I was going to write something about the Jim Acosta story, but I only got a few notes down before work, and then I was at work, and now it’s 2am and I’m just home and I’m buggered if I’m doing anything more than a simple paragraph here and then knocking off to bed. Maybe tomorrow.
Everything is good. Stye has gone right down, got the day off tomorrow, drinking a mug of Lady Grey right now; life is sweet. I mean, it could be better, yes, but it could always be better. When could it not be better? It always could! So might as well not worry about that. And so, accepting that it could be better, what have we got? A pretty sweet mug of Lady Grey, aforementioned, and that other stuff that I already said. Got... two pretty good lungs right here. A pumpy heart. Fingernails. They’re important for… cleaning out the dirt from under your other fingernails. That’s a simple pleasure in this world, isn’t it? Seeing some dirt under your fingernail and getting in there and getting it out. Wonderful. I’ve got eyes to see this wonderful and elegant mechanical keyboard, which is so wonderful to type upon. Ergonomic management keyboard. Oh yeah. We’ve got Peep Show, every episode of every series, on 4OD or whatever they’re calling it now. An advert every six seconds, and always the same one, for bladdy Fosters, mate, but still. Umm… I’ve got.... a family who love me. Friends who I barely make an effort with because I’m always bogged down in my own shit, but who are nevertheless always there when I need them. Flatmates who bring me tea in bed with chunks of grapefruit in, and buy me 80% cocoa dark chocolate from the shops. And a girlfriend who knows exactly how ridiculous and bizarre I secretly am (not so secretly) at like every single moment of the day, and yet still draws me cute cartoons and sends me pictures of her snuggling with her dog when she’s not with me.
And did I mention that I’ve got the day off tomorrow.
Life could be better. But it’s also pretty good.
Friday, 9 November 2018
Thursday, 8 November 2018
Day 194: Memories
Blog once a day? Stuuuuupid! I don’t wanna. Nope nope nope. I wanna lounge in bed with South Park on in the background and fiddle with photographs on my phone and browse indie games on my Switch and roll over and go to sleep. I’m too tired for this.
Ooof. OK. My eye is falling out. My eye is a putrid lumpy mess. My eye is… I have a stye. That’s what’s happened. I have a stye. There’s nothing to do but put warm compresses on it and wait for it to go down. Work today was grim though, I felt self-conscious, took me right back to days of my acne being bad. Struggling to make eye contact, scanning the faces of everyone with whom I interacted, noticing them noticing, fighting the constant desire to hide away. I told myself at the beginning of the day that I wasn’t bothered, although I’d woken up with the stye huge and inflamed and poking into my eye with a big whitehead on top of it, I’d said to myself that these things happen, I’m too old to care what people think, and mostly they don’t notice, people don’t; you’re the centre of your own world but to everyone else you’re just passing through, you barely register, if at all, and your embarrassments are tiny and external and distant to them.
But immediately once at work I was back into that mindset of the spotty kid shamefaced and looking down at the ground, keeping my head turned away from people, pretending to be distracted and avoiding conversations and closeness.
I spent years doing that growing up. Years and years. It’s no wonder I’m so screwed up now. It’s no wonder I have issues with confidence and intimacy.
My skin was always bad, so I always had to deal with the low-level anxiety and misery of knowing people could see, knowing it lowered you in their eyes, even if they felt compassionate you were still below them, knowing my pain and shame was right there plastered across my face for everyone to stare at and there was not a thing I could do about it. And I just plodded through it, tried to ignore it, tried to reframe my thoughts. But it was always there in the background gnawing away.
And then there were the times my skin got really bad, covered in pus-filled nodules and red raw and disfigured, painful to smile, worrying I would burst spots and spew yellow juice everywhere if I frowned or laughed or chewed food. And then the voices of shame ramped up into top gear, and I would do anything to get away from other people, from social events, from school, uni, work.
