Indian Accents Dave, Shilpa S
02/2013, Letnik:
124
eBook
Amid immigrant narratives of assimilation, Indian Accents focuses on the representations and stereotypes of South Asian characters in American film and television. Exploring key examples in popular ...culture ranging from Peter Sellers' portrayal of Hrundi Bakshi in the 1968 film The Party to contemporary representations such as Apu from The Simpsons and characters in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle , Shilpa S. Dave develops the ideas of accent, brownface, and brown voice as new ways to explore the racialization of South Asians beyond just visual appearance. Dave relates these examples to earlier scholarship on blackface, race, and performance to show how accents are a means of representing racial difference, national origin, and belonging, as well as distinctions of class and privilege. While focusing on racial impersonations in mainstream film and television, Indian Accents also amplifies the work of South Asian American actors who push back against brown voice performances, showing how strategic use of accent can expand and challenge such narrow stereotypes.
Apu’s Brown Voice Dave, Shilpa S
Indian Accents,
02/2013
Book Chapter
The Simpsons’ ninth-season episode “Much Apu about Nothing” reflects the conflict between the promise of the American Dream for immigrants and the pressures of cultural assimilation that lead ...immigrants to deny their cultural identity and focus on how the vocal nature of brown voice operates as an Indian accent. Apu vents his frustration, after masquerading in both dress and accent, as someone who is culturally and stereotypically American—an identity that does not reflect his experience. Apu expresses a love for the freedom of speech and free enterprise in the United States, but his “charade” to appear as American reveals
Even though it seems as if South Asians are ever present in contemporary television and film, this was not the case in the twentieth century. Prior to 2000, the most recognizable South Asian ...characters on American network television was the animated character Apu on The Simpsons (1989–).¹ In the film industry, independent filmmakers, British and Canadian producers, and Indian and other South Asian media outlets created and showed multiple media images of the South Asian diaspora throughout the latter half of the twentieth century; however, Hollywood made very few films that featured the South Asian immigrant experience or South
One cultural value historically associated in American mass media with South Asians is the practice of Eastern spiritualism. Early Hollywood films depicted India as a land full of mystical powers and ...religious cults. American cultural representations of Indian spirituality in the 1960s and 1970s were associated with the new-age movement and hippie culture; Indian culture became part of the American consumer-goods market. The new-age movement is a modern, late-twentieth-century movement associated with Western and Eastern spiritual philosophies that is inclusive of all religions and cultures and borrows from the ideas of self-help and self-transformation as well as the arena of
The comedic pairing of the characters Harold Lee and Kumar Patel in the Harold and Kumar films places Asian American and, specifically, Indian accents at the center of American culture. While the ...previous chapters discuss brownface and brown-voice racial performances as the means to exoticize South Asians as cultural objects or assimilate South Asians as deracialized model minorities, the next two chapters delve into how American national and cultural identity is transformed when Asian Americans are the center of the narrative comedy. In the Harold and Kumar films, an Indian accent becomes associated with the larger racial landscape of the
Animating Gandhi SHILPA S. DAVÉ
Indian Accents,
02/2013
Book Chapter
During the last week of January 2003, the Indian Press attacked MTV USA programming choices and Maxim magazine’s publishing decisions by protesting the “attempt to humiliate the father of the ...nation,” Mohandas Gandhi.¹ Indian politicians condemned MTV’s promotion of the teenage character Gandhi on the television broadcast animated series Clone High; Om Prakash Chautala, chief minister of Hayarana, and other politicians announced they would conduct a political hunger strike to protest the images in Maxim magazine, claiming it was “gross insult to the icon of non-violence” and condemned the television show, an “insult heaped” on Gandhi by MTV USA.² According
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008), written and directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, not only fits into the genre of stoner films but also is part of a growing body of ...films that chronicle the events and fallout of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Hollywood and American television were initially cautious to develop programming and scripts that addressed topics related to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, including topics such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, and the detentions at Guantánamo Bay. Popular comedians, such as David
INTRODUCTION Dave, Shilpa S
Indian Accents,
02/2013
Book Chapter
In 1990, the animated Indian immigrant character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon made his first extended appearance on the Fox network prime-time series The Simpsons. One of his signature characteristics was ...his distinct Indian accent. In the episode “Much Apu about Nothing,” Apu feels compelled to change the Indian accent he has been speaking on the show for the previous six years because his position is threatened by the imminent passage of Springfield political legislation Proposition 24 to deport undocumented immigrants.¹ Apu tries to solve his citizenship problem by obtaining an illegal identification that proclaims him to be an American citizen, but as
