Stereotyping for fun and profit
Oh, wow. This Aliens in America sitcom pilot is far worse than Apu and Fez (thanks, Jyoti):
The previews being shown on the CW Web site… have drawn criticism on the Internet saying the program perpetuates negative stereotypes of Muslims — not to mention of the clueless American Midwesterners — and that it conflates numerous, distinct Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. [Link]
Where to begin. An international exchange student would probably be middle class and just a regular guy. He’d wear jeans, not a kurta and skull cap. He might use ceremonial expressions like ‘inshallah (if God wills it),’ but he wouldn’t make a show of raising his hands to heaven.
But say you suspend disbelief and grant the show its hick-out-of-water premise. The Nordic blonde is exalted, the brown guy is the lowest man on the totem pole of foreign students and treated as a potential terrorist. A Pakistani Muslim would probably have a Muslim name, not ‘Raja.’ The azaan on the soundtrack sounds Middle Eastern, not Pakistani.
Young actor Adhir Kalyan’s accent is terrible. My 2nd gen brothers, I implore you, get some accent training, stat. My buddy’s nani will be glad to help. She runs Phonemes Anonymous for five bucks an hour over Skype.
The character’s name is Raja Musharraf, and like Pervez, he arrived unwanted 
There’s no ‘zh’ in Raja. It’s like anything foreign should be pronounced like French. Unless you’re the villain, in which case it’s with a British accent. Unless you’re French.
I enjoy subtle, intelligent humor that doesn’t require a laugh track to remind me to laugh. [Link]
Subtle and intelligent don’t even begin to cover it. And the sad thing is, the writers are probably convinced they’re helping dispel ignorance about Muslims. Interestingly, one of the intentionally racist lines in the clip is ‘Apu! Where’s my slushie?’
Imagine growing up as a white American in India. You’re stared at a lot and assumed to be ignorant, lazy and promiscuous. Everywhere you go, you get gouged on prices, even at national monuments where they refuse to believe you’re Indian. A few years later, a large TV network puts out a show about an exchange student from New York. The actor is actually an Indian guy doing a fakey American accent, and he dresses like a corn farmer. All the jokes are about how the kid is ignorant, lazy and promiscuous, just like what many people assume of you. Everybody thinks it’s hilarious.
Lighten up, you humorless PC thug, it’s just a comedy!
Here’s an edit someone on the West Coast contributed to the Wikipedia article. It lasted 25 minutes before being reverted:
This show is racially offensive to the South Asian community and Muslims at large. It is problematic to represent the South Asian community as militant, fanatical, or as props that can serve as some white nerd’s toy to boost his popularity or provide him friendship. This sitcom is a modern day minstrel show, where the “comical” friendly “terrorist” can win the hearts of a white community and an American viewership. [Link]
Silly contributor. Don’t you know the Wikipedia way is to use neutral language and link to the rant?
Here’s another scene from the show, which comes out this fall:
on Saturday, July 28th, 2007, 10:09 am in Issues, TV, Video clips › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
Manish, Raja and Raza are two different names and Raja is not too uncommon…..i personally have met one or two Rajas :) and as for the dressing, i can’t comment on a student wearing kurta, but in a cpl. of Hospitals weher i’ve worked, i’ve seen quite a few women wear Salwar-kameez to work regularly, they were all Med School students.
Raja means king and Raza means “God’s will” and “Contentment” in different contexts…..
The character’s name is Raja Musharraf, and like Pervez, he wasn’t chosen by the people :)
he he, good one Manish :-D
Wow. And the worst thing is that it’s designed for a young audience who, if they live in, say, a “non-diverse” or “not-very-diverse” area of our country, won’t have any experiences to challenge this one and will be more likely to believe/accept its crap.
To add to what musical said: I don’t know a Pakistani whose first name is Raja but there was cricket player named Rameez Raja from the 80s. But “Raja Musharraf” doesn’t sound right. A minute’s googling by the show’s writers could have fixed that… I guess it’s not important to them.
And there was a pakistani undergrad foreign-student in my classes at a US university (pre-9/11) who used to wear a kurta all the time (with jeans, if I remember correctly, and a long beard). It’s unusual, I agree, but not completely implausible.
The accent is somewhat cringe-worthy though.
But viewing the trailer in the best possible light; if the show’s message is “even if they dress funny and talk funny and pray funny, they’re still like us”, it might not be so bad.