Part of the shame was not being able to talk about the shame, so I couldn’t just say “I don’t want to go to the party because I feel like a monster.” So I made up excuses. And friends came to know me as flaky, disappointing, a let-down. And I knew they felt that, and I knew I couldn’t say anything, and I hid in my room alone and festered.
… Hard memories tonight. My skin has been far better since going on Roaccutane when I was 25. These days the breakouts, regular though they are, are mild enough that I would have killed for them a decade ago. Yet still sometimes it’ll be a bit worse, or I’ll get a stye, or a rash, or something, and it’ll trigger that social anxiety response, and I’ll be right back there again, an ashamed and awkward creature, wanting to scuttle away along the sea floor and hide under a rock.
Our issues never truly leave us. Some scars go all the way down. I guess we just have to be as honest with ourselves as we can be, as caring, and treat ourselves with kindness on the bad days. We can’t help being the way we are.
Ooof. OK. My eye is falling out. My eye is a putrid lumpy mess. My eye is… I have a stye. That’s what’s happened. I have a stye. There’s nothing to do but put warm compresses on it and wait for it to go down. Work today was grim though, I felt self-conscious, took me right back to days of my acne being bad. Struggling to make eye contact, scanning the faces of everyone with whom I interacted, noticing them noticing, fighting the constant desire to hide away. I told myself at the beginning of the day that I wasn’t bothered, although I’d woken up with the stye huge and inflamed and poking into my eye with a big whitehead on top of it, I’d said to myself that these things happen, I’m too old to care what people think, and mostly they don’t notice, people don’t; you’re the centre of your own world but to everyone else you’re just passing through, you barely register, if at all, and your embarrassments are tiny and external and distant to them.
But immediately once at work I was back into that mindset of the spotty kid shamefaced and looking down at the ground, keeping my head turned away from people, pretending to be distracted and avoiding conversations and closeness.
I spent years doing that growing up. Years and years. It’s no wonder I’m so screwed up now. It’s no wonder I have issues with confidence and intimacy.
My skin was always bad, so I always had to deal with the low-level anxiety and misery of knowing people could see, knowing it lowered you in their eyes, even if they felt compassionate you were still below them, knowing my pain and shame was right there plastered across my face for everyone to stare at and there was not a thing I could do about it. And I just plodded through it, tried to ignore it, tried to reframe my thoughts. But it was always there in the background gnawing away.
And then there were the times my skin got really bad, covered in pus-filled nodules and red raw and disfigured, painful to smile, worrying I would burst spots and spew yellow juice everywhere if I frowned or laughed or chewed food. And then the voices of shame ramped up into top gear, and I would do anything to get away from other people, from social events, from school, uni, work.
Part of the shame was not being able to talk about the shame, so I couldn’t just say “I don’t want to go to the party because I feel like a monster.” So I made up excuses. And friends came to know me as flaky, disappointing, a let-down. And I knew they felt that, and I knew I couldn’t say anything, and I hid in my room alone and festered.
… Hard memories tonight. My skin has been far better since going on Roaccutane when I was 25. These days the breakouts, regular though they are, are mild enough that I would have killed for them a decade ago. Yet still sometimes it’ll be a bit worse, or I’ll get a stye, or a rash, or something, and it’ll trigger that social anxiety response, and I’ll be right back there again, an ashamed and awkward creature, wanting to scuttle away along the sea floor and hide under a rock.
Our issues never truly leave us. Some scars go all the way down. I guess we just have to be as honest with ourselves as we can be, as caring, and treat ourselves with kindness on the bad days. We can’t help being the way we are.
And remember that other people seriously do not give a shit about the ways we think we're ugly. They are far too concerned with their own massively important pains and woes, of which we know little, if anything. And on it goes...
Tuesday, 6 November 2018
Day 193: Gammy
Maah maah maah. Don’t want to do my writing today. My chores. My stupid chores. Whose idea was it to write one of these every nobbing day? What an idiot. Let’s fire that guy. Bring back the guy who let us sleep all day.
