On at this time’s (Weds., April 26) episode of NPR’s Code Change, a dialogue podcast exploring how race impacts society, listeners are capable of tune in to the primary public dialogue between actor Hank Azaria and comic Hari Kondabolu for the reason that launch of the latter’s shake-up documentary, The Drawback with Apu (2017). The movie’s important highlight on how South Asians are portrayed in Hollywood sparked many debates about Azaria, a white man, voicing Indian immigrant Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on The Simpsons — a personality lengthy criticized for selling racial stereotypes.
On Code Change, Kondabolu elaborated on how he views the consequences of damaging illustration and the affect of his movie. “Illustration has weight, but it surely’s not essentially the act of violence in itself. However the one that was making [Apu] wished a really particular impact out of the photographs and phrases that they used.
“To be trustworthy, I’ve typically thought to myself, I remorse ever doing this. The documentary is about how I hate being related to this stereotype and now I’m perpetually related to it. There’s a variety of irony and frustration in that. However then impulsively you communicate in a school classroom, otherwise you discover out that your documentary is getting used when instructing media illustration otherwise you hear from South Asian dad and mom who speak about how a lot this implies to them as a result of they’ve youngsters. Now I’ve a child, and it feels totally different. My child’s not gonna cope with a variety of these items.
“I nonetheless get like aggravated that we gotta speak about it, however on the identical time, within the broad scheme of issues, I believe I did proper by my neighborhood,” Kondabolu concluded. “Even when they’re not all in settlement.”
“I used to be about 22, 23 once I began doing voices on the present, The primary voice I did was Moe the bartender. After which the next week I got here again and did the voice Chief Wiggum. After which that week or the next week, there was an Apu line, and it was simply written as clerk, and the producer, the director I used to be working with on the time mentioned, are you able to do an Indian accent? And I mentioned, yeah, I can try to did my model of an Indian accent, and that was it,” Azaria remembers on the podcast. “The one actually Indian accent that I had context for, other than guys who labored on the 7-Eleven that I used to be close to in L.A., was Peter Sellers in The Social gathering. It was principally an homage to that, considered one of my heroes.”
Talking on the non-public affect of The Drawback with Apu and the heated discussions that flared after its launch, Azaria tells Kondabolu he was extraordinarily grateful for the filmmaker “dragging and pushing me into this dialog.”
“It means rather a lot to listen to you say that,” Kondabolu says. “I do know you’ve instructed me privately the affect that I’ve made, however to listen to that publicly is a extremely huge deal to me as a result of one of many issues that pissed off me after the movie got here out is that I used to be getting loss of life threats … Initially it bothered me that you simply didn’t point out me as a result of I needed to cope with all this crap to get it there … There’s a historical past of white of us speaking about what they’ve realized and sharing the information with out giving credit score to the individuals of shade that truly obtained them there. Like, you set within the work and then you definately get by no means get credit score for the work. And on the finish of the day, I’m speaking about this far more than I wished to.
“And I do know it’s a distinct expertise for each of us, as a result of for you it’s opened up all these new concepts and also you’ve grown in unbelievable methods and I can see your pleasure concerning the work you’re doing now. To me, this was outdated hat once I made the documentary. So it’s the double whammy of being caught right here with out additionally getting props. So so that you can say it now does imply rather a lot.”
“I apologize for not saying it earlier,” Azaria responds. “It put me in a dilemma as a result of it’s nonetheless embarrassing to me to level on the doc, though no matter I really feel personally about it’s a drop within the ocean in comparison with what your neighborhood has needed to cope with.”
The final Simpsons episode with Azaria as Apu aired in 2017. The character has not featured in any tales since, however has appeared within the background of some episodes. The Flash actor Alex Désert took over as Lou and Carl.
Hearken to Kondabolu and Azaria’s dialogue on Code Change, “The Fallout of a Callout,” on-line at npr.org.
[Source: NPR]
