Season 32 of The Simpsons will premiere on Fox this Sunday, the first new episode to air since the show announced that it would no longer have white actors play non-white characters (a decision that has not been totally popular among the show’s stars), and Variety says that the new policy is already resulting in a noticeable change for one Springfield resident—specifically Carl Carlson, Homer’s co-worker at the nuclear plant. Carl was voiced by Hank Azaria for the vast majority of the show’s run, but on Sunday’s episode (“Undercover Burns,” a timely Undercover Boss reference) he’ll be voiced by Alex Désert from Better Things, Becker, Boy Meets World, and some shows that start with a different letter. He’s also done voice work on Spider-Man: Maximum Venom on DisneyXD and Adult Swim’s Mr. Pickles.
Variety doesn’t know if Désert is Carl’s permanent voice actor or if he’ll be voicing other characters on the show, but you’d think Fox and the Simpsons producers wouldn’t bring someone in just for one episode and run the risk of making this casting change seem arbitrary. Either way, Variety says Dr. Hibbert—one of the other Black characters on the show, traditionally voiced by Harry Shearer—does appear in the episode, but he doesn’t say anything (an approach that the show has previously used to avoid recasting Apu).
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Oh, no! Not Lenny!
Heheheheh. Poo.
“Are Poo and Ass taken?”
My eye! My doctor said I wasn’t supposed to get New Carl’s voice in it!
He’s a war hero.
Well then, let’s decorate him!
There’s been a lot of buzz around Lenny.
now this REALLY applies
An Undercover Boss parody as the season premiere jesus this show is so tiredddddd
It’s about time SOMEBODY stuck it to Undercover Boss!
They must have gotten tired of socking it to that Spiro Agnew guy.
Well they had to stop sooner or later, because in the year 3001 his image gets rehabilitated!Well, his image from the neck down, anyway.
I can’t wait till they do an episode on this Face Book thing.
“They have Internet on computers now?”
“Me neither!”
I’d forgotten Simpsons was still happening until this article.
Not as tired as people calling it tired without actually watching it.
I’ve been very apologetic toward the show due to the fact I didn’t actually start watching it until season 20. There is a very consistent and safe level of quality that the show’s later seasons have — but it’s embarrassing that they haven’t put in the effort to try and experiment more given the resources and legacy they have
I maintain that this is incredibly dumb, and doubly dumb for Carl, who was adopted and grew up in Iceland.
…because adoption makes you change your race?
Because he’s Icelandic, not African-American. The rationale for making this change just seems off as applied to Carl; it made at least a modicum of sense as applied to Dr. Hibbert or Lou.
He’s African-Icelandic-American.
I’m legit not sure if you’re trolling or not.Icelandic is a nationality, not a race. People who trace their ancestry to Iceland may be considered Icelanders in terms of ethnicity, but given that Carl is adopted that isn’t the case. In the same way “American” is a nationality, not strictly speaking a race. Carl is a person of color who speaks with an American accent. He is most appropriately playing by someone who meets that description.
Not sure if trolling or not, but there is no such thing as a race.It’s a purely social construct, based on cultural categories and arbitrary physical traits thresholds. You are the “race” that people assign to you, and/or that you assign to yourself, which means that, yes, it can be none, it can be multiple, it can be disputed, it’s 100% bullshit any way. Icelanders didn’t pop out of the ground in iceland, making them some different race from, say, senegaleses popping out of the ground in senegal.An african adopted (young) in norway will be more norwegian (in mannerisms, accent, cultural beliefs) than a swede. If that even means something.Seriously, this essentialization of “races” in the US is distressing. If you people don’t stop naturalizing these human inventions at some point, you’ll never ever ever solve those racialism issues.
We’re doing everything we can to continue to reify race. Because racists made race “real” to people, that’s the justification for the supposed anti-racists to double down, and make those arbitrary, false classifications even more central to our identity and institutions.You’re right that this will not help us to solve these issues. It will only make them worse. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now.
No. Violence and marginalisation makes race issues worse.
Stop that and then you can worry about if black voice actors are getting jobs for the right reasons.
Money’s also a purely social construct. It still matters.
Except that money has a function of exchanges facilitator. Racialism brings nothing. There is zero reason to support this construct.And social constructs usually get their own word when they get recognized as such. We speak of gender when we mean the cultural category extrapolated over our sexual (almost-)dichotomy. The racial construct is even more nonsensical than our naturalized masculine/feminine traits, yet people keep using “race” as some unquestionable natural category and essentialized, determined identity. It’s infuriating and saddening.It’s past time to deflate these beliefs and put them at their right place. You can’t keep playing hutu versus tutsi forever, at some point you have to reject the demonstrably false framework instead of waging the war in accordance to it. Inventing an arbitrary opposition once doesn’t mean it has to stay legitimate forever.
True. But the time to reject the framework is not when the victims of it continue to suffer – and simply removing the framework (if that were even an option) would not undo the damage done.
Ass has to be kicked with urgency. But framework redefinition is the only way to keep the kicked ass from coming down again.We can multitask.
How do you tell a cop “there is no such thing as a race” when you can’t breathe.
The exact same way you “tell it” to a nazi when he’s shoving you into a train car. You’re muffled, you die, and in what way does it make him correct ? WW2 allies should have racially split their own societies between jews and non-jews because of the war against antisemitism ?You can fight those people without endorsing their worldviews. It’s precisely a fight about the worldview. It goes through culture, education, collective beliefs as much as -actually more than- it can go through counter-violence. Because these are the roots. It’s the same thing as fighting islamism. You don’t do it through islamophobia, by endorsing the view that islam is incompatible with western societies, and justifying a war of religion (or some so-called “clash of civilization”). You do it by drawing the frontline perpendicular to the islamism/islamophobia conflict, and pitting people who accept each other’s religious differences against people who wish to eradicate those differences. You pit both sides’ “this is not a big deal” against both sides’ “this is a legitimate ground for ethnic cleansing”. You re-frame the perceived, constructed, artificial antagonism instead of fueling its myth. Else what, any cult’s belief enforced by violence and oppression is validated and should be adopted by all sides, from the moment it refuses dialogue ? Might is right ?
