The Worst Simpsons Character

wtf i just asked my boss (massive simpsons fan) who his least favorite character is and he said APU

Dude

is yr boss south asian

I'm pretty sure Apu is what kept me from ever really loving the show. On paper, it should be my favourite show ever.

I don't think Apu's the worst by a longshot but there are some p clear issues w him as a character

NB I haven't watched with anything remotely resembling regularity since the 90s so it's possible that Apu has been written with the utmost wokeness since flappy was old enough to tune in.

sund4r, it's fr4z's birthday today btw. I feel he has to be on this thread in spirit

Why Apu is my pick for worst character: I adored him when I was a kid and felt empathy for him and his family, laughed at jokes he made and made at his expense, repeated these jokes to friends as a preteen and teenager, learned all the words to "Who Needs A Kwik-E-Mart?", not realizing that this character was completely racist from top to bottom, voiced by Hank Azaria, and the feeling of having participated in something that is with any distant perspective incredibly dehumanizing toward South Asians, and having felt now that I reenforced stereotypes about South Asians in the process of loving this character, it just makes me feel godawful and concerned that Apu as a whole might scuttle the entire series as being unwatchable in the future, in the same way that I've never been able to watch Breakfast At Tiffany's or Sixteen Candles

i don't think apu is necessarily written in a bad way, you could argue he's always depicted as a fairly sympathetic and admirable person (the show makes it clear that the shitty things about the kwik-e-mart are corporate policy, not him being lazy), and his religion is generally treated respectfully (at least in early episodes, i quit following it closely after season 11 or so). but in 2017 it's p hard to get around the fact of a non-white character being voiced by a white person in a deliberately stereotypical way. all the more sad + unsettling because the show doesn't do that with most (any?) of its other non-white characters.

How would you rehab apu (other than voice recasting)?

NB I haven't watched with anything remotely resembling regularity since the 90s so it's possible that Apu has been written with the utmost wokeness since flappy was old enough to tune in

his religion is generally treated respectfully (at least in early episodes, i quit following it closely after season 11 or so)

I feel like if anything there's a lot more lazy lol-India humour wrt Apu in the post-90s/crap-Simpsons era; not that it there wasn't any of that earlier in the show's run, but it got worse rather than better - I guess it's just the general trend across the board that the humour became cruder and meaner, the characters more broad? there's also lots of lol-elderly jokes about Grandpa in later episodes that feel crasser and nastier than anything from the early/mid 90s era - though possibly the earlier stuff was just as problematic and I'm more inclined to interpret it generously if it's funny, and the stuff from later seasons isn't? idk

Tbh, the main reference I remember to Apu's religion was when Homer tried to feed Ganesh a peanut. In the 'curry-flavoured Slushies' episode, I think? That said, I'm pretty sure I've said more vicious things about Hinduism in my day so.

in 2017 it's p hard to get around the fact of a non-white character being voiced by a white person in a deliberately stereotypical way.

Idk why this would have been more OK in 1990! Azaria himself on the origins of the character's voice.

Like, it wasn't ambiguous to me when I was 12.

but in 2017 it's p hard to get around the fact of a non-white character being voiced by a white person in a deliberately stereotypical way. all the more sad + unsettling because the show doesn't do that with most (any?) of its other non-white characters.

??

Dr Hibbert is voiced by Harry Shearer
Carl is voiced by Azaria.

Ive never heard anyone complain about it.

(which isnt to say no one has, obviously!)

which isn't to say it's not terrible, obviously

Well of course. I was just correcting the "the show doesn't do that with most (any?) of its other non-white characters" comment.

In actual fact none of the main cast as far as I can tell is non white, which is pretty surprising. Futurama has Phil Lamarr and Lauren Tom at least.

Main voice actor cast, that meant to say.

trayce i said "a deliberately stereotypical way" -- i don't think dr hibbert or carl are stereotypes at all. apu's voice is an over-the-top caricature, and it seems as if hank azaria was encouraged to make it as stereotypical as possible.

It is a very fine line that separates "stereotypical" from "racist". So fine it is hard to see with the naked eye.

In my childhood, being the only Indian-American in my class, I remember how humiliating it was when the class voted me "most likely to work at the Kwik-e-Mart" and other similar BS. Probably he should go if that kind of shit still happens to South Asian kids today (or the whole show, because who gives a shit anymore)

On the other hand, I can remember laughing my ass off with my family at some of the Apu episodes - we were happy to see any humor related to India represented on such a funny show. I didn't know or care that Hank Azaria was not Indian until I was an adult. Apu has given me so many laughs over the years that I've basically given a pass to the character. If a new show did a character like that now, I'd be rmde for sure

Always loved the fact that Apu was part of the Be Sharps.

Everybody should watch "the trouble with Apu".

Homers potato man ruse to get backstage at U2 gig also a low point

They're fucking dubs, not spudeating culchies. Do some basic fucking research.

the squishy flavor was chutney

Yaritza Burgeos is much much much worse than Apu. At least Apu has some back stories and can be seen as fully fleshed character, spanish speaking bumblebee man is really just a dumb running joke about the Spanish language in the US.