In fairness I have been sleeping for at least some of today. Worked the close last night, then home to finish my post, then back up for a staff meeting at 9am. Came home later and snoozed in bed, did social media for work, and just been sitting around since then. Soaking my eye, which has got infected and gammy, maybe from splashing line cleaner in it last week, maybe from rubbing it because of the line cleaner. While applying the warm compresses I’ve been watching South Park online, of which show I’ve only seen odd episodes over the past probably five years. I’ve never watched it religiously, I’m not especially drawn to it, although I always find something to appreciate when I do watch it. Anyway, I’ve been binging season 20, where they lampoon the last presidential election and gender wars and online trolling and franchise reboots cashing in on easy nostalgia. It all swirls together so cleverly, after twenty years on TV by this point it’s astounding how much energy they find to keep constantly refreshing it.
Going to have another cup of tea, do my eye again, maybe check in on Red Dead, and then get to bed, rest before a 7am delivery shift tomorrow.
Not even going to bother saying it’s OK that some days I only have the energy for this. That’s obviously true. I’m pushing myself as hard as my tired, lazy arse can handle. It’s all good.
In fairness I have been sleeping for at least some of today. Worked the close last night, then home to finish my post, then back up for a staff meeting at 9am. Came home later and snoozed in bed, did social media for work, and just been sitting around since then. Soaking my eye, which has got infected and gammy, maybe from splashing line cleaner in it last week, maybe from rubbing it because of the line cleaner. While applying the warm compresses I’ve been watching South Park online, of which show I’ve only seen odd episodes over the past probably five years. I’ve never watched it religiously, I’m not especially drawn to it, although I always find something to appreciate when I do watch it. Anyway, I’ve been binging season 20, where they lampoon the last presidential election and gender wars and online trolling and franchise reboots cashing in on easy nostalgia. It all swirls together so cleverly, after twenty years on TV by this point it’s astounding how much energy they find to keep constantly refreshing it.
Going to have another cup of tea, do my eye again, maybe check in on Red Dead, and then get to bed, rest before a 7am delivery shift tomorrow.
Not even going to bother saying it’s OK that some days I only have the energy for this. That’s obviously true. I’m pushing myself as hard as my tired, lazy arse can handle. It’s all good.
Day 192: Brand
I’ve been reading No Logo by Naomi Klein recently, inching forwards with it a few pages on the bus one day, a couple of paragraphs in bed a day or two later. No Logo is one of those books that was always on my radar, that I almost felt I didn’t need to read because it’d be preaching so obviously to the choir. I could say “Oh, like No Logo by Naomi Klein?” in a conversation with another member of the liberal intelligentsia, and they’d nod and I’d nod, and we’d both know how erudite and sophisticated we both were. And really, what’s the point of books if not to deploy their titles as reference points proving that you’re better than other people?
But I finally did pick up the book, and boy am I glad. It is a thoroughly dispiriting and depressing affair, making me burn with indignation about three times a paragraph, and this is of course the other point of reading - to become so sickened by the state of the world that you barely have the energy to finish your cup of espresso and turn on your PlayStation that day.
Here’s the thrust of the book, as I understand it, thus far:
Since the 80s companies have been far less concerned with the actual manufacture of goods, which is a dour, mucky, low-class affair, and far more concerned with branding, which involves creating a mythos around your organisation and tying the owning of your goods to a spiritual, aspirational state of being, which is something that essentially soulless CEOs and marketing executives like the idea of an awful lot.
Thus, Nike don’t sell trainers, but the very concept of human perfection achieved through sporting excellence. Apple don’t make iPhones with very fast CPUs and lots of RAM, they turn the use of computer equipment into an act of religious enlightenment. Starbucks don’t brew the best coffees, but engender environments that provide modern versions of the Greek agora or Roman forum for today’s hip youth.
