Being unfair to Apu

Robert Ito

Ihate Apu,” the actor Kal Penn says in a new documentary about the penny-pinching, squishee-slinging, thickly accented convenience store owner on one of the most celebrated TV shows in history. “And because of that, I dislike The Simpsons.”

The feelings of South Asian-Americans toward the character and the show he inhabits are the focus of The Problem with Apu, a documentary debuting on November 19.

The brainchild of the actor and stand-up comic Hari Kondabolu, a lifelong lover of The Simpsons, the film wrestles with how a show praised for its incisive humour — over the years, it has explored issues like homophobia and political corruption — could resort to such a charged stereotype. Making matters worse is the fact that the Indian character is voiced by a non-Indian (albeit an Emmy-winning) actor, Hank Azaria.

“Everything with Apu is like this running joke,” said Kondabolu, 35. “And the running joke is that he’s Indian.”

Kondabolu, who grew up in Queens, the son of Indian immigrants, knows all about the show’s history (the longest-running American sitcom), its many awards (32 Primetime Emmys), its international and adoring fan base. “I’m a comedian going after the biggest comedy show of all time,” he said.

The documentary grew out of a five-minute piece Kondabolu performed on the FX series Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell in 2012. Mindy Kaling had just become the first Indian-American to star in her own series (The Mindy Project), and Kondabolu thought he’d use that breakthrough to talk about Apu, South-Asian stereotypes and the struggles of Indians in Hollywood.

But the topic seemed corny and overworked to him. When he took his concerns to Bell, however, the show host was puzzled. “I was like, no, no one’s talking about this,” Bell said in a phone interview. “Do you mean like all the other pieces that the South Asian community has done about Apu? And that’s when Hari went, oh yeah, you’re right.”

The piece touched a nerve with audiences, but it was the one-minute section about Apu that people most remembered. Why not make a full-length documentary about his issues with the Kwik-E-Mart owner, Kondabolu thought, which could serve as a jumping-off point to talk about all the other things the comic had been stewing about?

— The Independent