Maybe it’s a dig at good old Pervez, mocking his officious authoritarianism, and his pretentious personal style :)
But it’s a valid combination of names. ‘Raja’ can be either a first or a last name, and occurs among Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, North Indians and South Indians etc. In Pakistan’s feudal culture, it is also a hereditary mode of address for the bigger landlord types. ‘Raja sa’ab’ also often becomes a nickname for anyone (male) who may have acted superciliously among his friends once too often.
As for the surname Musharraf, its the Father’s name that is used as the last name here . Pervez Musharraf’s Father’s name is Syed Musharrafuddin. This apparently is a common practice.
here we go again…….. ridiculous
dude i’m so glad you posted a blog on this. i was ranting over how f*%ed up this show was at my work. but no body knew what i was talking about. is there anything we can do to stop this show from airing before it, god forbid, becomes popular.
from the previews, “if we order a coffee maker and get a toaster we can return it…”
aaah!
I liked it. It was simple. I chuckled a couple of times.
“The Azaan on the soundtrack sounds Middle Eastern, not Pakistani”
Azaan in Pakistan is called out in Arabic.
The melody sounds Middle Eastern.
I don’t know Manish… it really seems like you’re grasping at straws here.
My folks have been living in the States since I was 5, I studied here till I was 10, then went to a boarding school in India till 12th grade. Came back here twice a year for a couple months each time for my vacations. Just long enough for my American accent to get refreshed.
Anyway… point being… the number of ‘ignorant’ questions I got from ‘middle class’ Indians about life in the US was ridiculous. The exchange students that we got from places like South Africa and Canada had it pretty bad too. Not for the ignorant questions, rather for getting treated like outsiders, getting stared and pointed at, getting mocked for their accents… Kids can be really mean bastards.
Your example using a white Indian would have been more accurate if you had said
All the jokes are about how people think the kid is ignorant, lazy and promiscuous, just like what many people assume of you. In the slow and tedious process of people learning of their misconceptions… much hilarity ensues.
Sure in reality the process isn’t very funny… hell it can be painful at times… but that’s what sitcoms do… take the mundane lives of 6 friends and remind us that we’re supposed to be laughing every 20 seconds.
What’s the relevance to the argument about a U.S. sitcom? It’s not a critique of Indian TV, which has its own issues.
The accent is rather interesting. I guess it could be a medium size city accent in India.
Manish is correct in pointing out that the show sounds and looks ridiculous. Who the hell outside a madrassa wears a skull cap in that part of the World. The exaggerated physical thanks to ‘Allah’ was beyond silly. I am not waiting for this show.
Ok, look, I’m an old, white, American lady. I grew up in Los Angeles, among just about every race on the planet. And I loved it. And I miss it. The ridiculous xenophobia, racism, fundamentalism I’ve seen in the past, 7 years makes me sick. I find it so silly, pointless and wasteful. I ALMOST didn’t watch the first episode of AiA, because I thought SURE it would be Amos & Andy. Now, I can’t fine tune accents, apparal, facial hair, etc. WHAT’S FUNNY, TO ME is how the writers TOTALLY bust middle American ignorance. “Apu, where’s my slushy?” is NOT funny because it’s a racist stereotype of brown people. It’s FUNNY because MANY complacent Americans, who actually BELIEVE commercial media, have NO OTHER EXPOSURE to brown people! We can’t be BOTHERED to learn about people against whom we’ve declared war, even! Correction: illegally invaded. The military recruits in schools like the one portrayed in AiA. And kids from schools like that go on to become CIA, FBI, etc. We sent our soldiers to Afganistan with an outdated and ignorant how-to-interface-with-the-locals handbook. We didn’t SPEAK THE LANGUAGES of Afganistan, Iraq, etc.! Yeah, the kid’s over-the-top, a bit. But he’s portrayed as sincere, enthusiastic, GENUINELY respectful & loving, and quite nerdy. He’s not stupid, angry, suspicious, arrogant. In other words, he’s a regular kid, a bit on the nice side, thrown in with a school full of potential predators. AND HE DISARMS THEM! For me, this show is rather a relief. I was BEATEN, after 9/11, by a bunch of teens on a city bus. Why? It was a rainy day. I was wearing long sleeves, floor-length skirt and a scarf, tightly wound around my hair and neck. They thought I was a terrorist. Can we afford to damn this show right now? CAN WE WRITE, PRODUCE, DIRECT, & PORTRAY SOMETHING BETTER? I think THAT’s a reasonable solution!