Apu’s Brown Voice
- In Apu’s Brown Voice: Cultural Inflection and South Asian Accents, by Shilpa Dave, there is a particular discussion about the accents of the South Asian population and more specifically the term brown voice. The term brown voice is explained as a trait that the South Asian population has that implies that they are foreign, and this trait is their accent or voice. To further explain this, we are given an example of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from the series, The Simpsons. He explains that in the show, there is a huge emphasis on how different he is compared to the other citizens and part of the reason for that is the accent he has. This accent is what creates that cultural difference and is what set Apu is a different category than the other citizens that surrounded him in the animation series.
- “Apu’s flawed attempt to impersonate an American with a celebrity accent attaches him to an American cultural history and hence (in his mind) to an American cultural citizenship” (315). He explains this particular scene where Apu attempts to impersonate an American accent and he personally believes that he was able to do it successfully, which makes him believe that he is similar to everyone else because of his ability to do the accent. “But to the audience (including me) this is a humorous scene because we know Apu is not culturally American. In fact when we see Apu onscreen we expect him to speak English with an accent, namely what we have been taught to think of as an “Indian accent”” (315). This explains how people expect Apu to have a particular distinction that makes him foreign, which is his accent. This shows the term brown nose which was brought upon in the article. The audience is automatically expecting him to have an accent because they know that his ethnic identity is different from the remaining characters.
- The focused term for this article was “brown voice” which portrays the effect an accent has on the perception of someone. He explains that when someone has an accent, there is an automatic implication about that person being foreign, which he is able to show us through the character on The Simpsons, Apu.
- This article reminded me of the the episode of All-American Girl that we watched in class. In this episode, her mother believed that there was a cultural difference between her and the remainder of her family. In this show, her family sees her as being “too American” due to her actions that she portrays in the show. In a similar way, South Asians are being portrayed by the community as foreign based only on their accent.
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