June 18: ““Bring Back Apu” is a new comedy special from Akaash Singh, the 38-year-old Indian American comedian who wants The Simpsons to revive the Springfield Kwik-E-Mart owner. For nearly three decades, Apu was voiced by the white comedian Hank Azaria—until a backlash forced Azaria to give up the role.
“In the 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu, South Asian American comedians Kal Penn, Aziz Ansari, Aasif Mandvi, and Hasan Minhaj famously spoke of the ways Apu’s character was weaponized to bully them when they were children. So why does Singh want to bring back a character that has caused so much harm?
“Singh says the cancellation of Apu was an “overcorrection.” He is tired of flat, trite, and one-dimensional South Asian characters in media and entertainment. And so am I.”: writes Ali M. Latifi in an essay headlined ‘What South Asian Americans lost when we cancelled Apu’, for Zocalo Public Square.
“So, I found myself wondering if Apu was the right target. Should we be ashamed of Apu himself? As Singh points out in his debut standup special, much of the criticism around Apu relies largely on how white people have accepted or interpreted Apu.
“Take the anger around Apu’s accent. What is driving it? Is it actually about the white man behind it? Or is it the result of some internalized shame about an inflection that all too often has been used as a punch line?
“Is it because you think the accent is ugly?” Singh asked in a telephone interview before the special’s February premiere. “I don’t think it’s ugly. My parents have one. I’m not embarrassed by it. The ones who think it’s offensive, they probably are.”
