Of humorous characters and racial stereotypes

There are two famous Apus in the western world and both are fictional. Thefirst is the protagonist of three films made in the 1950s by the Indiandirector Satyajit Ray, which trace a boy’s journey to manhood andfatherhood, and from the paddy fields and ponds of rural Bengal to theturbulent streets of Kolkata.No finer films have come out of India,and the Apu trilogy remains among the great landmarks of world cinema –beautifully composed in black and white with a soundtrack by RaviShankar, they frequently appear on lists of best-loved movies.Certainly, I include them in mine.The second Apu isn’t at all like the first, though reportedly named after him as an act of homage by his cinephile creators.ApuNahasapeemapetilon owns the Kwik-E-Mart convenience store inSpringfield, the American town where the Simpsons – Homer, Marge andtheir children Bart, Lisa and Maggie – live in the eponymous cartoonserial, which was first broadcast in 1989 and is about to reach its625th episode.This Apu first appeared in episode eight.Hiscatchphrase “Thank you, come again” is delivered in a high, singsongvoice; he works 96 hours at a stretch and once deleted the sell-by dateon some cut-price sliced meat, poisoning the gluttonous Homer withsalmonella.An overdose of fertility drugs has given him eightchildren, which in an outburst of patriotism he once temporarily namedLincoln, Freedom, Condoleezza, Coke, Pepsi, Manifest Destiny, Supermanand Apple Pie.I have sometimes cried at the Apu Trilogy, and often laughed at his namesake in The Simpsons.Buthave I been wrong to find Apu Nahasapeemapetilon funny? A newdocumentary by the American standup comic Hari Kondabolu attacks thecharacter as a damaging racist stereotype.“Of course he’s funny, butthat doesn’t mean this representation is accurate or right orrighteous,” Kondabolu told the BBC, adding that it demonstrated “theinsidiousness of racism … because you don’t even notice it when it’sright in front of you.It becomes so normal that you don’t even think about it.”His film has already attracted an unusual amount of notice.It comes at a frail moment – when Hollywood and the entertainment media more generally stand accused.Kondabolu,the American-born child of Indian migrants, was mocked at school byfellow pupils imitating Apu’s voice, which was created – like those ofmany other Simpsons characters – by Hank Azaria, a white actor. “Apureflected how America viewed us: servile, devious, goofy,” Kondabolusays in his film, The Problem with Apu. “A white dude created astereotypical Indian voice, and a bunch of white writers in the roomlaughed at said stereotypical Indian voice, and this led to the creationof my childhood bully and a walking insult to my parents.”Children need very few excuses to explore the weakness of others: I had buckteeth and, oh, how I hated Bugs Bunny.And satire being satire, it tends to deal in stereotypes.Topick a not entirely random example, also from The Simpsons: aChicagoan, Dan Castellaneta, does the voice of the Scottish schoolgroundskeeper, Willie MacDougal.It was this voice that in 1995 first uttered the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” to describe the French.Itsounds perpetually angry – a strip cartoon would have bubbles overWillie’s head saying, “Grrr!” – and joyously inauthentic, which is thepoint.Inauthenticity can be popular, even among the people who find themselves traduced.GroundskeeperWillie’s real-life antecedent, the comic-singer Harry Lauder, becamethe most internationally celebrated Scotsman in the first half of thelast century through his exaggeration of Scottish speech, slyness, andcare with money, helped by his trademark outfit of kilt, bonnet andcurly stick, to present a pawky, almost pre-industrial personality(though Lauder himself started work in the mines). His popularity bothinside and outside Britain was enormous: he made 22 tours of the USsometimes by special train, and in his own estimation “must have seen,and been seen by, more citizens of the republic than any other man whoever lived”.Some people in Scotland disapproved, contending that Lauderhad made “a fool out of Scotsmen”. But many more were happy to applaudthis parody, not caring that he had created what proved to be a stubbornstereotype: they were comforted that the parodist was one of their own(unlike in the case of Apu, who is voiced by Azaria).But Scots wereamong the top dogs then.Why would they worry? Even quite late into the 20th century, signs of our top dogginess survived.Thelabel on the Camp Coffee bottle still showed a turbaned Sikh standingattentively with a tray, as a seated Gordon Highlander supped hismorning beverage, outside a tent that flew a pennant with the sloganReady Aye Ready. (To reflect more equal times, the Sikh was eventuallygiven a seat.) The large outline of another turban sat on the head of anear-ringed face high above Glasgow Central station, its neon tubesshining white as the night came on, to advertise another Scottishcomestible, Irn-Bru, via a little Indian boy, Ba-Bru, who was thecompanion of kilted little Sandy in the soft drink’s promotionalcartoon.It disappeared in the 1970s, by which time everyone hadforgotten that Ba-Bru was inspired by Sabu, the young Indian actor whoshot to stardom in Robert Flaherty’s film Elephant Boy in 1937.These were among our small, humorous relics of imperialism in India.Others appeared in print.Inthe 1950s, Hurree Jamset Ram Singh remained the finest bowler among theboys of Billy Bunter’s Greyfriars in the long-running cartoon series,though by then his nickname “Inky” and his description “the dusky nabobof Bhanipur” had possibly been dropped.Hurree’s command of Englishwas memorable. “The latefulness is superior to the neverfulness,” hemight say, meaning “better late than never”. And smiling at that (as Ido – who couldn’t?), I sense something similar in my reaction to Apu.I can’t think that the effect is racist, but one can never be sure.WhenTeachers Against Racism protested in 1972 against Helen Bannerman’s1899 children’s book The Story of Little Black Sambo, the publisher, IanParsons, replied that their letter filled him with “amazement, mingledwith despair”. Could it be true, he asked, that “responsible peoplecould be so utterly devoid of humour, so totally without imagination” asto want to ban a book that generations of children had accepted as an“enchanting story, an enthralling fantasy … Could a tiger turn intobutter with which to make pancakes, and could any child, black or white,eat 169 of them?”Parsons wrote sincerely, stressing that he’d supported the cause of what were then called race relations all his life.But his is the voice of another age.Itwas the teachers who understood that Britain was changing and thatrespect for black people needed to be fostered among white children “inorder to avoid the kind of terrible race tension and separatism whichhas occurred in the United States”. Bannerman, interestingly enough, wasa Scotswoman who had gone to India with her doctor husband, and therewritten the story for her children over a two-day train journey.The illustrations in many editions showed African children, though the text mentions Indian items: tigers, ghee, a bazaar.This blissfully ignorant combination charmed people for 70 years until it began to seem paternalistic and unpleasant.There can be no firm rule about stereotypes – it depends on their expression and who makes them, when and why.But their harmfulness or otherwise is usually best judged by the people they attempt to describe. – Guardian News & Media * Ian Jack is a Guardian columnist