This shift in conceptual focus for companies is borne out in their spending budgets. Branding, in which you foster the notion that people lead better lives because they use your, for example, garbage Lynx bodyspray, accounts for far more of companies’ marketing spend than traditional advertising, wherein you might say, Hey, buy our garbage Lynx bodyspray because it smells the best, and it’s really good value.
Maybe you pay YouTubers, who should be independent cultural critics, to be spies for you, to find our what your young key demographic are into. They say that kids are all playing this videogame called Fortnite, which includes a dance known as “flossing”. Therefore you put someone flossing in your next advert, and your audience see it and believe your brand to be part of their world, despite the fact the game, and the dance, have not a single thing to do with the product you actually sell.
Further, marketing in general accounts for far more of these companies’ overall budgets, so they have far less to spend on making the things they sell. So they close all their factories in their own countries, sack all the workers, and contract out manufacture to people in Bangladesh or China or the Philippines, who promise to fulfil orders on the cheap by erecting makeshift factories in zones to all intents outside of local jurisdictions, in which impoverished workers labour in the most horrendous conditions for paltry wages, and the big companies can say, Hey, it’s nothing to do with us, we just ask for x number of trainers to be made, for y price, and someone goes away and does it. That x trainers can only feasibly be made for y price by using essentially slave labour is something the companies don’t feel like considering.
And these trainers, made by young girls miles from their families and home villages, are utterly generic, the same as all other trainers, until that special white Swoosh gets stitched onto them, and they get put in the Nike box, and sold at the Nike megastore.
And at this end of the process, the sale of the goods, the companies all also want to spend less, so they have more left over for brainstorming cultural resonance sessions or what the fuck ever. So they cultivate the idea that retail jobs, working in Starbucks, Gap, the Apple Store, aren’t really jobs. They’re for students, for young people about to go travelling, for kids looking for some extra spending money. And as such they can pay minimum wage, offer no benefits, no job security, zero-hour contracts, forcibly discourage unionisation, treat their workers like complete pieces of shit, because none of it is that serious.
Except by the 90s, when No Logo was written, retail work had risen to account for 75% of all employment in the United States. The factories have all been closed down! There’s nowhere else for huge numbers of the population to work than in shops. The average age of service sector workers has risen, the length of time they’re spending in job roles has risen - and public sector professions are being axed all over the place, education is more expensive than ever, the cost of living is enormous, property prices are insane...
Yet, still, the big brands pretend their McJobs are more about life experience than a career, and they wash their hands of all responsibility.
They’ve fucked the developing world at the manufacturing end, they’ve fucked their own world at the retail end, and there’s nothing they can do about it, they say, because they need the money for branding exercises, for basically working really hard to create the illusion, the lie - let's call it what it is - that wearing Nike shoes makes your life any different to wearing any other black sneakers. That Lush soap is any different to any other surfactant that emulsifies oils so they can be washed away with water.
You want to know why the world is fucked? And this, admittedly is me extrapolating out my own conclusions. But the world is fucked because greedy organisations use slaves in the developing world to make tat that they trick us into buying at marked up prices, sold by members of our own society who aren’t paid nearly enough, under the pretence that the brand will make us happier, which it doesn’t. All the factories are closed. The shops pay nothing. The goods are too expensive. Everyone is struggling.
And then some loud demagogue comes along, some Trump or Farage or Bolsonaro, and yells that everyone is struggling, and it’s the fault of… the immigrants. Or the EU. Or the liberals. Or the Millenials. Or the lecturers. Or the scientists. Just as they said it was the fault of the Jews and the gypsies and the cripples in the 30s.
It never was then, and it isn’t now. It’s the fault of the private companies, the executives, the bankers. The Bullingdon Club politicians with their filthy hands down the pants of big business. It’s the fucking fault of the people with all the money! They’ve taken it! They’ve stolen it out from under us, and now they desperately need someone weak to blame.
Don't fucking buy their shit. Don't buy their lies, don't buy their brands, don't buy any of it. Reclaim your mind, your life, your world. Fight back.
