Why is it Perfectly Acceptable to Mock Asians on US Television?

Babu.

OTM!

"...the sound wasn't on, but I think I got the gist of it"

Simpsons: Apu, regularly, over the years (I have found all of these hilarious tho, except anything to do with his kids which I haven't seen so can't comment) - plus the scene at Two Guys From Kabul still rox ("Sometimes I think you WANT us to fail!")

South Park: Pretty merciless and deliberate, the Pokemon thing (Japanese envy complex over 'the American penis' etc. - all JABOF of course, but still a little uncomfortable at times) springs to mind

King Of The Hill - the neighbour is an arrogant asshat with an annoying voice - but WHY?

Family Guy: see above

Futurama: Amy's parents

the notable exception to this was Harold & Kumar, which did a great thing in that it both put ethnic stereotypes on the screen(e.g. the korean college students, the indian doctors) and went about taking them down(the titular heroes).

yeah, i was gunna mention that, since i think that the jewish guys were obviously(to me) put there coz the writers wanted avatars of themselves(jewish potheads) in their own movie, and thought it'd be funny to put stereotypes of themselves in a movie about stereotypes.

but this is not just with animated shows by any means; they're pretty much the go-to ethnic group for any lazy screenwriter who needs a clueless/harmless/asexual foreigner.

http://www.ntut.edu.tw/~s2370053/ICHIRO%20%20SUZUKI-4.JPG

I dunno .. but I DO remember Hank's line when everyone accused him of being racist... "No, I hate him because he's a jerk. What kind of a country is this where you can only hate a man if he's white?"

2 xposts

The idea is basically that Hollywood has a shapeshifting stock character, the "magic negro" who, though benign, is 2-dimensional and exists only to help the white character achieve love/spiritual harmony/realizations about their lives, etc. An oft-cited example is Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost.

The critic I heard on NPR describing this (who might have been the one who coined it) said that the main objectionable thing is the two-dimensionality and, in a sense, the servitude. The black character is just a stepping-stone for the white character. And this critic said that this was his most important criteria for racism in a movie, not whether there are any "ethnic stereotypes" but whether the character is a fully realized human being.

The only people you can't mock on tv seems to be psychiatrists.

hmm, try this in practice. should this criterion be restricted to just the principal characters? what exactly is a 'fully rounded human being', in concrete, nonsubjective terms? the magic of movies is they can create out of light and chemicals 'fully-rounded characters' to be sure, but achiveing that is a) very difficult b) not necessarily the be-all and end-all. people watch plenty of films in which not even the leads are fully-rounded humans -- star wars, fer example.

Steve is implying that by listing King Of The Hill, The Simpsons and Futurama as shows that trade on Asian stereotypes. Listing Futurama really baffles me because if Amy's parents fit any type of BEHAVIORAL stereotype, it's the WASPy old-money blueblood stereotype; you'd only call them Asian stereotypes because they have accents.

The only example that sprang to mind was their alarming eagerness to see her bear children and frequent comments re this, tho both this and the general disapproving tone with which they spoke of and to her transcends ethnicites/cultures granted.

I think I agree with 3 re Kahn in KOTH. It's taking things a step further just to say 'we need to be able to portray a character as a jerk regardless of his ethnicity, his ethnicity being a trivial detail'.

Likewise, there's nothing wrong with having an Indian convenience store owner, as long as his sole purpose in the movie isn't to talk funny. In H&K, it's actually rather poignant that the convenience store guy is portrayed as someone who gets hassled and picked on, since Hollywood tends to do just that to Indian convenience store owner characters.

I loved the South Park episode where Chef was protesting about the town's flag (it's motif white figures surrounding a hanged black figure), angry that the kids didn't see the problem (oh but you see it was because they saw the colour contrast as as purely statistical - but once a few of the white figures were changed to black it was all okay). it may seem a bit hammy and certainly warped but i wouldn't say retarded (considering what usually happens in that show).

Well, if I watched a recent episode of KOTH and a recent episode of The Simpsons, I personally would be highly likely to find the former funnier (tho that's tied to a sense of it being 'smarter' too I suppose).

OTM. This is like every Morgan Freeman supporting role ever. And don't forget the cousin of the Magic Negro, the Witty Gay (the Magic Negro usually helps men, whereas the Witty Gay is there for the women). What's similar about these characters is that they may help the protagonist to find love, but they never find love themselves. I think both of these are created by well-meaning writers/directors/producers who want to battle negative sterotypes, but don't realize that a positive sterotype is still a stereotype. Or maybe they do, but they fear that making these characters three-dimensional will raise accusations of racism/homophobia.