The burden of worldview/systemic change doesn’t rest with the victims of racial violence and marginalisation. While society’s leaders benefit from racism, it won’t end – your mythical construct will remain very real. Racism can only begin to end when it’s victims receive justice. Then we can realistically talk about deconstructing the false framework of race.
Absurd dissociation. If I’m accused of being a reptilian under a human skin (or of being a mere human by people who fancy themselves reptilians), I’d prefer this lie to be denounced than having a charter define human/reptilian relations. It’s not a game that could be played and won, the game itself is a loss. Of course people will rank “races” if they believe in them as essentialist, determinist sets of aptitudes. Have a Jane Elliott split your classroom into blue eyes and brown eyes, you then better end the experiment by saying it was a false dichotomy rather than endlessly argue how each should be treated while maintaining the lie. But in a global case, everyone is guilty of perpetuating the lie. Society isn’t just made of “victims” and “profiteering leaders”. It’s made of all the inbetweens who solidify collective beliefs. It’s made of the sum of discourses, representations, illustrations, attitudes – the cultural common sense, the beliefs most shared among subcultures. And every each person participating in that representation reinforces it. Be it a white public servant, a black civil rights militant, a politician, a journalist, a cop, a scientist, a teacher, an artist, a racist, an “antiracist”, a racist-in-the-other-direction, your uncle, your grandma. Above all, scientists, and their relays in society.What you’re saying is that you should support this belief in distinct “races” (through reappropriation, language practice, bureaucratic categories, etc) until equality will be achieved between these fictional, fantasmatic categories. That it’s up to the leaders-who-benefit-from-it to start debunking it. It’s not. Common knowledge is not determined by leaders. Each person whose language or discourse propagates and reinforces racialist beliefs is an accomplice to institutional racism. And the needed changes in common knowledge only comes from ordinary, day-to-day, dissemination. Cultural beliefs have to change. They do in many domains. Gender, ecology, astronomy, etc. Knowledge circulates horizontally more than vertically. Through you and through me and through us.You can’t establish moral rules without it.
Unrealistic expectations. Humans, either by nature or nurture, at the very least categorise that which is different. Whether it’s one person compared to another, one family compared to another or one culture compared to another. Combine this with human greed, aggression and other negative emotions and thoughts and persecution is the evident result.
What you’re suggesting is a utopian ideal that I can agree with in theory, but going by history is incompatible with human behaviour and so therefore impractical.
Human history is one of racism; of one group treating another negatively
based on how they look or what their culture does or what resources
they have. If the word “race” is the problem for you, perhaps try substituting it with
“culture” or “cultural background”, it’s essentially the same thing.
What would be more realistic is for humans to recognise we have different cultures and work together with them for mutual benefit. This already happens so clearly we’re capable of living peacefully with a cultural (read: racial) framework. As you say “we can multitask”. In this regard, the framework isn’t to blame for racism, the way people use it is.
As R3507mk2 says above (far more concisely than me) “the
time to reject the [race] framework is not when the victims of it continue to
suffer – and simply removing the framework (if that were even an option)
would not undo the damage done.”
People are being persecuted, oppressed, hurt and killed because of their
cultural background and, yes, how they look. The persecutors are to blame. Those who stand by and do nothing are also to blame, though to a lesser extent. The victims aren’t. Just because they may identify as a particular race doesn’t mean they want or are inviting persecution because of it.
And of course it’s not “up to the leaders-who-benefit-from-it to start debunking it”. In a democracy it’s up to the people to vote in leaders that have a similar worldview. You show me a leader that can give victims of racism justice and promote cultural cooperation and I’ll happily vote for them. Maybe then we can start to discuss how this race thing isn’t really helping.
Unrealistic expectations. Humans, either by nature or nurture,See, you’ve already defeated your point here. Because we’re talking of something cultural, and culture isn’t determined. It varies and evolves in content. And racism (in the racialist sense) isn’t widespread, it’s a theory that appeared in the western world along with early genetics and the scientific classification of animals. It’s a specific belief of DNA-based mental attitudes and aptitudes correlated with phenotypical traits, classified, depending on versions, in 4 or 8 types usually. Among which “white people” and “black people”. The “negroid race” if you want to endorse racialist pseudoscience.It makes for a specific type of discrimination, because it is anchored in an idea of physical, natural, determination. For instance, four “races” of humans separated by qualitative barriers, and for each one the natural limitations of abilities that cannot be overcome. “Scientifically proven”. A natural order, clean, well sorted, purifiable (woe to the half-breed disrupting that godly natural order).Clanic perceptions of superiority are widespread, cultures perpetuate themselves through ethnocentrism (the idea, reproduced through education and socialization, that we do it right and they do it wrong). And you get many variations of it. But racialism is very specific. Even tribes that name themselves “the people” and define others as savages (“other tribes are cannibals”) and enemies do maintain commercial and genetic exchanges with them. There is an identity flexibility and permeability that is absent from the rational materialism of racism. You can have negotiation, integration or assimilation with culturalism. Racism only allows for segregation, discrimination or genocide. And pretends to be based not on opinion or tradition (which can always be questioned and debated) but on the objectivity of science.Common language uses “racism” (as “discriminatory attitude”) for anything, from classism to culturalism. All of these are bad, but none go as far as racialism (“racism” based on the belief in races). What you will always have, is 1) among assholes : intimate circles of solidarity and empathy beyond which otherness gets progressively dehumanized, 2) among more people : social distinction based on taste, subcultural signifiers, ideologies. Functionally, culturalism (a variation of that, at the larger scale of fictional “cultural” unities) does borrow quite a bit to racialism, with various forms of cultural determinism (“they can never ever learn to live our way”). But it’s still one step above, a non-racist culturalist can discuss, for instance, the age at which he assumes cultural programming to be definitive, and admit wobbly thresholds, whereas a racist traces material frontiers. The fight against culturalism and racialism isn’t the same.Also cultural are the contours of the imagined categories : the choice of relevant trait. After WW2, most of Europe has ceased to care about who is or isn’t jewish. Only in extreme-right texts is this label considered worth mentioning. People usually don’t care to know if a celebrity is jewish, or homosexual. In the 1930s, it was an important trait, used by many more writers and readers to define whether they belonged to the same group or to another. The thing is, these things do change, with time, events, education (formal and informal). Propaganda can invent lines of separation through various myths and markers, knowledge can disqualify them, and this is illustrated by their variety across time and regions. We don’t fear or sacralize twins, we don’t presume that redheads are satanic. Or that people who were born with a caul are sorcerers. We don’t stigmatise people who were born out of marriage. There’s just a lot of ways to create alterity that vanish and appear (the current trend is to overload “generations” with meaning and identity, and a few years ago “blondes are dumb” was the rage). Before the rise of nazism a lot of people didn’t know they were supposed to be jews. For most people around here, the distinction between catholic and protestant “identity” has ceased to be the huge deal that it was in middle ages. And even your racial color belief is local, many regions or subcultures have eschewed this myth (in most of europe, the term “race”, loaded with deterministic folklore, has been removed from administrations). So yes, there is a large plasticity in these plays on identity, few of which are as strict as the myth of “race”. Your claim that nothing ever changes, or that changes have no effect, is simply historically and anthropologically false. And it leads to simply ceasing to combat racism, because, hey, if it never changes anyway…
Again, you don’t provide a practical way to dismantle the race framework while there are injustices carried out because of it.
