Comedian Hari Kondabolu is disappointed with The Simpsons' response to the Apu controversy.
Calling the reactions of the makers of the American animated sitcom "petty and sad," the Indian American comedian told The Daily Beast that it signalled “the downfall of a show I loved for so long.”
Kondabolu was among the first to draw attention to the subject with The Problem with Apu, his documentary. Quite a number of Asians have accused The Simpsons of painting Kwik-E-Mart manager Apu as a stereotypical Asian character.
Kondabolu said the most disappointing aspect was using Lisa, considered the most progressive character on the show, to dismiss the criticism surrounding Apu.
Lisa, in the April 8 episode, had touched upon the controversy saying: “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?”
“The punch to the gut was not to the Indian American part of me, oddly enough, it was to the Simpsons fan part. You just sacrificed Lisa? Lisa’s me, man,” Kondabolu said in the interview. “Lisa’s me and you’re telling me that Lisa would say that? As a Simpsons fan, they really had to go on a bit of a journey to justify that. They had to find some way for themselves to be like, ‘You know what? We’re just going to nip this in the bud by using this character to say something she would absolutely not say’.”
Last month, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening spoke about the controversy telling USA Today, “I’m proud of what we do on the show. And I think it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended.”
“When we first started, we were part of the downfall of civilization,” he said in the interview. “Bart said he was ‘an underachiever and proud of it, man’.”