Was a bit surprised to see Bobby Jindal cited as a representational advance.

I think of Apu as a caricature that they could (barely) get away with in 1990, but which the show did its best to develop into a real character as it went on. Several episodes handle his relationship with Manjula with a certain amount of depth.

Weirdly I have no problem with bumblebee man, he is both a very specific media parody and a deliberately crass cartoony stereotype (I'd liken him to Italian Chef in terms of v broad "characters"), obv it's a knife edge but it's one they used to walk more surely before they were shit

Apu tho... it's precisely the fleshing out of the character that makes the tone-deaf portrayal seem so galling. There's no "it's the attitudes we're mocking" plausible deniability

almost every episode where the Simpsons go "abroad" is majorly fucked up in one way or another

Except Australia which is documentary

yeah their jokes about Canada are fine, I suspect some writers genuinely knew about Canada (culturally at least).

xp lmao wins

the scene in "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" where they're on the plane is hilarious, riding that incredibly offensive knife's edge:

"Come on, Homer. Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon."
"That's not how I remember it. Besides, if we wanted to see Japanese people we could've gone to the zoo."
"Homer!"
"What? The guy who washes the elephants is Japanese. His name is Takashi. He's in my book club!"

and then the stewardess telling Bart to turn off his GameBoy because it fucks with the plane, he turns it off, "you're the boss," the plane nosedives

...how on earth is that last part a racial issue? Unless you mean her accent when she shrieks "turn it back on!"

it's not i just thought it was funny

o ok fair enough! Yeah I love that episode, I know a lot of ppl dont.

also the super advanced toilet "i am honored to accept your waste"

lmao and Homer just walking through the paper doors in the hotel. sorry im watching the episode on yotube

"its loaded with wasabi!" was a phrase used in our house a lot at one point, Ive no idea why.

Lisa is amazing for those reasons. She acts as a proxy for the square audience member who comments critically on the absurdity of what's going on. She is a manifestation of the smug audience member who questions continuity. Without her this show would just be Family Guy

I had this post in the back of my mind when I watched last night's episode (I don't often watch new ones, but I've been under the weather and couch-bound all weekend, and it was on). It was about an adult Lisa reflecting back on three of her birthdays--so right away, they're combining three formats that they've often fallen back on in the lean years: flashback episode, future episode and three-story compilation. One of the segments is about Lisa discovering, on her fourteenth birthday, that Marge is planning to leave Homer (blah blah blah scheme to get them back together), and another is about Lisa's eighteenth birthday coinciding with her first day at Harvard, where she meets her freshman-year roommate (hints of a possible lesbian affair to come are dropped). There's a scene where Bart, now a twenty-year-old dirtbag scoring with Harvard girls wanting to piss off their fathers, tells Lisa that if anyone deserves to be at Harvard, it's her. I dunno. The episode wasn't funny, well-written, well-structured or inventive (they've officially run out of clever riffs on the post-Trump, technophile future), but stuff like this really gets to me these days. Despite the ever-fluid temporal setting, I really have come to see Homer/Marge, and Bart/Lisa, as generational avatars, with the former as boomers (read: my parents) and the latter as whatever the post-Gen X, pre-millennial designation is (read: me), and when the series makes even the sloppiest attempt (as this probably was) to suggest anything about the long-term durability of the relationships within this family, well, I guess that's something of a soft spot for me.

So yeah, weak episode, but I was damn near in tears by the end of it.

On the Apu character isn't racist side as well. I suppose these days you'd say it was great they put a fully-rounded immigrant character on TV.

spanish speaking bumblebee man is really just a dumb running joke about the Spanish language in the US.

I always felt there was an affectionate pastiche of Chespirito, whom this was based on:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/29/chespirito-comedian-dies-simpsons-mexico-bumblebee-man

(I watched "El Chavo" mostly, his work was pretty surreal but I'm willing to bet -- without spending a few hours watching this again -- that it captures a certain sorta vibe his work had)

On the Apu character isn't racist side as well. I suppose these days you'd say it was great they put a fully-rounded immigrant character on TV.

you are insane

It seems pretty shitty to dismiss the concerns of the stereotyped/offended group in these kinds of scenarios. I have distinct memories of my Indian/South Asian friends - who were also Simpsons fans - stating in no uncertain terms that Apu was a racist caricature in the mid-90s, and it's pretty clear that the character is built around an offensive stereotype, no matter how nuanced or developed the character came to be. He still has *that* voice and *that* job and *that* appearance. There are still jokes/storylines/gags centered around Apu that I think are great, but yeah at heart we're talking about a racist caricature voiced by a white person specifically for that purpose.

I wish someone would make a documentary or something so we don't have to have this stupid argument

the trailer for which prompted this thread revive

The trailer pretty much lays it all out! I don't understand how anyone can watch the whole trailer and still have more to say about this!