The Guardian Hari Kondabolu Thank You Come Again

In The Problem With Apu, S Asian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu confronts his long-standing "nemesis" Apu Nahasapeemapetilon – better known as the Indian convenience store possessor on The Simpsons. Creator and star Kondabolu discusses how this controversial caricature was created, burrowed its way into the hearts and minds of Americans, and continues to exist – intact – nearly three decades afterward. Featuring interviews with Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn, Whoopi Goldberg, W. Kamau Bell, Aasif Mandvi, Hasan Minhaj, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aparna Nancherla

The Problem With Apu highlights troubles that ail the 'audible minority'

Information technology's a huge relief to see the inherent racism of Apu'southward accent being tackled at last. Accents are the less explored borderland of bigotry. I fifty-fifty have a term for people like me — the audible minority, writes Shree Paradkar

Shree Paradkar Columnist

Fri., Nov. 24, 2017 iv min. read

Article was updated Apr. 13, 2018

Kondabolu. Exactly the kind of name someone wanting to mimic an Indian accent would honey to use.

Throw in a caput stir — neither a nod nor a milkshake — a sing-song lilt and hahaha, everyone's in splits.

Information technology gets monotonous afterward a while. Having to smile at the next white guy who thinks he'southward entertaining you while not sounding anything like whatsoever Indian you lot know.

And so I find it deeply, intrinsically satisfying that the comedian named Hari Kondabolu has the final laugh on the funny-not-funny but much beloved The Simpsons character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, with his documentary The Trouble With Apu. Apu's accent, he says, using a line from an older riff, sounds similar "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my male parent."

What is that, you say? Every character is caricaturized on the Simpsons?

Trouble is, unlike those other characters, Apu cemented the just dimension through which to represent Indians in whitestream media.

Oh lighten up. Like Kondabolu, I, too, enjoy The Simpsons. Similar many Indians and people of Indian origin, I constitute Apu hilarious for a long time. You laugh along when you call up everyone'south laughing with y'all.

Over time you realize the joke'southward on y'all.

Also many phone interviews for jobs suddenly lapsing into awkward silences afterward the showtime commutation of pleasantries force y'all to run into things differently.

A more pointed example occurred at a workplace later on I made a self-deprecating comment most my accent. A white woman began saying, "Pardon?" in a patronizing fashion every time I spoke. Fortunately she was impaired enough to be overly blatant virtually it. That she weaponized my emphasis was illuminating.

Racism is usually talked about in optical terms, based on the visibility of "otherness." Accents are the less explored stumbling blocks to employment, promotion and social mobility.

I accept even coined a term for people similar me — the audible minority.

I apply it for "not-native" accents of English that, different British and settler colony accents, are assigned a lower social value.

My feel is backed by data. American researchers conducted ii experiments to evaluate the glass-ceiling bias against non-native English speakers, in a written report published in the Periodical of Practical Psychology in 2013. In i experiment they asked graduate and undergraduate students to valuate candidates of like age, attractiveness, educational activity and work backgrounds for a middle-management position. Native speakers were 16 per cent likelier to exist recommended for the job.

"Wanting to avoid possible bias in established companies, many skilled immigrants turn to entrepreneurship," the authors wrote in the Harvard Business organisation Review. "Therefore, our second report focused on new-venture funding." Hither besides, they found speakers with American accents were 23 per cent likelier to have received funding.

Over in Europe, a recent paper concluded that Dutch students at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences did not accept seriously lecturers from an Indonesia university who spoke with an emphasis.

"Emphasis is used equally a point that the speaker is function of an out-group and statements made by a speaker with a heavy accent are perceived every bit less true," the researcher writes.

Both recommend raising sensation of emphasis bias as the first pace to mitigating it.

The Problem With Apu shows that with Indian accents, that bias is out in the open.

"At that place are accents that past their nature, to white Americans, sound funny. Menses." The Simpsons executive producer Dana Gould says in the documentary.

In a 2007 radio interview, Hank Azaria regaled the host with a story from the writers' room: "Right away they were similar 'Can you practice an Indian accent and how offensive can you make information technology?' …"I was like, 'It's non tremendously accurate. It's a little, uh, stereotype,' and they were like, 'Eh, that'due south all right.'"

Hank Azaria of Simpsons' fame reveals the origins of Apu alive on a cool paltalk show. HILARIOUS version of Apu singing Beatles song.

Even Apu's last name is an Anglo-axial riff on long South Indian surnames. Some 28 years agone, when Apu first appeared, diasporic Indians were relieved to be acknowledged on their tv screens.

After years of beingness remembered, if at all, by Peter Seller'south "Baboon num num" in the 1968 moving picture The Party, Azaria'due south Emmy-winning voiceover saying "Come again, cheers" still represented modify: being a crafty convenience shop owner in an arranged marriage, with 8 kids was still a giant leap from the black-magic-practising, monkey-brain eating Indian dude reveling amid grinding animalistic poverty in Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom.

But that characterization of Apu, in which his accent was the chief trait, never evolved.

So 2012 rolled forth and at that place was Ashton Kutcher in brownface, playing "Raj the Bollywood producer" who was "created to provoke a few laughs," the makers of PopChips said.

Directed by: Aristotle Athiras

Earlier this yr, the actor Kal Penn whipped out a few old audition scripts he got " Jeez I think this ane!" he said in a tweet. "They were awful. "Tin you brand his accent a little more AUTHENTIC?" That usually meant they wanted Apu"

In Main of None, Aziz Ansari has a whole episode on auditioning for a role, where he is told to pretend to have an Indian emphasis for the part of "Unnamed cab commuter."

The resistance is finally finding voices.

"The response to 9/xi has created a generation of highly politicized southward-Asian Americans who are pushing dorsum against the model-minority characterization and finding new commonality with black America," wrote Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian in May.

In the documentary, Kondabolu places Apu in the legacy of minstrelsy. The flick came near after a 2-infinitesimal segment Kondabolu wrote on a Television set show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, went viral. Bong, who is Black, talked Kondabolu into writing nearly the lack of Indian characters on TV.

Kondabolu taking on a beloved icon, the emergence of Penn and Ansari and Mindy Kaling and Hasan Minhaj – one-act might simply turn out to be the best antidote to mockery.

Shree Paradkar writes about discrimination and identity. You can follow her @shreeparadkar

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Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2017/11/24/the-problem-with-apu-highlights-troubles-that-ail-the-audible-minority.html