive. That's why Hank Azaria seems to be avoiding Hari. That little bit of tension that no one is really asking them to feel demands that you try to show some degree of sensitivity, and for some people, it's easier to try to shut down the conversation than to do that.
Which kind of leads to this topic. Again, I don't think I'd ever think to make a documentary about Apu myself. But it's one of the cases where the backlash is more disgusting to me than the original problem. At best, he's a still a pretty lazy stereotype character, who is often humanized through making him seem more like the American cast instead of through nuance of specificity in his own cultural experience. The thing that gets me is when you hide behind people enjoying it and it happening long enough to excuse the act, or when someone daring to question a show that you like is the limit of your sensitivity.
