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An inner-city millennial content writer, who had the exact same accent as Malcolm Turnbull before he started integrating African-American vernacular into his day-to-day vocabulary, has today penned a 450 word article discussing how he always felt uneasy about the recently controversial Simpson’s character Apu.
Brodie Neeson (30) says he can completely understand the sentiment held by Indian-American documentary-maker Hari Kondabolu, creator of The Problem With Apu.
“I’ve always had a problem with it, my dude” he says.
“I always thought that the character of Apu might have been stereotyping an entire demographic of people that I had never come in contact with during my care-free suburban upbringing”
“It was always so crass. Just lazy, cheap, punching-down type humour. It’s definitely not all good in the hood”
The Problem with Apu focuses on the character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, an Indian immigrant in the wildly popular animated sitcom The Simpsons who, for a period, was the only figure of South Asian heritage to appear regularly on mainstream U.S. television. The film explores encounters with negative stereotypes, racial microaggressions and slurs against people of Indian and South Asian heritage disseminated through the character.
Brodie says that even though majority of his sense of humour was shaped by The Simpsons, he’s not afraid to write off the entire comedy institution as a problematic vessel for white privilege.
“It was the same with Kirin J Callinan, you need to be able to call out things that you’ve heard people talking about on Twitter”
“As a proud ally of the plight of South Asians in America, I just want to say that The Simpsons should be banned from Television. Let’s just get over it. There’s heaps of funnier stuff out there now. Have you ever seen Rick and Morty?”
“Don’t get me started on Sex and The City, as a proud intersectional feminist ally, I think those women are idiots”
