Many of us were taught a simple lesson when we were children. A lesson that Hollywood has forgotten. When you give in to bullies it will never be enough. They will demand more and more as you continue to submit to their demands.
The Federalist Papers reports,
That is what has happened to one of America’s most beloved, and longest running shows, “The Simpsons” as they have now caved in to the PC Police and decided to cut the Indian character Apu from the show.
Producer Adi Shankar, who does not work for Fox or “The Simpsons,” attempted to save the character by crowd sourcing scripts to deal with “the problem with Apu” but now, he says, it was all for naught as the character will disappear into the ethos.
“I got some disheartening news back, that I’ve verified from multiple sources now: They’re going to drop the Apu character altogether,” he told IndieWire. “They aren’t going to make a big deal out of it, or anything like that, but they’ll drop him altogether just to avoid the controversy.”
Shankar clarified that he got this news from two people who work for “The Simpsons” and a third source who works directly with creator Matt Groening.
Reached for comment on Shankar’s allegations, a representative for “The Simpsons” at Fox provided a cryptic response: “Apu appeared in the 10/14/18 episode ‘My Way or the Highway to Heaven.’” In the episode, Apu only appears in a single wide shot (below) that showed dozens of characters gathered around God.
Following Hari Kondabolu’s 2017 documentary “The Problem with Apu,” “The Simpsons” poked fun at the controversy in the ironically titled episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” that took a jab at the political correctness of the shows’ critics. Then in May, Matt Reiss, the only original writer still at the show, told Vanity Fair that the show dealt with the Apu problem back in 2016 episode, with the episode “Much Apu About Something,” and the character has “barely had a line in the past three seasons.”
Shankar believes the decision to yank the Apu character and avoid the controversy is a mistake, especially for a show known for its social satire.
Shankar accused the show of cowardice for the move.
“If you are a show about cultural commentary and you are too afraid to comment on the culture, especially when it’s a component of the culture you had a hand in creating, then you are a show about cowardice,” he said. “It’s not a step forward, or step backwards, it’s just a massive step sideways. After having read all these wonderful scripts, I feel like sidestepping this issue doesn’t solve it when the whole purpose of art, I would argue, is to bring us together.”
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