It honestly angers me that people are getting so bent out of shape about that. Like Hank is being a good dude and realizing how disingenuous Apu can be but people just refuse to accept it. It’s ridiculous.
Well its also meaningless if there's no action from the show. He had a good statement and good ideas about how to handle this from a writing and voicing perspective, but he also said that he hopes the show does it, he's not using his considerable power to make these changes happen, just making a good suggestion and leaving it to the powers that be, the same powers that made Lisa spout some bullshit a few weeks ago. So I mean good on him but I totally understand being critical of the situation still.
I’d also say 6 but 7 has Stop the Planet of the Apes I want to get off and Smashing Pumpkins so it’s difficult
I'm watching the episodes where milhouse parents divorce and they're arguing at the Simpson's house...and to try relieve the tension Marge yells for Lisa to sing and she pops out singing grand old flag...and she does instantly Dead
I was listening to Entertainment Weekly radio yesterday afternoon, and the host was supposed to interview Hank about another project. His manager said he couldn't ask him any questions about Apu because Hank felt like he addressed it enough the night before. So the radio host declined the interview, because he thought Hank would at least want to keep the conversation going. Thought that was interesting.
Hey, as long as we're still talking about this, I think there's another problematic character on the show: Ralph Wiggum. I mean, is anyone else bothered by the fact that he's basically the "slow" kid played for laughs? Has anyone even NOTICED that? Like, there's a season nine episode literally makes a joke about him having special needs. I hope that shit also gets addressed in the near future
I guess if Groening is able to be proud of the past 18 or so years of the show and not admit any dip in quality/tolerability, it doesn't surprise me to hear his take on the Apu controversy. But still that really sucks. The people running this show just keep bumming me out.
Whether he's right or wrong, there are tons of bad stereotypes on the show that would need to be addressed if they're going to with Apu.
Have those of you trying to make some sort of “slippery slope” argument actually watched The Problem with Apu? Hari says very plainly throughout it that, while everyone is made fun of and stereotyped on the show, the reason he has such a bone to pick with Apu is because at the time when Apu was introduced there were no good, positive, non-stereotypical representations of Indian Americans in our culture. Apu immediately became the single representation of their identity in popular culture, and lots of people faced lots of verbal abuse and mockery and bullying because of the stereotypes that Apu pushed far and wide into our culture at that time. So, no, the creators don’t have to make every single character non-offensive. This is just one group of people asking specifically and logically for one character’s very problematic history to be addressed.
To an extent, but I will say I've never heard anyone refer to a Scot as Groundskeeper Willie before. I have often heard brown people, regardless of nationality, referred to as Apu. There's a racial component to Apu that isn't as present in a lot of the other stereotypes