Until everybody does, we have to live with it.
It’s a debunked, false scientific theory like flat earth of phlogiston. Teach basics of genetics in school, and have a lesson on race theories. Stop using that notion (you people are so good at blanking/beeping out taboo words, such an n__, c__, f__, etc, what’s the point of erasing an N word and keeping the R word that implies it ?). Keep correcting people who use that term as a descriptive, reminding them that it’s not a real thing. Stop using it yourself. Stop using it in administration. Stop assuming (and passively letting people assume) that skin color (from which thresholds? one drop rule?) share the same subculture. It’s not up to “someone” in particular. How has the notion of gender integrated common knowledge ?
How come so many other countries have got rid of that administrative notion, and made the word virtually disappear from “common sense” public discourses ?
____
Edit:
Also, on topic : Cross the line, don’t reinforce it. Don’t increase black actors’ voiceovers by splitting the roles along color lines. Simply have many more black actors doing white character voices.
It’s a debunked, false scientific theory like flat earth of phlogiston. Flat earthers aren’t killing round earthers.
Teach basics of genetics in school, and have a lesson on race theories. This is already happening.
Stop using that notion (you people are so good at blanking/beeping out taboo words, such an n__, c__, f__, etc, what’s the point of erasing an N word and keeping the R word that implies it “You people”? Do you assume I’m American? Do you think race and racism is only relevant in America? It isn’t. It exists where I’m from and all around the world. Probably where you’re from too, though you may call it culturalism or nationalism, it’s essentially the same thing and is universal.
And the N word is currently offensive. The word race currently isn’t.
Keep correcting people who use that term as a descriptive, reminding them that it’s not a real thing. Race may not be real, but killing in the name of is.
Stop using it yourself. Stop using it in administration. We’re talking about it, so the word gets used because it’s relevant to the discussion.
Stop assuming (and passively letting people assume) that skin color (from which thresholds? one drop rule?) share the same subculture.
Try reasoning that with a white supremist.
It’s not up to “someone” in particular. How has the notion of gender integrated common knowledge ? As I clarified, it’s up to everyone. That’s how it becomes common knowledge.
How come so many other countries have got rid of that administrative notion, and made the word virtually disappear from “common sense” public discourses ? Because these “other countries” aren’t intrinsically multicultural with significant proportions of immigrants. Every country that is (typically colonised ones): USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. have racism. And the USA had slavery based on race. It’s relevant to these countries today, which you’d know if you lived in one of them.
Cross the line, don’t reinforce it. Don’t increase black actors’ voiceovers by splitting the roles along color lines. Simply have many more black actors doing white character voices. With more black executives and creators this will happen. But it’s not happening nearly enough yet, and they have to get to the studio without getting pulled over by the cops for no reason.
Oh, well there is a reason. But you would say “it doesn’t exist” as if that solves it.
Look, I’m going to preempt your reply. Ultimately you still don’t provide a practical way to dismantle the race framework while there are injustices carried out because of it. Logically, let alone ethically and morally, if people are treated with injustice because of the color of their skin, i.e. race, then they have a human right to seek justice and claim compensation based on how they were treated, i.e. with racism. Doesn’t matter if race isn’t biologically real. It’s effects are real. Gods aren’t physically real but billions of people get real comfort from the concept. Race as a concept is real. It’s effects are physically real. You using academia to stop racism is like bringing a book to a gun fight. At best you’re naive. At worst you’re willfully contrarian and not helping.
You’ll never change anything as long as you condone the notion of race and treat it as a thing. You’re basically telling people “cease to treat differently that other species that has infiltrated mankind, because they have rights too”. You’re condoning essentialism and a discrete partition of mankind. Feminists have understood the issue long ago, and have successfully split the notion of sex and gender. You’re way behind that, and, because of that, your society will keep dragging behind in terms of racist violence, physical and symbolic. I’m from countries (plural, I hop between three) that have all a high quantity of foreigners for very different reasons (ex-colonial empire, international hub, EU airlock) and deal differently with multiculturalism, with each their own forms of ethnicism and xenophobia. And there are issues, of different kind. Yet nothing in the scale of what takes place in the USA. Because approaches of “race”, citizenship and identity are very different. The levers to fight racism are much better positioned – the biological myth is essentially dissipated, “race” is a somewhat offensive word (still, we have also a very different approach to offensive words than the USA, we don’t toy with first letters or beep them out as if it changed anything, we use them or not), and pointing out that a culturalist argument amounts to racialism is, itself, inhibiting. Thing is, using this notion it’s simply your cultural habit, and you’re unable to think outside of it. You don’t see the role of a cultural environment and collective representations, which would be too global for you, you simply see it as a row of bad guys to squish. But it’s just a sisyphean rage against symptoms. The perpetuation of actions is a corollary of the perpetuation of beliefs. And you choose to fight the former without paying the slightest attention to the latter. You’re in for some confusing decades. But have fun.
