>>104211987He's named after three 1950s films collectively known as the Apu Trilogy after their main character (who undergoes nothing but hardship his entire life, because it was the 1950s), not "a famous indian film star known far and wide".
He's also modeled on Peter Sellers in blackface as Hrundi V. Bakshi in The Party, which was basically a sketch show for Sellers, who - let's be honest - could be funny but was extremely dated humor even in the late 1980s, when the film was 20 years old. A lot of The Party is actually ripped off from other contemporary comedies, many of them not familiar in the Anglophone world.
Essentially if you're backing the original interpretations of Apu (prior to the attempts to give him depth, which at least show willing on the part of the show to change and include wider audiences) you're backing the continuation of Sellers' racist depiction of Indians (of any background - the surname Bakshi, whi that particular spelling, indicates a Sikh heritage moreso than it does a Hindu brahmin). The guy literally wore boot polish on his face to play Bakshi, probably because he couldn't do convincing American accents and they didn't want him to play a Brit or - god forbid in 1968, when Irish-Americans were just coming into fashion after centuries of abuse - an Irishman. Plus he'd already done his French accent for Clouseau.
>>104210474There are cases of that. There are also cases of them coming to the US and becoming doctors. What was wrong with making one of the doctors in the show Indian, or having another Indian character who didn't have a funny accent even though, like everyone in Springfield, he would be a moron? Nothing. But they didn't do it, so everything India is explored through the distorting lens of Apu, the convenience store clerk.
Kudos to Azaria though, he's really tried to accommodate over the years. Just this season they had him play a Hindu god and he did the smart Indian voice instead of the comedy one. Good for him.
