'The Simpsons' Responds to Criticism About Apu With a Dismissal

At the end of 2017, Hank Azaria, the voice behind Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a convenience-store owner on “The Simpsons” with a thick Indian accent, responded to a recent groundswell of criticism that the character was racist. It came to the forefront thanks to Hari Kondabolu, a comedian of South Asian descent, who made a documentary, “The Problem With Apu,” which debuted last fall.

“I think the documentary made some really interesting points and gave us a lot of things to think about and we really are thinking about it,” Azaria told TMZ. He said he found the situation “upsetting.”

On Sunday night, “The Simpsons,” a cultural staple and television’s longest-running sitcom, now in its 29th season, finally responded: with a dismissive nod that earned the show more criticism, especially from Kondabolu himself. The episode, titled “No Good Read Goes Unpunished,” featured a scene with Marge Simpson sitting in bed with her daughter Lisa, reading a book called “The Princess in the Garden,” and attempting to make it inoffensive for 2018.

At one point, Lisa turns to directly address the TV audience and says, “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?” The shot then pans to a framed picture of Apu at the bedside with the line, “Don’t have a cow!” inscribed on it.

Marge responds: “Some things will be dealt with at a later date.”

Followed by Lisa saying, “If at all.”

The writers of the episode — one of whom was Matt Groening, the show’s creator — received immediate backlash. Some viewers found the response tone deaf and criticized the choice of Lisa, often the show’s moral center, to voice it. (And not to mention: “Don’t have a cow!” could be interpreted as a jab at Apu’s Hinduism.)

Kondabolu took to Twitter to make his thoughts known. "Wow. 'Politically Incorrect?'," he wrote. "That’s the takeaway from my movie & the discussion it sparked? Man, I really loved this show. This is sad.”

He added: “In ‘The Problem with Apu,’ I used Apu & The Simpsons as an entry point into a larger conversation about the representation of marginalized groups & why this is important. The Simpsons response tonight is not a jab at me, but at what many of us consider progress.”

Al Jean, one of the show’s original writers and its showrunner since 1998, appeared to acknowledge that the response would cause controversy, posting on Sunday night, “New Simpsons in five minutes. Twitter explosion in act three.”

He also retweeted messages decrying political correctness and calling the criticism of Apu a “non-issue.” Representatives for Fox, the show’s network, declined to comment.

Kondabolu’s documentary grew out of a short segment he did in 2012 on the FX series “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell.” Four years later, he turned Apu’s plight into a documentary feature: objecting to Apu as a caricature voiced by a white actor and written by white writers, or as Kondabolu described it: “A white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.” He told The Times last year, “Everything with Apu is like this running joke. And the running joke is that he’s Indian.”

Bell, among many others, offered support for Kondabolu: “The Simpsons, 1989 - 2018 #RIP,” he wrote in one post, followed by: “I think the fact that they put this ‘argument’ in the mouth of Lisa’s character, the character who usually champions the underdogs and is supposed to be the most thoughtful and liberal, is what makes this the most ridiculous (as in worthy of ridicule) and toothless response.”

Azaria, after intense lobbying, declined to be interviewed for the documentary, but had said in 2007 that the depiction of Apu is “not tremendously accurate.” The show’s writers have shown a willingness to address the situation in the past: In 2016, actor Utkarsh Ambudkar voiced Apu’s nephew in an episode called “Much Apu About Something.”

Ambudkar’s character called Apu a stereotype.