When you’re in a fight for your life against people who are using a “debunked, false scientific theory” for their own gains, telling them “race isn’t a thing” isn’t going to do shit.
You’re talking about changing hearts and minds of entire populations. This takes time and a concerted effort by everyone. This is being undermined by evil people. You keep bringing up WW2. A war was fought to end the same evil. The war continues in various ways around the world.
And you still don’t provide a practical way to dismantle the race framework while there are injustices carried out because of it. To misquote Charles Dickens, “Money talks and bullshit walks.”
You’ve got nothing, so move along.
“If you people don’t stop naturalizing these human inventions at some point, you’ll never ever ever solve those racialism issues.”Ah yes, the ol’ “if you just ignore racism it’ll go away” take. That is a very bad and dumb take.
Denouncing racialism for what it is (an outdated scientific fallacy) is less “ignoring racism” than fully endorsing and promoting racialist categories is.When people start burning “witches” at the stake, you denounce the fact that witches are not a thing. You don’t go legitimize the belief in witchcraft by endorsing this label and negotiating on this premise. Racism exists. Races don’t. Ignoring how deeply racialist views permeate “common sense” is the tragically bad and dumb take here.The “race” word itself has to go. It’s the first step (of many, because it then pops up indirectly through culturalist beliefs, etc). But I’m really baffled by how entrenched the “race” idea still is in US discourses, representations and administration, and how people keep defending it.You want to fight racism ? Start by scientifically debunking it. Else, it’s just myths versus myths.
I liked it better when I thought Icelanders popped out of the ground in Iceland.
Fun fact about Brodka, he thinks that police only kill people because they resisted arrest, defends blackface, and thinks BLM is run by “white anarchists”. I recommend hitting the dismiss button on his comments.
Confusing race with nationality. That’s a paddlin’.
He is still of African descent. It doesn’t matter where he was born you numpty.
Because he’s Icelandic, not African-American.
He’s still a black man though. Iceland or not he’s still not a white guy.
Next thing you’ll be hearing they got black guys in like England!
Because who cares other than sad people who need fake outrage to justify their pathetic existence?
No, race does not determine voice. It’s an incredibly racist thing to suggest otherwise. Culture determines voice. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11153874/If you are suggesting that black people have something different about the shape of their mouths or vocal chords, you are edging toward some truly racist shit.We are getting dangerously close to saying there is only one way to be black and that would be horrible. It’s OK to be black and culturally white. Or black and culturally Japanese. Or white and culturally Japanese. Or Japanese and culturally Swedish. We need to stop stigmatizing assimilation. My family did it. If I moved to Korea with young kids, I’d try to get them assimilated as thoroughly as possible.Black people from England are more English than “black.” That’s OK. My father’s family were jews. They didn’t sound like stereotypical jews and that’s OK.
You’ve taken about 35 massive leaps to get where you ended on your diatribe. The fictional character of Carl Carlsson is depicted largely as an African-American man. The Sage of Carl suggests that he was adopted and spent some time in Iceland, but there are also multiple episodes that show him as a child in Springfield having pre-teen and child interactions with Homer, Moe and Lenny. If you are recasting the voice of Carl to be a person of color choosing an African-American man is the appropriate choice. Choosing an Icelandic person would not be. Suggesting the show should have kept a white American actor as the voice because they didn’t choose an Icelandic person it contributing to the problem.If you were creating an entirely new character with no background or existing screentime and chose to cast the character as a person of color with an Norse accent of some sort, you could absolutely do that and have a rich cultural history for that character. But Carl Carlsson has consistently been depicted as person of color with an American accent.
Yeah, I’m not sure you need to recast the character at all. He has a very neutral general american accent. Carl’s voice is unique on the show and there’s nothing offensive or out of place about it.Hank is one of the main three male voice actors the Simpsons have had in place since season 1. Those three guys gave us a city full of characters which was great for a then, low budget show. Glad that they didn’t make a town full of nothing but white people. Honestly amazed that the only accent anyone is offended by is Apu.But black people can sound like white people and Carl seems to fit considering he lives in Springfield and he hangs out with a bunch of white dudes at a bar.
Hank Azaria has said he will not voice Apu or Carl anymore so the alternative is no more Carl. So your opinion aside, this is what it is and Alex Desert is a talented voice over artist. Let’s just enjoy something new and stop trying to bend over backwards to justify white people voicing characters of color.
who is enjoying this? does anyone even watch the show anymore?? lol
Choosing an Icelandic person would be fine if they were black.
I just googled that and my computer is still laughing at me.
Says the guy who thinks that police only kill people because they resisted arrest, defends blackface, and thinks BLM is run by “white anarchists”…
Hey a new one!For the record:I don’t believe BLM is run by white anarchists. I think in some places, such as Portland, the same white anarchists who’ve been breaking coffee shop windows and pursuing their sophomore-year-poli-sci level bullshit since WTO. I don’t understand why people aligned with Black Lives Matter don’t tell these fuckers to stop hijacking their movement. Just like looters don’t help this movement. These black block idiots (who I’m also on the record saying are going to hand this election to Trump) don’t help it either. You are three for three in failing to appreciate or understand a nuanced opinion. Why do you keep doing this?
Hold up, what are “culturally white” and “culturally black” (the latter of which you didn’t say but implied, and if you didn’t, I wonder even more what “culturally white” is).Other than that, I largely agree.
“Culturally White”: I enjoy bologna, happy hour at TGI Fridays, 80’s nights and the comedy stylings of Gallagher.
