I was recently approached to work on a script.
At first I was pretty excited about it. It was the brainchild of someone I’d worked with before, someone I liked and had worked well with on previous projects, someone I believed shared my beliefs on fair and sensitive representation in the media. Bonus that there was actual money behind the project. But mostly, I was excited about the prospect of getting to help shape the Chinese American characters in the story.
The creator and I shot emails back and forth, we met, we talked, I met others on the team — in spite of a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right, I let my enthusiasm grow. Something in the way they talked about casting actors of color…they were all for it, but the reasons seemed…tokenish? Like they were proud of themselves for “thinking outside the box”?
When I pushed to talk about the nitty-gritty of a specific Chinese American character — oh, the places she could go! — I was met with the answer I was afraid was coming.
This wasn’t the precise wording they used, but I’ve heard non-white characters described this way before. It all ends up sounding the same. “She’s just a character that happens to be Asian! We wouldn’t write her as an ‘Asian’ — we would just write her like a normal character!”
And I was so sad. I knew I would have to leave the project. As a Chinese American woman writer, I was being asked to write a Chinese American woman character who was “normal” — unlike me?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that an AAPI character has to be in your face, ALL ASIAN AMERICAN/PACIFIC ISLANDER ALL THE TIME, (that’s bizarre and racist). And there are certainly characters out there where race does not have to be a deciding factor in who plays them (ideally).
But sometimes race can and should inform a character. If a character is written as Chinese American, in a setting where their background can be explored, their race should in some way inform how they are portrayed. Because that’s what it’s like to be Chinese American — your race isn’t always what you consciously lead with, but it’s always a part of who you are and how you are perceived. Chinese Americans are not “basically white”.
Of course it’s easy to understand why white Americans might think of AAPI people as “all the same” or just a bland copy of their white counterparts if you listen to the likes of Roseanne.
On April 3, the episode “Roseanne Gets the Chair” aired on ABC. In the episode, the characters of Roseanne and Dan Conner fall asleep on their couch. When they wake up, Dan says, “We missed all the shows about Black and Asian families,” to which Roseanne replies, “They’re just like us. There, now you’re all caught up.”
They were referring to Blackish and Fresh Off the Boat, two other ABC shows that, if you aren’t familiar, are sitcoms that center around a Black family and a Taiwanese American family, respectively.
When outrage over the racial implications of the joke arose, Roseanne showrunner Bruce Helford defended it saying, “We are commenting on the fact that all sitcoms really want everybody to feel included of all diversities and it’s kind of a funny thing. That’s all.”
But his defense did not hold up. Several members of the AAPI community spoke up, including Bob’s Burgers writer Kelvin Yu. Said Yu in a Tweet:
https://twitter.com/InternetKelvin/status/981908691271041024
He went on to say:
https://twitter.com/InternetKelvin/status/981908696069320704
The joke in Roseanne bolsters the idea that people of color are all the basically the same, and that those “sitcoms of color” are just imitations of the white “normal”. It infers that the basis for comparison of family sitcoms is the white family – Latinx, Black, Asian, it doesn’t matter, they are all just a different colored label on the same package.
While shows like Blackish and Fresh Off the Boat certainly portray universal similarities that families of all races can relate to, they also serve to highlight the unique experience of being Black or Taiwanese American in America; a look into raising children who experience white culture differently than their parents do. In this way, we are definitely not all the same, but those differences are rich, important, and should not be belittled. Different does not have to mean “other”.
Speaking of “other” — The Simpsons dealt with the controversy surrounding the character of Apu on Sunday, April 8. Well, kind of.
The character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a character who has been on the show from the very beginning, has come under criticism recently as being a deeply stereotyped portrayal of a South Asian man. Apu’s accent, his family, his mannerisms, all add up to one big racist caricature of how non-South Asians see South Asians; as a gag, a joke, the other.
It’s harmful, hurtful, and with the decades The Simpsons have been on the air, Apu has certainly impacted how many South Asians have been treated in America.
And while people have been speaking up about Apu for a while, notably in 2017’s The Problem With Apu, directed by Michael Melamedoff and written by and starring Hari Kondabolu, The Simpsons had been mostly mum until Sunday.
Said Kondabolu of Apu, “[Apu] was a tool for kids to go after you. And this was perfect, right? A caricature with this ridiculous accent that nobody has. And even though I grew up in Queens, I still had the same vulnerabilities, and my parents were accented. I thought: how are they going to view my parents, how are they going to view me?”
In the episode, Marge endeavors to read Lisa a politically correct version of The Princess in the Garden, but the version Marge edited is disappointing. Like The Simpson’s non-apology.
Lisa says that Marge’s attempt to make the story “inoffensive” has ruined it. Marge replies, “Well, what am I supposed to do?”
Lisa then turns to directly address the audience and says, “It’s hard to say. Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?”
She turns to a picture of Apu on her nightstand that has the message, “Don’t have a cow,” scrawled on it and signed, “Apu”.
“Some things will be dealt with at a later date,” says Marge at Lisa’s side.
“If at all,” Lisa responds and they both stare blankly into the camera for a beat.
Essentially, The Simpsons responded to the problem with Apu with a shrug and a “get over it.”
Some have made the argument that The Simpsons have gone after everybody during their decades on air. Hank Azaria, the actor that voices Apu said, “The Simpsons over the years has been pretty humorously offensive to all manner of people: Republicans, Brazilians, presidents, high school principals, school principals, Italians, you name it. And they take a lot of pride over there in not apologising for any of that. I think, over the years, they’ve done a really good job of being, shall we say, uniformly offensive without being outright hurtful.”
But there is a difference between being offensive to Republicans and high school principals and being offensive to South Asians (or Italians or Brazilians for that matter). We make fun of Republicans and principals for what they do, the gag about Apu and South Indians is about who they are. Why is that OK to go after?
Is it because they might speak with accents? Might speak another language? Because they might have different belief or value systems than the average white American? Is it because of how much they earn? Because they look different?
Is it because they are the “other” in America?
If Roseanne and The Simpsons have demonstrated anything, it’s that America is still largely intolerant of differences. That intolerance may not be exhibited in outright hate, but it is demonstrated in indifference.
Indifference to jokes that diminish or erase people of color in the cultural landscape. Indifference to the way a damaging stereotype is portrayed on a beloved TV show. America accepts that this is our entertainment; these are the things that define our popular culture.
The joke on Roseanne, a character like Apu – these are not new things. I’m sure you or I could name countless punchlines and portrayals that deliver laughs at a group or community’s expense. It’s admittedly hard to see all of them, we all have our blindspots. I had a sentimental weakness for The Simpsons. I always knew that characters like Apu or even Cletis the Slack-Jawed Yokel were problematic, but I grew up with them so I turned a blind eye.
Frankly, I turned a blind eye to a lot of characters like Apu. It was easier to laugh with my white peers than to draw attention to myself and be that Asian who was way too serious about her Asianness. I wanted to be “normal”.
I doubt I was alone in this behavior.
But now we’re adults and we know better. Right?
The hard part is, we have to speak up. We have to speak up against the stories and shows we might have grown up with, that we loved (yes I was also a Roseanne fan back when I was a kid…I watched a lot of TV), and we may have to face the ire that challenging the norm provokes in people.
People take their TV very seriously (scans the 1600 words I just wrote)…obviously.
But it matters. It matters what we see as “other” it matters what we see as “normal”. And perhaps most of all, it matters that we stop being so preoccupied with who those two things are.
Featured Image via Creative Commons
