[ 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

[anarchicq]

Other characters on the Simpsons have changed and evolved over 28 years.

Including Apu, who genuinely loves his job, has an extended family, is a lady's man, was reluctant for his cultural traditions on arranged marriage, genuinely loves his wife, had marital troubles, reconciled with his wife, became a father...

He's honestly one of the most well rounded characters in all of The Simpsons.

I find their Italian stereotypes much worse. Cookie Kwan is questionable too. She's Asian and she does real estate and she's savage about it. Is there anything more to her?

[(Anonymous)]

Other characters being racist is not a defense of Apu.

If you think that the specific character attributes of Apu raise him above the original racist aspects of his character, I think that's a reasonable opinion, even though I don't really agree.

[anarchicq]

Ok, so, this might be wrong-headed of me but I'm not much older than The Simpsons itself. I feel there's a difference between a stereotype and a racist portrayal.

I have lived near several corner stores or gas stations all my life and almost all of them had either a teenager working the til, or someone who was East Indian. Also I'm in Canada, and every person in retail or the service industry says "Thank you, have a nice day". That Canadian stereotype is true. We thank our bus drivers. So I never thought "Thank you, come again." was a joke or racist or anything. It's common courtesy.

That's how I grew up. Looking now, sure it's a stereotype but there's truth to it.

Every character on The Simpsons started out on a pretty basic level playing field of Let's Make Fun of Everybody. Most of the characters evolved, as good characters should.

[(Anonymous)]

"Sure it's a stereotype but there's truth to it" is kind of a dangerous road to go down, because everyone that uses stereotypes does so because they think there's some truth to them. And the problem with using stereotypes, even if it's not innately a negative stereotype that you're using, is because it's reductionist, it simplifies a culture to the outsider perspective of that culture while ignoring the internal parts of it. It's outsiders claiming a truth about a culture without having any insight into that truth, assuming that their own experiences are more important in how to present a culture than that of someone from a culture. (Not saying that it's consciously the goal or idea, but rather that there's a subtext there whenever a presentation leans on stereotypes.)

Easy example: creating a work with a single East Asian character, and having their most prominent characteristics be that they're really polite and good at math, is still bad even if those are erstwhile positive characteristics in the abstract. Because the portrayal is still founded in how people outside the East Asian culture view East Asians rather than how East Asians view East Asians; it's still based in reducing them to how others see them. And while acknowledging the external view can be important, it shouldn't be done in a way that dismisses the internal view, because that's essentially communicating that the culture is only valuable in a given work in terms of what outsiders get from it, that the actual internal truth is irrelevant. That it's only being used in your work in so much as people can react to it; using the culture as a prop.

That's why it's different when, for example, someone within a culture is commenting on their own culture in generalities; because at least in that case, it's coming from an internal perspective rather than an external one, it's still coming from the voice of a member of that culture. (Even that can be questionable and potentially inauthentic, of course, but it's at least a step.)

A stereotypical portrayal doesn't have to be explicitly insulting or bigoted against the culture to be bad, it doesn't even necessarily have to be untrue, because what makes stereotypical portrayals bad isn't (entirely) the quality of accuracy of what stereotype you're presenting, but the fact that stereotypes are innately reductionist and external. It almost doesn't matter if many convenience store clerks actually are South Asian, because even if it is true, it's still oversimplifying things to lean on that. Simplifying is fine, but oversimplifying is the problem. And even just including a single Indian voice in writing Apu would help, because then you could get authentic humor coming from both the external and the internal. Simplifying things down in a way that doesn't exclude the internal, but allows it to complement the external instead.

[(Anonymous)]

Fantastic post! Great stuff. Really great.

[cakemage]

I know I'm late to the party, but this is really well said.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm NOT in Canada and it's still typical around here for cashiers and such to say "Thank you, have a nice day." Are there... places where this isn't normal? I'm a bit confused now.

[(Anonymous)]

People say it but not necessarily in the distinctive identical, metronomic, sing-song-y way that Apu does

Oh, Cookie...

[(Anonymous)]

STAY OFF THE WEST SIDE

Re: Oh, Cookie...

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not going to lie, I really enjoyed Cookie Kwan, mostly because she took no shit and you didn't really see that from a lot of female east asian characters.. but I can also see the problematic side of her too.