Er, that wasn't how it happened. They put a big smiley face on the hanged black man, colored the while people rainbow colors and had all the figures on the flag hold hands (including the hanged man). The didn't actually change the offensive subtext of the flag (ie, the celebration of the lynching of black people).

Sociah, South Asian more or less equals Indian.

And the seeming moral of the story is that it's a damn good thing Will Smith was "prejudiced" against Robots, because it turns out Robots want to kill you and ravage your women with their giant Robot dicks! Except for that one robot, who acted like "one of us".

It was kind of brilliant.

Which is exactly what you often see with Jews in movies -- doing too well (fast-talking hollywood moguls, unscrupulous lawyers, irritating Jappy wives who shop all the time, etc.) Which is why there's not really such a thing as a benevolent stereotype, because when you're doing too well, they don't trust you.

yes, theyre indian and theyre offended because apu is just a bit of a complete idiot really, for people to laugh at, rather then with, i think. hes a bit of a bumbling, idiotic, nincompoop (wrong spelling?) without any sort of backbone or integrity. hes just an archetypal stereotype, the submissive indian shopkeeper.

lots of (white) people dont think anything of this sort of thing though, they dont get why its offensive (the south park guys et al). ive had friends say to me 'but its a joke!' it might be, butit doesnt make it any less racist. there was a good discussion of racist jokes/humour a while back on ilx i think, but i cant remember what thread it was.

Please offer examples of how/why Apu is unacceptable/caused offence because I find it a bit ridiculous to be honest (at least before he ended up being saddled with octuplets, though the perception of that as mockery based on racial stereotype IS rather shaky (but still read by some).

(I guess you could make a point that Apu is an idiot because he takes advice from Homer but that's a characteristc shared by pretty much everyone on the show at one point or another.)

I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, because "South Asia" also includes Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

I don't think this is really true. He employed Homer briefly in quite an early episode and the contrast between his steadfast efficiency, dignity and general nous and Homer's hapless ass was all too apparent. That's just one of dozens of examples where Apu has held his own in the show. Of course he is a stereotype (they did beg him to join THAT bowling team after all) but that in itself is not necess. a bad thing - it's what is done with the stereotype that matters and I think how they've treated him has been more a reflection of affection without any sinister undercurrent. I don't think that's naivety on my part either.

I'm sure you meant "he started out as a stereotype" there because what you've written pretty much implies that every minority character on television, regardless of how they're written, is a stereotype.

My point exactly. I was trying to establish if fizzle's friends had reason to take personal offence or not. I just hate that 'oh my friends who are the same ethnicity/culture say it's offensive so it MUST be thing'.

OH NOES AN IMPERIALIST MENTALITY IN A MOVIE ABOUT THE BEGINNINGS OF AN EMPIRE RELEASE TEH HOUNFS

I just hate that 'oh my friends who are the same ethnicity/culture say it's offensive so it MUST be thing'.

Yes, because it implies that minorities are noble paragons of immense wisdom and intelligence whose quaint, mystic ways are beacons of light in the mundane darkness that is white Western culture. NEWSFLASH: BROWN PEOPLE CAN BE STUPID, TOO.

Those jokes don't work unless the character in question isn't actually a stereotype. And I don't think you can thin the meaning of the word out to remove the preconceived notions that go along with it.

That was totally at fizzle! I was agreeing with you!

xpost - whew!

yeah, that's a key thing. One of the things that popped up in a film class i had was an essay put out a while ago about how it was really simplistic to accuse any film that had a racial stereotype as being racist just for that. The example given was Hattie McDaniel's "Mammy," as both a racial stereotype(subservient but sassy black housekeeper/slave) and what Hattie McD actually did with it.

but then you start wading into far deeper waters at that point when things get the point of discussing all race in all film. It's the kinda thing that term-long film/cultural studies classes are based on.

i dont watch the simpsons, but the times i have seen apu, he seems a bit gutless, like many indian/south asian characters on TV. im asian, and im personally tired of seeing it. i think fizzle was using 'south asian' as a catch-all for people from the indian sub continent.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here but I thought it was common knowledge that a) The Simpsons is very proud of it's oft subtle (tho often not at all) fun-poking at stereotypes and b) that Apu was thought of as one of them both by the writers and the audience, but in a way that genuinely was deemed to be acceptable (to a 'universal' audience? i'd like to think so but perhaps not). This means I laugh at and enjoy the nature of his accent and the way he says things (and what he says) more in a celebratory way rather than a mocking way.