“I’m a blacula hunter. I hunt blaculas. Do you know what that means?”“You…only hunt African-American vampires?”“No, I also hunt British vampires!”Watching Americans discuss race is always inherently amusing, especially when they try to apply their (inherently fucked) racial mores to a global situation. It basically boils down to “We expect you act in a racially stereotypical way particular to America, but instead we will try to praise you for it, instead of mock.”
So does it bother you that Jason Biggs has received many many jobs playing Jews, often cast by people who assumed he was Jewish (including Woody Allen)? I mean, I know you are going to get to no, just interested to see how.
It doesn’t bother me at all. Not sure why you thought that would be hard to justify. I recognize that actors are people who are able to inhabit characters that are not like themselves. Some non Jewish people look more Jewish than actual Jews. He’s good at playing a nebbish. He’s got a big nose and curly dark hair. He’s better at portraying that kind of role than Jake Gyllenhaal who IS Jewish. Why we need to present Jews as anxious dweebs is another issue. But Biggs is fine in that role.
“that kind of” jew? also taking a job from somebody with that life experience who could have imbued it with that experience instead of a superficial impersonation of stereotypes people like yourself mistake for a cultural identity. Congratulations, even if the state of Israel won’t recognize this because it’s on your father’s side, you are a self-hating Jew!
Self-hating Jew? How? Why? Jewish is weird because it is not a race. It’s a religion and an ethnicity. I’m half-way to the ethnicity, and 0.0% of the way to the religion. But according to you, though I don’t look very Jewish, since I have a Jewish last name I can take a role as a jewish character. Because I can imbue that role with my “experience” as a non-practicing non-Jew with blue-eyed kids and a blonde wife. Unlike Jason Biggs who apparently millions of people assume to be Jewish. He likely knows more about what it feels like to be Jewish than I do. But according to you, only a Jew can play a Jew. Which, taken to its logical conclusion means that a Jew is not only the only person who can play a jew. It’s the only role he can play. After all, how could a Jew play a Catholic? He would have no “experience” from which to draw when “imbuing” his character. How could a Jew play an atheist? Only an atheist can draw on their experience to imbue her character with that real atheist experience. Except no. Right, you think some things must be imbued with real life experience and some things don’t. You can’t explain why a Jew has to be played by a Jew but an atheist doesn’t need to be played by an atheist.So fucking dumb. This is just pure scorekeeping.When one plays the nebbish Woody Allenesque character they are performing a superficial impersonation of that character no matter what religion they believe. That’s what acting is. Even Woody Allen the person isn’t Woody Allen the character.Idris Elba plays Stringer Bell on the Wire. Stringer Bell is a hardcore Baltimore gangster. Idris Elba is the right color, but he’s English. He’s not even American. He’s acting. They are all acting. Stop keeping score and enjoy the performances.The character either acts, looks, and sounds the part or they don’t. Al Pacino did a good job in Hunters. That was a very jewish role and I have seen Al Pacino play numerous Italian Catholics. Yet he was good because he is a good actor.
Biggs got the roles because the people assumed he was Jewish. Woody Allen even stated that. I know your argument is “representation doesn’t matter” but for example: the reason why there wasn’t a “bankable enough star” to have the major in Ghost in the Shell be played by a japanese woman is because people like ScarJo always take those parts so there isn’t anyone who becomes a big enough star to be bankable so ScarJo takes the next part and on and on
So is your concern that Biggs is taking all the juicy, nebbishy Jew roles and so poor Shia Labeouf, Liev Schreiber, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Andrew Garfield (etc. etc.) can’t take that role?Jews are hardly underrepresented on film and most of the successful ones are where they are because they are able to play far more than just nebbishy schmucks. Or sleazy shysters. You act like Scarlett Johansson (herself Jewish) is TAKING roles. Not that she’s being given roles. Or that she’s earning roles. A role to play a futuristic robot, no less.It’s not up to Hollywood to make stars. It’s up to us. This is the same stupid argument about paying women’s soccer players. Everyone is so worried about how much the USWNT is paying Megan Rapino that they completely lose sight of the fact that she’s a professional player playing in a domestic league that pays players peanuts because none of those same complaining people support their local women’s soccer team. This is just dumb. So ScarJo takes this role and we lose out on an asian star? One actor benefits? One?? So Maggie Q gets the role? Good for her. Too bad that movie was a mess, right?Stop whining and support movies with actors you like. Don’t worry about their demographics. Support the work. You’d have all Jewish roles taken by jews. You’d have all black roles taken by blacks. You’d have all asian roles taken by asians. (not good enough. Asian is too broad. You need Chinese people playing Chinese characters) and you’d have everyone staying in their lanes. But here’s the real issue. It’s like you forget that people, generally like seeing characters that they can relate to on screen. And as much as we like to pretend otherwise, the US is a majority white country. I didn’t make it that way. But it’s weird to pretend it isn’t.Take a story (Say, the Handmaid’s Tale) and have it turned into a movie in Japan. What are they going to do with the casting? Hire Japanese speaking white actors to make the characters look like the characters in the book? Or are they going to localize it for a Japanese audience by hiring Japanese stars in order to entice Japanese audiences to see the movie? It’s like there’s a few white actors in Japan and they are wondering why they aren’t getting parts just because they aren’t bankable. Well, that’s your answer. Producers want bankable stars because the producer is the one who takes it in the shorts if the movie fails. If audiences in Japan decide they aren’t going to see a japanese actor portray Offred, Japan will learn a lesson. Unfortunately the lesson might not be the one we like. Ghost in Shell bombing might mean that asian actors get these roles. Or it might mean studios are less willing to take on life adaptations of Manga where they will be forced to have an all Asian cast.Lots of asian actors appeared in Ghost in the Shell. Asian producers and writers got paid. If it took ScarJo to make it happen, vs. not happening, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If I own the rights to E.T. and some Bollywood producers wants the rights to it, am I going to tell them to hire all White actors? Of course not. I’d want the biggest Indian stars I could get. I’d have it set in an Indian suburb. I’d have Eliot have a different name and eat a different candy. And no sane person in India would wonder why.Welcome to the world of big business. Producers who risk millions don’t always have the ability to change the world. They are often stuck with the world we have.