It's going to get really important, really soon. Be on the right side of this.
Monday, 5 November 2018
Day 191: Verdant
We had a long relationship talk this evening. Being an adult is hard, and messy, and there are no obvious answers. But we're doing the best we can. I think that's all any of us can do.
Check this out though. It’s a picture I asked my friend Jackson to draw for the blog, and he’s knocked it right out of the park. I love his style so much, the detail, the curlicues, the flow and the verdant decomposing sense of life. I’m still not sure how I’m going to use the picture, my Blogger template doesn’t allow for header images, and my web design skills are paltry, and probably the whole blog needs an overhaul - but it’s finding the time, the energy, as with everything else.
But regardless, the artwork is fantastic. It's exactly what I was picturing when I gave him the vaguest, least helpful spec imaginable. Thankfully he somehow went and drew precisely what was in my head. Go check out his stuff on Instagram, it’s seriously the best.
Anyway, I’ve got a bed to jump in and a girlfriend to go snuggle down next to. See you for now.
Check this out though. It’s a picture I asked my friend Jackson to draw for the blog, and he’s knocked it right out of the park. I love his style so much, the detail, the curlicues, the flow and the verdant decomposing sense of life. I’m still not sure how I’m going to use the picture, my Blogger template doesn’t allow for header images, and my web design skills are paltry, and probably the whole blog needs an overhaul - but it’s finding the time, the energy, as with everything else.
But regardless, the artwork is fantastic. It's exactly what I was picturing when I gave him the vaguest, least helpful spec imaginable. Thankfully he somehow went and drew precisely what was in my head. Go check out his stuff on Instagram, it’s seriously the best.
Anyway, I’ve got a bed to jump in and a girlfriend to go snuggle down next to. See you for now.
Saturday, 3 November 2018
Day 190: Scores
Tired from work, from writing late last night, from fighting to get that post done when the thoughts were fizzling and evaporating somewhere between mind and screen. Stumbling after them in the dark, grabbing their tails, forcing them back into existence. Forcing myself through the misery of writing so badly, of the words being such a malformed betrayal of the initial impulse to write. Forcing myself to finish a draft that made no sense, that was so clumsy and hesitant, that simply did not work. The night getting late, seeing the time, grabbing tufts of my hair and wanting to scream that I flat out could not do it, that I could not get a post up, that I would have to write just a single sentence saying that I'd failed and I had nothing for today.
...But then doing star jumps in my room to get the blood pumping. Making another mug of tea. Slapping myself back awake and grinding out a second draft that made slightly more sense. Tidying it up, trimming it, making it as presentable as possible. Publishing it to the blog, letting out a sigh of relief, and then going to Red Dead for half an hour to unwind my frazzled brain before bed.
Riding my horse far out into the wilderness, watching the ground change beneath me, the rustling of the grass. Listening to the wind soughing the trees. Seeing silhouettes of trees on distant cliff tops, stark and lonely with the moonlight shining through them. A gully far below me. Unseen water flowing in the dark.
Then PlayStation off, six hours sleep, and up for a Saturday open. I'm stuck working a perpetual Saturday open. It always seems to be Saturday open, I'm trapped in purgatory, or in an American TV show where the twist is that they're all really in purgatory. Hey, American TV show writers - come up with better twists!
And now I'm home again, feeling flat and low. But I don't need to be low. It was so tough getting that post finished last night, yet I managed it. If I'm going to focus so intently on the times I fail - and I am, I am going to focus on that - then it's only right, only fair, that I also focus on the times I succeed.
If you keep track of all the goals your team concedes, but not the ones they score, well, then you have no idea how the match really went, do you?
Except, of course, the problem with depression is it finds ways to discount the positives. "That goal doesn't count," it says. "You were offside. You were lucky. It won't happen again." Or else it says the other team are too easy to be worth winning against. "Happy about beating those amateurs? Get real. They're awful. To have only won by the amount you did is embarrassing. It's actually more like failure..."
