- Hank Azaria has provided the voice for Apu on "The Simpsons" for decades.
- It's been under criticism as a racist caricature.
- On Sunday's episode, the show appeared to brush off the criticism instead of engaging with it.
- Critics are calling that response insensitive and lazy.
- It doesn't help that Azaria and "Simpsons" writers appear to know the character can be seen as offensive, and keep it up anyway.
As more people pay attention to diversity on TV, there's been a growing chorus of voices calling out a character who's been a mainstay on "The Simpsons" for decades: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.
On the show, Apu is a convenience store owner with a thick yet vague South Asian accent. Ever since he was introduced as a character in 1990, he's been voiced by Hank Azaria, who is white.
To critics, he's a racist caricature who has perpetuated stereotypes about people who come from India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries, and who should be handled with more care than he has in the past three decades.
"The Simpsons" finally addressed the Apu controversy on an episode Sunday night. It didn't go well.
"The Simpsons" brushed it all off.
On Sunday night's episode, titled "No Good Read Goes Unpunished," there's a scene where Marge Simpson gets frustrated while reading Lisa a children's book that's been sanitized of unsavory details. Lisa responds with uncertainty, at first.
Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now suddenly politically incorrect," Lisa says while looking directly at the viewer. "What can you do?"
Then Lisa looks at a photo of Apu on her bedside with the phrase "Don't have a cow" scrawled onto it.
"Some things will be dealt with at a later date," Marge responds.
"If at all," Lisa says in response.
A representative for Fox, which produces "The Simpsons," declined to answer questions about the depiction of "Apu" on the show.
"The producers of 'The Simpsons' are declining comment and prefer to let the episode speak for itself," the representative told INSIDER.
Critics say it's an irresponsible way to handle the show's racism.
To critics of Apu's depiction on "The Simpsons," the way the show addressed it Sunday night was unacceptable.
Apu has been a reference point used to advance racism in pop culture for decades. Actors like Kal Penn and Kumail Nanjiani say they have been asked to "do an Apu accent" in auditions.
And in his 2017 documentary "The Problem With Apu," the comedian and "Simpsons" fan Hari Kondabolu sees Azaria's depiction as little more than "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father."
"We just were underrepresented,"the actor Utkarsh Ambudkar said in the documentary. "We didn't have any other representation in this country. That creates a problem when the most popular show on television is showing mainstream America what an Indian is."
To perpetuate that stereotype remains damaging, as Josh Rivera wrote in GQ.
"To hand-wave away the lived pain and racism that others have experienced in this manner is to trade a considerable portion of your legacy just to maintain an air of smug superiority that isn't worth it," Rivera wrote. "These people aren't making this s--- up, man. I've been called 'Apu' based solely on my appearance, and I'm not even remotely South Asian."
Sunday night's episode not only waved that all away, critics say, but possibly poked further by using the phrase "Don't have a cow," which could be a glib reference to Apu's Hinduism.
After the episode aired, Kondabolu called it out.
Critics also accuse the show's creators of laziness.
Many fans are also upset by what they see as the "Simpsons" creators — like Matt Groening, who co-wrote Sunday night's episode — dodging the issue.
In the past, "The Simpsons" has been a fearless critic of social issues like racism and homophobia in culture at large.
But when it comes to itself, the show's creators brushed off the criticism and used Lisa, the show's moral center, to do it.
Furthermore, Apu is an ongoing concern, not some relic of the show from previous episodes.
There doesn't seem to be a movement asking the writers of "The Simpsons" to kill off Apu or change the series entirely. But the show, Linda Holmes wrote for NPR, needs to reckon with its past and address affection for art with its own moral principles.
"Apu is not the central character of 'The Simpsons,' and it's absurd to suggest that the fabric of the show will be unwound if he doesn't continue to be the same caricature he is," Holmes wrote. "His existence at the periphery — his very flatness, and his definition as a bag of signifiers meant to scream 'INDIAN!' is integral to what it means to write a racist stereotype. It's galling that writers will force a character to exist as funny scenery and then complain that they cannot change him without upsetting the emotional arc of the series."
"The Simpsons" showrunner appeared to be dismissive on Twitter.
Some people also noticed that "Simpsons" showrunner Al Jean appeared to endorse his depiction of Apu on Twitter when the episode aired.
On Sunday night, he appeared to predict that the episode would ruffle some feathers. He later retweeted someone who said that Apu's critics "just want to cry about everything nowadays."
There are conflicting stories about Apu's creation.
Making things more complicated is that, over the years, different stories have emerged about how Apu came to be the character he is.
In a 2007 interview, Azaria said producers wanted Apu to be an offensive Indian stereotype.
"Right away, they were like, 'Can you do an Indian voice? And how offensive can you make it?'" Azaria said. "I said, 'It's not tremendously accurate. It's a little bit of a stereotype.' And they were like, 'It's OK.'"
But in 2016, writer and producer Mike Reiss had a different story. He said that in the script where Apu's character is first introduced, he wrote specifically that the character shouldn't be Indian.
"I wrote in the script, 'He is not an Indian,' because that is a comedy cliché," Reiss said.
But Azaria used the fake Indian accent anyway for the line.
"And suddenly, Apu was Indian," Reiss said.
Azaria knows the character can be offensive, but he does it anyway.
In a separate interview, published by the Archive of American Television in 2015, Azaria said he bases the portrayal on a clerk at a 7-Eleven store he disliked.
He also said he bases it on Peter Sellers' portrayal of an Indian character in the 1968 movie "The Party." In the movie, Sellers, who is white, wears brown makeup and adopts a thick Indian accent. Azaria called it one of his favorite performances ever.
"I've since learned that a lot of Southern Asian people, a lot of Indian people, found that Peter Sellers portrayal offensive," he said. "Sometimes over the years, I've gotten some flack for Apu. Which I understand."
In 2013, Azaria told The Huffington Post that he had mixed feelings about the character.
"I really do love the character and do try to do right by him accent-wise and character-wise, and that goes for all the characters I do," he said. "But I do understand why people could have been offended or upset, and I'm sorry for that."
A representative for Azaria didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's requests for comment.
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