Been catching up on episodes of Simpsons recently. Now I am a huge fan of the Simpsons but one thing that has always concerned me is the Apu character. I used to watch The Simpsons with my family and we all found it really funny, but there were some initial discomforts when it came to the Apu character (especially the early episodes when he was just a backround player). The question of whether this portrayal of an Indian storekeeper was racist kept poping up in my head. I don’t think this is true especially as the T.V series progressed, the character has matured into something that mocks peoples perceptions of him (as and Indian) and although it is still stereotypical, it is no more so then the portrayal of dozens of other characters on the show (Krusty’s rabbi dad?).
However this leads me on to the question of asian charaters on TV in general. UK TV is very bad at portraying Indian or ethnic characters. The main reason for this, is because writers are lazy and prefer the character’s ethnicity to be the main plot thread of the character and one this runs out (as it always does) you are left with a pretty vacuous character (Just watch any episode of Eastenders with their ‘Asian Family’). Compare this to US TV shows, now I am not saying that they ‘understand’ ethnic minorities and that all their portrayals are note perfect, but take for example ‘Mohinder Suresh’ of Heroes fame. Now he is clearly from India and the actor plays his role with a slight indian accent (shame on you), however his ethnicity is not a major plot element (so far), in fact it has nothing to do with moving the show forwards plot wise and it is to all intents superfluous. Not only that but generally all the ethnic minorities on the show are their to push the plot forward and not their make some point on race relations. Now I think this is brilliant because it in a way does make a point about race relations (i.e. they have the same fucked up problems as everyone else on ‘planet Heroes’) ..I think it has a lot to do with the writing, US TV show writers are currently just on a different level compared to UK writers.
. I bet the whole thing is one big conspiracy aiming to hypnotise men with their booty shaking and the use of a high frequency voice being played over the track, that only men can hear, saying “You must respect women…You must respect women”…what else would be the point of this video?