But that's depression. We know this. I know this. It is the nature of the beast.
I've been playing better recently. That's all that needs to be said. I've been improving. I've scored 190 goals in 190 days, and that's pretty special. Some have been halfway-line belters; some I've walked in after tussles in the box.
But they've all gone in.
Take the victories. Appreciate them for what they are. Keep turning up, let the result be what it may, and remember to enjoy the game for its own sake. It's all just a laugh on a Saturday in the rain, eh?
And make sure to rest. Rest is important. It's what I'm going to do now.
...But then doing star jumps in my room to get the blood pumping. Making another mug of tea. Slapping myself back awake and grinding out a second draft that made slightly more sense. Tidying it up, trimming it, making it as presentable as possible. Publishing it to the blog, letting out a sigh of relief, and then going to Red Dead for half an hour to unwind my frazzled brain before bed.
Riding my horse far out into the wilderness, watching the ground change beneath me, the rustling of the grass. Listening to the wind soughing the trees. Seeing silhouettes of trees on distant cliff tops, stark and lonely with the moonlight shining through them. A gully far below me. Unseen water flowing in the dark.
Then PlayStation off, six hours sleep, and up for a Saturday open. I'm stuck working a perpetual Saturday open. It always seems to be Saturday open, I'm trapped in purgatory, or in an American TV show where the twist is that they're all really in purgatory. Hey, American TV show writers - come up with better twists!
And now I'm home again, feeling flat and low. But I don't need to be low. It was so tough getting that post finished last night, yet I managed it. If I'm going to focus so intently on the times I fail - and I am, I am going to focus on that - then it's only right, only fair, that I also focus on the times I succeed.
If you keep track of all the goals your team concedes, but not the ones they score, well, then you have no idea how the match really went, do you?
Except, of course, the problem with depression is it finds ways to discount the positives. "That goal doesn't count," it says. "You were offside. You were lucky. It won't happen again." Or else it says the other team are too easy to be worth winning against. "Happy about beating those amateurs? Get real. They're awful. To have only won by the amount you did is embarrassing. It's actually more like failure..."
But that's depression. We know this. I know this. It is the nature of the beast.
I've been playing better recently. That's all that needs to be said. I've been improving. I've scored 190 goals in 190 days, and that's pretty special. Some have been halfway-line belters; some I've walked in after tussles in the box.
But they've all gone in.
Take the victories. Appreciate them for what they are. Keep turning up, let the result be what it may, and remember to enjoy the game for its own sake. It's all just a laugh on a Saturday in the rain, eh?
And make sure to rest. Rest is important. It's what I'm going to do now.
Day 189: Let's have an argument about Apu
You’ve seen the rumours that Apu is going to be written out of the Simpsons, right, due to the character’s problematic nature as an Indian-American stereotype?
And I presume, like all my other friends on social media, you’re up in arms about this. You feel it’s a step too far for political correctness, that it’s needless censorship of something you love, taking way too seriously a show that at heart has always been irreverent and intended to shock.
What about Groundskeeper Willie? you cry. What about Cletus and Comic Book Guy and that Italian chef? It’s only a silly cartoon! Where will the crusade end?
Well, sorry, buddies, but I’m not really with you here. I agree in part, but there’s a real issue of privilege that you’re not seeing, and it makes me sad.
Comedy is a weapon. As such it must be wielded with responsibility. Irreverence should be used to tear down that which we revere too highly, to remind ourselves that those who would position themselves as gods also do smelly shits out of their bums, that organisations that attempt to rule the world are just as prone to buffoonery and incompetence as any of us. Humour should be used to address power imbalances, to level the playing field.
And, no, there is no topic that should be out of bounds, in my eyes - but the more emotive the topic, the more responsibility the comedy writer holds to navigate the issue adroitly.
Make fun of school shootings, is what I’m saying, but not of parents grieving for children killed in school shootings. Mock Catholic priests, don’t mock the boys that they rape.
