Making a Stereotype - Augustman
Augustman Logo
Style
Culture
Gear
Food & Drink
Travel
Wellness
AM Select
E-Magazine
Most Trending
Making a Stereotype
Most Recent
Making a Stereotype
Most Trending
Tom Ford Highlights The Need For Flexibility Within The Fashion System
Most Recent
COS Presents Its Sustainable Denim Collection for SS21
  • Fashion
  • Watches
  • Grooming
Most Trending
Where To Find Upcycled Furniture And Homeware In Singapore
Most Recent
Mattel Has A Life-Sized Floating Baby Yoda Up For Auction
  • Design
  • Events
  • Art
  • Music
  • Film & TV
Most Trending
What’s New In The 2022 Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Most Recent
Michelin Aims To Make Its Tires Fully Sustainable By 2050
  • Tech
  • Motoring
Most Trending
Could This Be The World’s Oldest Mass Production Brewery? Egypt Thinks So
Most Recent
Blair Crichton Of Karana On Turning Jackfruit Into Meat, And Embracing A Plant-Based Future
  • Dining
  • Drinks
Most Trending
These Are Asia’s Most Stunning Mangrove Forests
Most Recent
The New Air France In-Flight Safety Video Will Make You Miss Paris And Flying
  • Travel Guides
  • Hotels & Resorts
Most Trending
Nourishing Superfoods To Add To Your Diet This 2021
Most Recent
Amp Up Your Home Gym With These Designer Fitness Equipment
  • Fitness
  • Health
Most Trending
Uncover Mindful Living with AUGUSTMAN x LIFESTYLEASIA
Most Recent
Social Entrepreneur Josh Tetrick of Eat Just Talks Sustainability And The Future of Food
  • Men of the Year
  • MVMT
  • August Mentors
  • A-Listers
  • Hit List
  • sg
    • MY
    • SG
  • Search
Making a Stereotype
Sort & Filter
Close Filter
Sort By
Date
Relevance
Filter By Category
All Categories
All
Style
Culture
Gear
Food & Drink
Travel
Wellness
AM Select
Apply
Filter By Location
singapore
All Countries
Culture
Mattel Has A Life-Sized Floating Baby Yoda Up For Auction
Culture
Where To Find Upcycled Furniture And Homeware In Singapore
Culture
The Lowdown On Zack Snyder’s Justice League And Where To Watch It On 18 March
Augustman Logo
sg
Making a Stereotype
Back
All  Style
  • Fashion
  • Watches
  • Grooming
Back
All  Culture
  • Design
  • Events
  • Art
  • Music
  • Film & TV
Back
All  Gear
  • Tech
  • Motoring
Back
All  Food & Drink
  • Dining
  • Drinks
Back
All  Travel
  • Travel Guides
  • Hotels & Resorts
Back
All  Wellness
  • Fitness
  • Health
Back
All  AM Select
  • Men of the Year
  • MVMT
  • August Mentors
  • A-Listers
  • Hit List
E-Magazine
  • Malaysia
  • Singapore
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
Sort & Filter
Close Filter
Sort By
Date
Relevance
Filter By Category
All Categories
All
Style
Culture
Gear
Food & Drink
Travel
Wellness
AM Select
Apply
Filter By Location
singapore
All Countries
Culture

Making a Stereotype

Darren Ho
30 May 2017
Article Hero Image
Trending Now
Michelin Aims To Make Its Tires Fully Sustainable By 2050
GearRead More
COS Presents Its Sustainable Denim Collection for SS21
StyleRead More
Mattel Has A Life-Sized Floating Baby Yoda Up For Auction
CultureRead More
Blair Crichton Of Karana On Turning Jackfruit Into Meat, And Embracing A Plant-Based Fu...
Food & DrinkRead More
Here's your ticket to incisive commentary and insights from the celebrity sphere. Sign up for our newsletter.

Shrey Bhargava made news this week when he put on Facebook a post about stereotyping Indians in Singapore in the great comedy Ah Boys to Men, which is embarking on its third sequel. Which reverberated around Singapore like one of the NDP fighter jets. 

It enlightened us on many other stereotypes. For example, Received English is not funny. Indian accents are. Comedy is all about funny caricatures of characters. Actors are hired not as themselves, nor what their perception of the role should be like. Most Germans are not Nazis, but in many war movies about WWII, many of them are still tasked to play Nazis. The actors in Big Bang Theory are nerdy and Melissa McCarthy never objects to the roles she gets. That last one is definitely not true, because she often talks about how movies and television stereotype fat people and in fact has campaigned against fat-shaming and for breaking Hollywood stereotypes.