I have a feeling you’d find a way to be annoyed if they were replacing him with an Icelandic voice actor as well.
Well yes, because I don’t think they needed to change the voice actor in the first place. I’m just pointing out the tiny irony. I do hope they use this voice actor for all black characters; I’ve loved him since Boy Meets World.
You know what your comment reminds me of? My Icelandic boyhood…
A møøse bit my sister once…
FUCK OFF, KARI GISLASON. I PUT UP WITH ENOUGH OF YOUR BULLSHIT IN UNI- wait, sorry, mistook you for someone else.
Not dumb at all. It’s an ideal. An ideal that if a person of a particular cultural background is available to portray a character of that cultural background (or similar), even if only their voice, then use them.
I assume that Icelanders are the whitest white folk on the planet. Do you think Carl eats lutefisk?
Yes, but will he be blind too?
I liked Azaria’s Carl. LET ME EXPLAIN! I don’t like the fact that it’s a white guy doing the voice (and when I was an avid watcher pf the Simpsons, I wasn’t savvy enough to consider who did the voice or why it was problematic), but at least it wasn’t an imitation of a black guy. Carl was just a workaday chum. Anyway, I’d say I’m excited to hear what Alex Désert does with the voice, but watching the Simpsons is no longer a priority.
“and when I was an avid watcher of the Simpsons, I wasn’t savvy enough to consider who did the voice or why it was problematic”Thats the thing though, nobody ever cared who did the voice because it wasn’t problematic. There was no offensive stereotype, it was just a well done voice. No different than Bart being voiced by a woman. I guess you could say Apu was offensive since he did have a strong accent. Though his accent is virtually identical to the 2 guys who run the 711 down the street from me, so its not like his was unrealistic.
Would have been hilarious if the producers had instead decided to draw Carl/Hibbert as white people, and kept everything else the same. The slacktivism meter would have been off the charts.
With Apu it wasn’t just the accent. Everything about him is a stereotype with the accent just being the icing. Just about the only way to get more stereotypical with him would be to include a random Bollywood-esque dance number every time there is an Apu-centric storyline.
The point isn’t just the “accuracy” of the voice. The point is that voice actors of color already have an extremely hard time getting work due to our nation’s rampant racism. Having white voice actors voice characters of color further restricts the already thin job pool. Not to mention the uncomfortable similarity to blackface and the extremely problematic history of white actors portraying characters of color.
I think comparing voice actors voicing characters of other races to stage/screen actors using blackface is a hell of a reach. One is out and out offensive while the voice thing is really only offensive if the character in question is an offensive portrayal or stereotype (in which case it would still be offensive no matter who’s voicing them and the writing team should be put on blast). Don’t get me wrong, it’s always good to push for more diversity in acting of all kinds but a VA not playing their race/age/gender is fine.
at the risk of being called a jerk for asking what is apparently common knowledge…ARE black voice actors struggling to find work, because of racism?
Very true! So, I guess the solution is to cast a black guy with…checks notes…13 IMBD credits since 2018. Twice as many as Azaria, including 3 other animated series. Maybe they should have cast a guy who ACTUALLY has a hard time getting work.
Yeah, but I don’t think the way to solve that is to get rid of any white people who have existing jobs like this.
I work in an industry where there’s known under-representation of minorities. Fully supportive of the folks trying to change that (hint: not me, too far outside my role/expertise). Needless to say I’d still be a bit miffed if one day I got sacked because of it, having been there 10 years.
Why is Nancy Cartwright doing the voice of a boy?! What madness is this? You’re telling me, that in all these years, there hasn’t been one 10 year old boy actor who could have played the role? I am SICK to my stomach with righteous rage!!
HEY, WHITE PEOPLE:Chinesey dude here. I don’t give a flying fuck what ethnicity voices me or people like me. Get over yourselves. You’re not fucking helping, and treating us as a piece of flair to display how fucking open-minded you want everyone to think you is just as bad as out-and-out racial discrimination. Also, congratulations on allowing yourselves to be played by a hack comedian nobody whose name escapes me at the moment.
it’s odd to think there may have been a period in America where people like Apu were encountered so rarely by the average jerkoff that his character was an introduction to their culture and not a mockery of it
I don’t feel he was ever meant to be a mockery of Indian culture. A stereotype for sure, like most of the side characters on the simpsons, but not in a negative way. He has always been portrayed as a hard worker, a good person, liked by nearly everyone, faithful to his religion, and eventually a family man. His life on the show is the American Dream.
agreed. too bad the silly voice that was once used to disarm people before telling them about other cultures is now a bigger issue than the culture’s representation.
It’s not that you weren’t savvy, its just that pointless virtue signaling wasn’t in style at the time.
craziest bit is we all know it doesn’t play the way they say it.every single one of us has the mental fortitude to watch edgy TV and still be a good person, and yet half of us go around saying they need to censor art for the stupids.
how DARE you say the voice was okaywe all know black people sound a certain way and white people can’t imitate ityou RACIST
Exactly! White people voice Carl like this, but Black people voice Carl like THIS.
It’s true… we’re so lame
Patton Oswalt acts all high and mighty and woke.But he voiced a black guy in Sorry To Bother You.It’s like hypocrite much?
Ehhhh is this sincere? If so I think you missed the point of his casting for that role, and possibly the entire movie
i’m kidding
Lol in that case nice work
Why ain’t we cancelling Chappele and Murphy for all their white and Jewish voices.
the easiest way to prove this shit is dumb is to state as succinctly as possible the underlying ethos
It’s just not good anymore as well as family guy but they make billions in worldwide revenue especially merchandise so they be around and renewed forever.
I can hear the new voice now.Well, hello dhere!
