So Nikhil left a comment on my post about Apu and the 7-Eleven/Kwik-E-Mart promotion. He said:
I'm really glad he left this comment. I mentioned briefly in the original post that the point of the cartoon (and satire, in general) is to exaggerate the ridiculous. When I began to elaborate, I found I was writing enough for another post. So here goes.I see your point about the negative stereotypes, but that’s the whole point isn’t it? Aren’t all the characters stereotypes? Yes, the accent is inaccurate, and the character is two-dimensional, but... it’s a cartoon (one of the definitions of which - from Webster’s dictionary- is “a ludicrously simplistic, unrealistic, or one-dimensional portrayal”.Maybe I’m not analyzing this intellectually enough, but I just don’t understand why people are offended. I seriously doubt this is going to take us back to “Jim Crow’s America”, as Manish thinks it will.
It is not so much the cartoon itself that I am offended by. In fact, I used to watch The Simpsons back home in India and even in my early years here, and I never thought twice about Apu. It is only later on that he started to annoy and then offend me. And it is not so much the character itself that began to get my goat. It was more in the way that I saw Americans perceive him - as this funny-talking, dirty, dishonest "Hindi" (sic) who worships funny-looking, blue creatures with many arms. This perception of the cartoon character began to replace reality, and Americans who claimed to be my friends (and some who were my enemies) came up to me spouting "Thank you, come again!" in that bud bud ding ding accent. This is when it really began to tick me off. And, to clarify, it's not so much the phrase itself, but the manner in which it's been used that's my peeve.
I think the point is best illustrated by something I read on Greatbong's post about this whole thing.
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