The Big Bang Theory plays up racial and gender stereotypes. It's a popular situational comedy but does that make it acceptable, or good comedy?

The Big Bang Theory plays up racial and gender stereotypes. It’s a popular situational comedy but does that make it acceptable, or good comedy?

Singaporean provocateur Xiaxue slammed him for the post, writing “What did Chinese people do?! Because we find Indian accents funny we are now racist, even though so many of us wish for Tharman to be the next PM (myself included)?” This argument is what some people would call a ‘non sequitur’, also sometimes a fallacious argument. Just because one wishes for a current deputy prime minister to be the next prime minister doesn’t mean he or she is not a racist. It could mean the person recognises Mr Shanmugaratnam’s brilliance. Or a line of succession. 

The Oxford dictionary defines that as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”. That’s a strong phrase. Perhaps the right word in Shrey Bhargava’s experience would be ‘stereotype’, which it defines as “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing” – in this case, the expectation of an accented speech. One of my favourite musicals has always been Avenue Q, for a simple song in its performance. 

Accents are a way of intonation in a language usually specific to a country or region or social class. They are also the easiest way to establish affinity or distance. They have been used often in comedy to establish the cultural or lingual gulf between foreign and local. A particularly successful example of this is the classic English comedy Mind Your Language. A comedy that specifically set the premise for native accents as migrants coming into the country and wishing to integrate themselves by learning to speak the native language. 

But before we laugh at lingual accents, consider in this case the numerous Indians who live in India and across the world. That’s just how they speak. It’s not because it’s funnier or more entertaining. Implying an actor ought to just do it for artistic licence to pervade a stereotype is well, sad and rude. But don’t take it from us, take it from our former cover star, Dev Patel.

No one likes to be stereotyped. Nor does any one want to be a representative of that stereotype. Like how Shrey doesn’t want to depict all Indians as having a strong Hindi accent, I’m sure lots of Singaporean girls also don’t want to be stereotyped as ‘sarong party girls’ just because they happen to date or marry a foreign guy. Or Singaporean men who don’t want to be cast as ‘siam tiu’ or ‘tiong tiu’ kings just because they date a Thai or Chinese girl. Or that women should only earn 78 cents to every dollar a man earns. Of course, in that case, Shrey shouldn’t have done the accent. I’m not sure why he did it. He has to live with that decision.  

Aristotle, in his Poetics, pointed out that the purpose of comedy is to portray humans as social beings, to hold a mirror up to society to reflect “its ugliness” in the hope that, after we see it in comedy, we won’t repeat it again. It’s designed to be rehabilitative. Although, strangely enough, we don’t seem to learn from it as we keep demanding for racial and gender stereotypes.  

Actors like George Takei have spent their entire lives trying to destroy racial stereotypes. Yet we persist. Why?

Actors like George Takei have spent their entire lives trying to destroy racial stereotypes. Yet we persist. Why?

Over the course of the few years that I’ve worked in writing, I’ve spoken to a few actors and directors on racial stereotypes in Hollywood. Our recent cover interview with Daniel Wu touches upon the same subject, and in our interviews with various Asian actors in Hollywood (including Jackie Chan, who told us that he did his stereotype roles for his movies in the US for the money). Even worse, he was more recently slammed for stereotyping Indians in his recent film Kung Fu Yoga. Stereotypes occur because people find it entertaining, that’s true, but what we think is entertaining also changes as our culture and society changes. Just like how it was common for parents to threaten to have the police arrest me if I misbehaved as a kid, no one does that anymore. What’s acceptable, and what’s acceptably funny, evolves. Perpetuating that idea doesn’t do anybody any good.

Here’s just a thought, Singaporean to Singaporeans. A long time ago, women weren’t allowed in the workforce, or be the leads in movies and television programmes, or encouraged to be funny. But times change. And these days they change very quickly. Maybe it’s time to have a comedy show with every actor speaking in Received English. I for one would find that entertaining in Ah Boys to Men 4. 

singapore
Racism
daniel wu
Darren Ho
Talk to Me About:

Up Next For You

These Are The Most-Followed Instagram Accounts In The World
Manas Sen Gupta
Culture
After 28 Years Together, Daft Punk Are Calling It Quits
AFP Relaxnews
Culture
Want To Build The Perfect Home Office? This Is What You Will Need
AFP Relaxnews
Culture
The Most Riveting Crime Series On Netflix You Need To Watch
Manas Sen Gupta
Culture
Here's your ticket to incisive commentary and insights from the celebrity sphere. Sign up for our newsletter.
×
Where are you?
Tell us so we can display what you want to see.
  • Malaysia
  • Singapore
Malaysia Singapore
Advertise About Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions
© 2021 Copyright Augustman