https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53201667
Just read this article and don't really know what to make of it. Part of me does think it's going too far but I also accept I don't (or can't) fully understand. Does it really matter who does the voices as long as they're good at it?
I remember when I was about 14 a friend made fun of how my accent used to be when they first met me when I was 9 and had moved house and left a comprehensive to start at a new school - it was a prep school. We had not been friends at the prep school but when we both moved the next year to the same private school we became best friends. And then at 14 our friendship drifted as she found interests that I was not part of and she made different friends and became interested in boys.
I was 14 and it hurt that she was making fun of the Asian accent I had had when I was 9 - I still wonder about it occasionally today but only in the context of discussing school friendships with my children. But I genuinely think that if I had been white she would have found something else to use to achieve the desired effect - she had been a very good friend previously so clearly was not racist but she was finding new friends and maybe it was a way of trying to distance herself from our friendship by making fun of me, when previously she would have been more thoughtful when we were best friends.
So having said that, I agree with this article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-44027613 and I disagree with the statement in the article by Shilpa Davé, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film:
"It's a made-up accent that makes Apu an object of racial humour because of the way he talks rather than what he is saying. The enduring characteristic that he represents is that all Indians talk with a funny and foreign accent, compared to US accents," she told me.
I think made-up accents are used for people from lots of different countries - Europeans, Australians etc and are an object of humour. I really can't see why it is worse to do a made-up accent when it is someone with different colour skin. I find it strange that people would think someone is inferior because of skin colour but I do not find it strange that people would make fun of other people for what they consider their idiosyncrasies, whether that is accent or something else. Of course it would be kinder to not make fun of anyone but I have had tears streaming down my face with laughing so hard while people were being "gently" made fun of. What I consider "gentle" might of course be very different from what someone else considers "gentle". But I would hate to see a time where we can't laugh at ourselves and in the same spirit laugh at others.
Another good school friend (white) phoned me recently and reminded me of how in the 1980s we used to call each other racist names as a joke when we were at school. She was worried I had just gone along with it because I had felt unable to object. My recollection was that I was sure my friend was not racist so I had laughed about it and joined in because it was subversive and edgy. I had not seen her as white and me brown - we were just 2 people who both appreciated a subversive joke - probably why we were friends.
