At the end of the day, I think this is a question of identity. Many people of Indian heritage want some sort of re-inforcement, acceptance etc. as being no less american/english/european etc. In doing that they also seek to distance themselves and are somehow embarrassed by things like arranged marriages, elephant headed gods, Indian accent etc. To me, all of these are normal and good, even the ‘Thank you, come again’ line. I mean what’s wrong with ploiteness?? Apu is all out to just make money,(sometimes at the expense of his own dignity)but isn’t that true of so many immigrants and what is so negative about that? It might be a stereotype, but it is based on a sliver of reality. So it gives people ammunition to taunt you? Well, heck, if it wasn’t this, it would be something else. On the whole, I have found this character to be more positive than negative.

I don’t care what the show depicts(personally, I find Apu a funny and also endearing character and have never felt offended), because I am sure it will not change the opinions of those who know me about me. On the otehr hand, I can imagine that if someone has a basic problem with who I am and where i come from, they would still taunt my accent, or my beliefs or habits etc. even if the character of Apu had never been created.

However, at the end of the day, this is about The Simpsons and they make fun of a lot of things, it’s in the spirit of the show. I think we should be less uptight about this.

This character Apu and the ensuing Qwik-E-Mart campaign are totally absurd. I wonder how many other people made fun of and characters created for making fun of them were used to create la E-Mart trends. This reeks of racism.

I’m sitting here trying to think of an example of any character in a TV show that presents a person of Asian Indian heritage just as a regular person. I’m not big into TV, but I can’t think of any. Anyone else?