[ SECRET POST #2324 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4324 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 25 secrets from Secret Submission Post #619.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

unless he's changed a lot since I stopped watching the show he's one of the very few characters who's both smart and good at his job (although his repeatedly cheating on his wife wasn't that smart).

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't his job being a skinflint who cheats the community at the convenience store that he owns?

[(Anonymous)]

He doesn't cheat the community. And a small business owner being cautious about money is pretty damn reasonable.

[(Anonymous)]

ACT ONE

At the Kwik-E-Mart.

MAN 1
I need one twenty-nine-cent stamp.

APU
That's a dollar-eighty-five.

MAN 2
I'd like two dollars worth of gas, please.

APU
Four-twenty.

MARTIN
How much is your penny candy?

APU
Surprisingly expensive!

[(Anonymous)]

sorry, I LOLed

[(Anonymous)]

Also, he was willing to sell an opened and expired package of ham for a discount price. Because of it, Homer ended up in the hospital. "Whoo-hoo, cheap meat!"

[(Anonymous)]

Homer: Your old meat made me sick!

Apu: Oh, I'm so sorry. Please accept five pounds of frozen shrimp?

Homer: This shrimp isn't frozen! And it smells funny.

Apu: OK, ten pounds.

Homer: Woo hoo!

[(Anonymous)]

So, like, there's clearly a class of stereotypes that are nominally positive, but that are still negative in effect.

Obvious examples include "black people have big dicks and are sexually potent" and "Jews are cheap". Even "Asians are smart". None of those things are intrinsically bad - in fact, all of them are good! Being careful with your money, or good at sex, or smart, are all positive traits (IMO). But all of them, when they're used as stereotypes, are used in ways that limit and objectify the person being stereotyped and to imply that those traits are actually negatives. Assuming that all Jewish people are cheap, and reducing them to their cheapness, and then turning it into a negative, and then using it to dehumanize them - that's how these things do work to entrench racism. And it's the same with the stereotype of the Asian convenience store owner.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that Apu goes that far at all. The problem comes from the cumulative effect of these stereotypes - from the broader pattern that they create. But the only way to alter that broad pattern of stereotypes and dehumanization is to push back on specific attitudes and examples, and that includes examples that aren't as glaring or aggressive.

[4thofeleven]

Eh, that's pretty much every businessperson in the Simpsons - Burns, Krusty, Moe...

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't that what the secret says? OP doesn't dispute that Apu is a likeable character. But his accent and ethnicity is definitely used as comic relief.