I mean, we all know this. It is rudimentary stuff. You can find the funny in any topic, but sometimes you have to work really hard.
And when it comes to Apu? I think too often they haven’t been working hard at all.
I get that the issue isn’t cut-and-dry. These things exist on the spectrum. At one end you have things that are clearly not appropriate. The Simpsons may love to stereotype, but they don’t have a recurring black character who deals drugs on street corners and eats chicken wings and robs people at gunpoint. We can all agree that that would only reinforce negative stereotypes. We can all agree that that would be fucking racist.
Then up at the other end of the spectrum you have Groundskeeper Willie, and what amounts to a silly joke among equals. Scottish people don’t have a hard time of it in America - Americans creepily idolise the Scots, scurry to find any vague connections to Scotland in their own ancestry, love the idea of a country with history dating back more than a few centuries (disregarding that of the indigenous folk the current Americans starved and massacred and cheated out of their land). The portrayal of Willie is offensive, totally denigratory, and utterly harmless.
It’s power balance, see? The scales are equal, and it’s like banter between friends.
And then you have Apu. Where does he sit on the spectrum? For me, somewhere in the middle. He’s become a rounded character (although he wasn’t early on), many storylines have treated him with respect, there have been great jokes by him, at our expense (like when he’s referred to, next to a “Christian” and a “Jew” as “miscellaneous”, and he replies: “Hindu! There are 700 million of us.”)
I like him. He’s one of the family. He is a living person now, and to phase him out of the show would be to do him a disservice.
But the power balance is all wrong. You and me see the funny accent, the catchphrases, the octuplets, and believe it all to be, like with Groundskeeper Willie, friends ribbing friends.
But it’s not about us. We are not in a position to know.
Have you ever been spat at in the schoolyard and told to fuck off back to the Kwik-E-Mart? Have you ever been yelled at to get a bath because you stink of curry, or because your skin is the colour of shit?
No? Then how can you know whether a representation of Indo-Americans is problematic? It is not your problem. You don’t get it. If the portrayal of Apu cannot hurt you in any single way then how can you say whether the portrayal is hurtful?
Do you see this? Do you understand this?
Sometimes your viewpoint is simply not the important one. Sometimes something that brings you some pleasure brings more people great pain. You have to step outside yourself and into their shoes, and think about it from their point of view.
A lot of Indo-Americans have stated they appreciated having Apu on their screens growing up, appreciated the exposure he gave to them - that it was nice to have even a stereotype of themselves up there as part of the conversation, even if he was voiced by a white guy putting on an accent unlike the way they really spoke. That the fact he evolved into a deeper character and how he entwined with the Simpsons family furthered race relations in the 90s.
But so many have also talked about childhoods with bullies daily shouting “Thank you, come again.” Of daily minor hate crimes all revolving around the one reference point that all schoolkids knew. That they still had to endure growing up where the most prominent figure like themselves on TV was a servile, penny-pinching convenience store owner who sold dodgy, out-of-date hot dogs and spoke in that voice designed by white people to make other white people laugh. The same voice white casting directors keep insisting Aziz Ansari and Hasan Minhaj and Kal Penn and Aparna Nancheria and every other Indo-American actor puts on in their auditions for cab drivers and store owners and whatever comedic sidekick role has been written for them, despite none of them talking like that.
I don’t want to see Apu written out of the Simpsons (even though it barely matters, as the show hasn’t been close to relevant for over a decade). But I think it’s healthy to have the conversation about it. To not be scared about bringing these points into the open. To listen to opposing points of view, and really think about them, and allow for the possibility that we may have been insensitive, callous, confused.
This isn’t a battle of extremes, of one right and wrong. It’s a discussion, messy, uncertain, and one we are so lucky to be able to have. Don’t be offended that people are offended at something that you yourself are not. Be cool, be open, consider alternatives, and above all stay civil. You’ll be surprised where the journey can take you..
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