I agree — the character doesn’t exist as a punchline in the same way as the Spanish-speaking bumblebee man.Was there a concern that the show doesn’t hire black people, in general? Has there been a lack of black writers and animators too? If that were the case, I could see how they’d want to bring new people into the room. But I haven’t seen that alleged anywhere.
he was based on a real person
Wow, thank you for the background!I hope you also understand that the jokes themselves are what’s opportunistic. And of course, the bit is one among many. The punchlines are “haha, that person is different and weird.”With Carl, there are no jokes (or very few?) that are, “haha, he’s black, and we laugh at black people.” That’s why it seems weird to focus on the ethnicity of the voice actor. Bumblebee man, Apu, and scores of minor characters are clearly racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted.
It’s so weird how people start out understanding something, and then years later they’re arguing against their own mind.These characters are not real people. They were designed to be the butt of jokes. Our whole society seems fine with IRL dragging and humiliation over the mildest slight, but we’re so protective of our fictional characters.
There’s not a huge pool of black animators in South Korea, where the show has been animated for 30 years.
But will the scripts be authentic to the Black experience?
SPOILER ALERTChief Wiggum shoots him
Perhaps, if Carl starts blaming everyone else for his problems and asserts that all yellow skinned people have inherent privilege based on nothing.
If they’ve got black writers, which they really should.
Shut up
This actually kind of exciting. I wonder if he’ll try to approximate the old voice or just do his own thing.
Hopefully it’s completely unique. It’s boring to have his voice sound almost-but-not-quite the same as Hank Azaria. Make it completely different so at least fans can argue over whether they like new or old Carl.
Since closely replicating someone else’s voice is (I’m guessing) a tricky thing, I say he should lean into doing his own thing. He’s never going to please a chunk of the audience regardless of what he does, and to be perfectly blunt Carl isn’t really a major player in the world of The Simpsons anyway.
Oh shit! They can have Carl start a ska band!
Fourth wall…carl broke the fourth wall!!!
Not enough. There won’t be justice until they go back and redub all of Carl’s lines throughout the series and no longer make the original versions available. That will solve everything.Seriously, though, shut down the Simpsons, please. It’s been bad for so damn long and the way they’ve flailed responding to the Apu criticism is just embarrassing.
Simpsons is still mildly amusing, occasionally has fun episodes. It’s better than watching assholes giving each other traumatic brain injuries on Sunday night.
Wait, so you’re just not going to mention that he is also the singer of the ska band Hepcat? Way to drop the ball when you could have picked it up.
Unless he does a pitch-perfect impersonation of the old voice, it’ll probably be largely hated.
Its a latter-day Simpsons episode, it’ll probably be largely hated regardless of Carl’s voice.
Seems like they could just have something happen like he gets hit in the throat with something, and his voice permanently changes. And if Alex doesn’t end up being the permanent voice actor, then they can make it a new running joke about why his voice keeps changing.
I would quite like for Rich Hall to be the new voice of Moe.
We could have an episode full of sniglets!
Every one was fine with it until it became popular to have fake outrage over non issues.
Thats unfortunate. Lenny had a great voice and so did Hibbard. Decisions like these are bad for the entertainment industry as a whole.
Yes, hiring more diverse voice actors is bad for the industry.
Yes – it’s terrible. We’re now casting for race not talent. It’s an affront to art. Pandering to the lowest common denominator of millennial triggeredness
We should maybe tell Botticelli or Rueben they should put some people of color in their paintings. Racists. Romeo and Juliet didn’t really cover the plight of mixed race Italians during the renaissance so it’s totally trash. The Homeric legends really are about a bunch of slave owning rich Greeks – absolute horror they didn’t address the inequality after the Ionian revolt. This movement to dictate art for political correctness-sake is a cultural nadir we’re too stupid to deserve to climb out of.
Ah yes, bad faith hyperbole, that oughtta show us!
Maybe if we had there would still be groundbreaking art minus the systemic oppression of minorities for thousands of years. We can try things a different way and see how it goes. And equating Carl as the same level of as Romeo and Juliet? *chef’s kiss
And stop making the naked ladies so chubby. I can’t beat off to that.
Giving opportunity to more people is a good thing. Allowing literally more voices into the scene is a good thing. The idea that white folks are the Most Talented and other folks getting a chance to try out means that these naturally worse voice actors of color are gonna ruin animation is a pretty shitty takeaway here, friendo.
You’re a fucking idiot
We’re now casting for race not talent. It’s adorable that people think that we were casting “for talent not race” any more or less before. You can’t make people not cast for race not talent. It’s innate to human behavior. We cannot evaluate talent. (I mean, aside from talent being a largely subjective concept, but let’s pretend it’s a universal score branded into arms or something.) Humans as a whole are fundamentally incapable at the biological level of implementing anything but a very very very very crude meritocracy. We’ve no way of knowing how shitty we are at it – lots of people don’t get the opportunity to be better than the geniuses we think we’ve put in the right job. We don’t get to play branching universe. The world is not going to get “any more unfair” if we try and ensure that people who are not getting jobs for reasons *other than their talent* supplant some people who do. It’s dumb that people don’t recognize the incredibly lousy job we do at hiring the right person for the job, and it’s dumb to think it’s something we shouldn’t fuck with to achieve better representation because supposedly everyone is the best person for the job and couldn’t possibly be improved upon. (An aside: everyone but the people we work with of course. The same people who seem terrified of our meritocracy crumbling around them seem to have no problem recognizing that co-workers or people they interact with get hired and maintain employment *all the time* for reasons other than how good they are at what they do. Man some of them are downright awful at it! Who hired them, right?) Do you really believe our common goal of an ideal meritocracy is so well executed, maintained and sacrosanct that it fucking matters that even 10% of hires out there who might have been better for a job doesn’t get it? It’s such a facile vantage point. You can’t make a perfect meritocracy, but economically dominant classes are totally disinterested in the giant imperfections in the implementation of their ideals when it systemically doesn’t apply to them.