I think I disagree re thinning out because though the connotations ARE often there, 'Asian shopkeeper' seems like Stereotype Level 1 (whatever else you associate with that be it positive or negative constituting Level 2).

The episode where Apu tries to gain citizenship is utterly brilliant and at no point does it, I think, undermine or treat the culture that Apu came from in a negative light. Likewise the episode where Apu and Homer travel to India to ask the President of the Kwik-E-Mart corporation to give Apu his job back is just gloriously silly - I can't believe anyone would find anything that offensive or truly racist in it.

hahaha this shall be my new "OH NOES"

xpost:

note that Apu is/was occasionaly shown to be far more educated than the majority of Springfield(the flashback ep where he helps out a young Prof Frink on their punchcard supercomputer).

he also had a bitchin' 1976 Pontiac Firebird, tho i don't know if he still does. If they haven't yet, i'm surprised the writers haven't gotten a subplot out of Apu trading that in for an extended van/schoolbus.

wait, was it a Firebird or a Trans-Am? he pretty much had the Smokey & the Bandit car, only colored orange(yet still had the t-top).

I should point out that this also applies to Groundskeeper Willy, Cleetus, the Australians in 'Bart vs Australia' and pretty much all the stereotype side characters.

Although at the end of the day I still stand by my "Do people watch these shows before criticizing them?" post, particularly since blahbarian responded with "Well I don't watch the show but IT'S RACIST!"

Saying that Apu is a stereotype means that all of the character development and the various storylines they've done with him are absolutely meaningless and all he is is the Indian guy who runs the convienve store, end of story. The fact that they've gone beyond that and given him a viable, believable personality and back story take him out of the realm of being a stereotype and make him a fully-realized character.

People are offended by Apu because they watch three seconds of the show and see a man with an Indian accent behind a store counter and run away with their panties in a bunch without seeing how he fits into the context of the rest of the show. (Or, in simpler terms, people get offended by Apu because they're conditioned to see every representation of their minority group as pandering and offensive due to the fucking horrible track record of the American entertainment industry, so any character that goes beyond the narrow parameters has to go through the misguided "BURN THE RACIST DEPICTION WITH GUNS" phase first.)

Unless I get an example of how Apu is "gutless" I'm going to have to presume you're projecting because I can't think of a single thing he's done that could be construed that way.

OK, NO, HE'S NOT FUNNY.

im trying not to say it was racist as the race card seems to get wheeled out a little too keenly. but fine, yeah, its racist.

apu seems to voice no objection in any of the episodes where people take the piss out of his religion or culture. thats why i think hes gutless.

This is absolute horse-shit. I could provide more than one example and you still haven't presented any.

Huh?? Did that post come through a time warp, straight from the sixties?

WHY DO ASIANS LIKE WATERMELON? MY STEREOTYPES ARE WROOOOOONG

MORE ASIANS WITH WATERMELON

"Chinese Laundry-Owner Criticized by ACLU for Upholding Racist Stereotypes"

Like that, but funnier. Apu is hilarious and NOT one-dimensional. I agree with Hank on KOTH. Dan Perry is correct. Etc.

OTM!

wow, I was totally about to say this again. seriously, remember the bachelor auction where he's the only good man in springfield?

...but let's try anyway!"

http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/chamber/61613

CHINESE ADMIT: 'WE CAN'T TELL EACH OTHER APART, EITHER!'

By ANGUS FENWICK

DESPITE centuries of accusing Caucasians of racism for claiming they can't tell Chinese people apart, the Chinese admitted today that they, too, have trouble distinguishing each other.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, 54, stated, "The problem has grown to epic proportions. It's hurting us in business, in culture, and in our personal lives. The truth is that we all look very much alike."

The president of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation was recently interviewed for an hour on China's most prestigious talk show before it was discovered that the "president" was actually a Shanghai fisherman.

At the Golden Horse Awards this year, China's version of the Oscars, Mei Mei Yoon, 32, was awarded Best Actress and a pretender had the nerve to walk up onstage to accept the award even though the real Mei Mei Yoon was sitting in the audience. "Even my mother thought the pretender was me," says Yoon. And Beijing shopkeeper Xiao Chen, 27, proposed marriage to someone he thought was his girlfriend, Hui Ying -- and even made love to her -- before the real Hui Ying arrived home late from a meeting. "We ask the world for any helpful suggestions to deal with this embarrassing problem," entreats Guangya.

At least the media thinks it was Guangya.

Published on: 09/08/2005