Kiss off, Bangalore
When The Simpsons tackled outsourcing in ‘Kiss Kiss Bangalore,’ the only segment on YouTube at the time was the Bollywood-style dance scene at the end. But Srini’s posted a condensed version of the full segment:
It’s got the whole enchilada — Middle Eastern music confused with South Asian, Homer as a Thuggee, non-desi voice actors reading Hindi lines phonetically and awfully (eye roll). The quality of work here is just shoddy. And before the Apu deniers start with ‘It’s a cartoon! With yellow people!’, remember that Americans have very little context. How many know a damn thing about what everyday life is like in Bangalore versus a town in Illinois? Hey, maybe Bobby Jindal will replace Apu and Sanjaya as the best-known Indian in America. Joy.
The scene where a guy feigns a Texan accent while alighting among a bank of telephones is very much like Sunil Malhotra’s Call Center short. It’s one of those tropes which is so obvious, it’s become cliché.
Previously: ‘The Simpsons’ go Bollywood
on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008, 5:28 pm in Economics, Humor, Issues, Simpsons, TV, Video clips › 
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hey manish, i hope you are not referring to the music in the beginning as ‘middle eastern’ mixed for south asian? that music comes from the borat character’s theme song for all things Kazakhstan! besides, there is clearly bollywood music at the end! and who cares if a non-desi actor does the accent? that’s what acting is! what about bollywood films where the characters are supposed to be americans, but are clearly brits? and what about bollywood copying american stuff and doing a shoddy job …like all the time??
don’t be so sensitive :) the simpsons are not one of the shows i would put on the list for shoddiness.
Check (it was a homestay, so a little different than being a hotel tourist) and check.
Maybe The Simpsons should hire me.
^__^
The Simpsons were brutal in elementry/junior high school. Weekly episodes of torment the ABD stuck in the middle of gingerbread white land… no wonder so many became coconuts.
Back then there were so few of images of SAs on the Telly. Between Apu, fakirs, Maharishi, etc. not much of a selection to choose from.
It’s much better now, but hey who am I to say? I’m a lot better off these days, not a dweeb in junior high. For once I’d like to see a genuine kick-ass SA character a la Bruce Lee in the US of A.
Lots of cargo cult and Heart of Darkness cliches in there too. What I found most off-putting was the assumption that Homer introduced the idea of overtime, benefits, insurance, etc to desi employees. I’ve heard jokes about that sort of thing from a lot of Americans, who seem to have no idea about the strict regulation of formal industrial labour in India or the power of unions in many states and who feel smug every time they hear about some overseas Nike factory getting labour and health codes. It’s the guilty-liberal version of the civilizing mission.
Everything about the Simpsons is inflated satire and cliche. Imagine if every fat, white (yellow), beer drinking, christian, male boor in America were offended by Homer. If you’re so offended…why promote it?
The other Simpsons characters are more detailed archetypes (bar owners…) But the Indian tropes just happen to coincide with the dominant American stereotypes of Indians. Funny that. And lazy, and crude.
Promote it how exactly? One must mention to critique. You are not a mind reader.
Manish,
If you had a dollar for evertime came back with “all the other characters in Simpsons are caricatures” in response to anything you have said about Apu you would have been a ricker man;)
The Col. Kurtz/Apocalypse Now spoof was very clever.
Manish,
I must add that on my recent visit to South India I saw many of the ills of modernization and globalization in operation. Besides the fact that traffic and pollution is simply unbearable, people employed in the emerging IT/Telecom sectors are working punishing hours with a 2-hour commute each way. The project deadlines are brutal on the health of young and old alike and it is also having a severe impact on the quality of family life. Yes, the economy is booming. Absolutely no questions about it, but it is coming at a big cost to the social life and the sort of laid-back lifestyle that I had grown up with.
Ohhh… the traffic and parking, you New Yorkers and we Bostonians have it easy, it is a breeze in mid-town manhattan. I promised myself that I would never complain again about traffic in the US after witnessing traffic flow in India or succumb to road rage.