Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film

3. Animating Gandhi: Historical Figures, Asian American Masculinity, and Model-Minority Accents in Clone High

3 Animating Gandhi Historical Figures, Asian American Masculinity, and Model-Minority Accents in Clone High MTV US apologizes if we have offended the people of India and the memory of Mahatma Gandhi. January 31, 2003 During the last week of January 2003, the Indian Press attacked MTV USA programming choices and Maxim magazine’s publishing decisions by protesting the “attempt to humiliate the father of the nation,” Mohandas Gandhi .1 Indian politicians condemned MTV’s promotion of the teenage character Gandhi on the television broadcast animated series Clone High; Om Prakash Chautala, chief minister of Hayarana, and other politicians announced they would conduct a political hunger strike to protest the images in Maxim magazine , claiming it was “gross insult to the icon of non-violence” and condemned the television show, an “insult heaped” on Gandhi by MTV USA.2 According to various reports, over 150 politicians and activists staged a one-day hunger strike at Gandhi’s memorial in New Delhi to protest a character on a show that they hadn’t seen (nor were likely to because the show was not going to air in India) but only heard of through the popular grapevine of the internet and the non-resident Indian (NRI) population.3 A few days later, the U.S. division of MTV apologized to the people and nation of India about any misunderstandings concerning the depiction of Gandhi on the series Clone High.4 Why was there a controversy? After all, Apu from the television series The Simpsons had been on American television for thirteen years at the time, and although there are still discussions about his portrayal and the ramifications for South Asians and Asian Americans, his character is not a source of national Dave_Indian text.indd 60 1/8/13 10:36 AM or international protest. Clone High, like The Simpsons, was an animated series that parodied everyday life; it ran for thirteen episodes from November 2002 to March 2003 before MTV cancelled it. Although the series is not as well-known as The Simpsons, the controversy it generated is symptomatic of how racial performance becomes the dominant narrative of how Indian and Indian Americans are represented in American culture.5 The protest directed at the show centered on the issues of cultural appropriation and American ignorance (read as lack of respect) of Indian history. This ignorance results in the erasure of Indian Americans characters’ awareness of their own history in order to assimilate to American narratives. This chapter marks an addition to representations of Indians in America as new immigrants (1960s) and convenience-store owners (1980s and 1990s), such as Apu, and focuses on the roles of Indian American teens and young adults who have a more complex relationshiptoculturalandnationalcitizenship.Clone Highrepresentsthenext generation of Indian Americans—the suburban teenager and American-born Indian(desi),whobearnovisiblevocalaccentbutarestillraciallyperformedin a variation of brownface roles. The characteristics of an assimilated brownface The cast of Clone High: Mr. Butlertron, John F. Kennedy, Cleopatra, Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, and Principal Scudworth (lying down) animating gandhi · 61 Dave_Indian text.indd 61 1/8/13 10:36 AM performance are present in the roles of the model-minority immigrant and the second-generation Indian American. This chapter discusses the racializing aspect of Indian accents and brown-voice performance in relation to the depiction of the model-minority sidekick and American masculinity. In further developing the discussion of the national community of America, it is important to discuss the gendered and racialized representations of Indian American men in the media. Although the characters Gandhi and Apu have individual names and storylines, they often become representatives of Asian American men, in general. While growing up, Indian American actor Kal Penn (one of the stars of the film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle [2004]) remembers the effects of the character Apu on his everyday life: “A lot of Indian kids took a lot of heat.” So in his films, he tries to directly address and then counter the idea that every Indian American looks, acts, and speaks like Apu.6 With the exception of his role in the film Van Wilder (2002), Penn is featured in roles where he does not have an Indian accent. Scholar Richard Fung describes the stereotypes of Asian American men in popular culture: “Asian men (at least since the 1920s) have been consigned to one of two categories: the egghead/wimp, or—in what may...