You have absolutely zero idea what you’re talking about
Triggered- case in point. Triggered to the extent that one would claim talent does not exist. Yes, we all get awards for participating. We’re all just as good as one another. The simpsons just got bullied into replacing a guy who originated the role, made people love the character and created an icon, as minor as it may be. But because people bitched and moaned, they capitulated and put some Poochy voice into the mix. Good luck with that.
talent does not exist Says a lot that you have to claim I said something that I said nowhere. I didn’t say talent doesn’t exist. I said humans are so inarguably scientifically proven awful at evaluating it without bias (so much so that beyond it proven being proven by countless studies over the past 60+ years, massive profitable companies spend hundreds of thousands dollars trying to learn how not to do it so that they hire better people and make more money – it’s an industry unto itself) that to to worry about one successful talented person supplanting one role of many that another talented person is doing is dumb. It really comes down to the fact that something you believe to be true (that unfettered freedom to evaluate and select talent leads to the best people in the right positions) is demonstrably false. And sure, if you wanna use the word triggered, go for it. Morons do trigger me. made people love the character You have absolutely no evidence or proof that the popularity of the character is because of their voice, or the actor, any more than it’s because of the properties innate to the character, or their dialog, or specific jokes they’ve had written for them, or the drawing, or the way they’re animated. You only say this because it’s required to bolster your claim that this is one of many tragedies that will lead to the death of merit – something people have been pulling the fire alarm about since the dawn of time every time there’s a shift in the inexact pursuit of an actual meritocracy.
You are just babbling nonsense now. Have a nice life. Moving on
I hope Carl’s radical factor has been increased to 8.3
Yes, misconstruing the point is blah blah try harder
By all means, tell me which part I got wrong.
Tard. It is going to led to less diversity. You think Family guy is
going to hire some spic just so she can say “NO” and “We need more lemon
pledge” And some wop to for a 2 second “Bada-bing!” What’s even worse, is I have no idea where they are going to get a gay baby and a talking dog from.
I sure hope Aaron McGruder fires Sam Jackson from his Boondocks revival, and gets an actor with the appropriate melanin levels to play Gin Rummy!And how dare Regina King steal TWO roles that could go to little boys?
Please stop talking. No one cares what you think about anything
Hiring people based off of things that are unrelated to the job is bad for any industry. Skin color is not relevant to voice acting and should not be used as a part of the decision to hire someone.
And the other side of this is that successful black voice actors will be more restricted too. Should Phil LaMarr be doing the voices of asian characters like Samurai Jack or white characters like Barry Allen anymore? If its ok for him to voice other races then why not Harry Shearer?
Tard. It is going to led to less diversity. You think Family guy is going to hire some spic just so she can say “NO” and “We need more lemon pledge” And some wop to for a 2 second “Bada-bing!” What’s even worse, is I have no idea where they are going to get a gay baby and a talking dog from.
Its a character that has been around for 32 years in a fucking cartoon.
Exactly. Why do you give a shit about who he’s voiced by? Why not give somebody a job? The show sucks anyway so it’s not like it’s gonna be a massive quality shift, might as well employ more actors to make money off it.
Why do YOU give a shit? That’s where you need to start in this self-promoting one-man parade of virtue signaling.
It truly isn’t. The fact that you’re so fucking angry about the Simpson says infinitely more about you than me. Enjoy being mad!
😅Ok, princess.
The worst part of this phony shit is there’s no way to ever really please you. There’s no threshold that satisfies you because you don’t really give a shit in the first place.You just strongly insist that this one random person taking someone else’s job is a step in the right direction. But you’ll still be whining ten years later and saying nothing has changed.
Yeesh, for someone who’s ostensibly against showy displays of self-righteous bullshit, you sure are going out of your way to make a showy display of self-righteous bullshit.You’ve LEAPT to the conclusion that because I think it’s nifty to hire diverse voice actors, I’m champing at the bit to replace all white voice actors and move the goalposts to sate my endless hunger for complaining and and blah blah blah. I’m saying is that it’s cool to give more opportunities to more voice actors, which is the exact opposite of complaining. If the Simpsons wasn’t doing this, I wouldn’t care, because it’s a terrible show these days and it doesn’t affect me at all. Who on earth has time to complain about this zombie of a cartoon besides saying that it’s bad?
Moreover, this isn’t “taking someone else’s job.” Hank Azaria is pulling the same paycheck. It’s literally only adding a job for somebody, which you’d have to be a complete asshole to say is a bad thing, considering the only quality level it has a chance of tampering is a show as lousy as modern-day Simpsons.
Take a deep breath before commenting, kiddo. You look ridiculous.
How is a black guy voicing a black guy “diverse”?
The actual question is how an all-white cast is “diverse”?Your question is fucking idiotic.
No one else gonna poke fun at you for saying Lenny, when you meant Carl? No? Okay, fine, I’ll do it.
I think of them as one. They are essentially a married couple. But yes, thank you.
Man, the nonsense about Apu was absurd enough, but I didn’t expect them to follow through on something even more meaningless and pandering.
I’m all for it, but unless they also change out the writers for people who don’t think that an Undercover Boss parody in 2020 is a good idea for a season premiere, will anybody actually hear Nu-Carl’s voice in the first place?
Now, now, it’s “Alex Désert from PCU.”
aka the only movie in Comedy Central’s library for about 3 years.
“You’re wearing the shirt of the band you’re going to see? Don’t be that guy.”
He played a blind man on Becker AND HES NOT EVEN FUCKING BLIND. He took a role from a differently sighted actor and I want him to explain himself.
Deston Berry would be way better at it
Well at least it should be make this easier.Lenny = whiteCarl = black
To sidestep controversy, all black characters on THE SIMPSONS will now be voiced by Bill Cosby.
They’re all famous jazz musicians!
Speaking of which, I’m surprised that Dr. Hibbert is still a character. Not only is he voiced by a white guy, he specifically was created as a Bill Cosby analogue much how Rainer Wolfcastle was Schwarzenegger and Drederick Tatum Tyson. So he’s kind of doubly problematic.
All of which shows just how terribly dated this show is and why it needs to just end already.
It was actually canceled 17 years ago and Fox just forgot to stop sending Matt Groening the checks.
I bet you’re a lot of fun to be around..
Given they’ve done everything else three times over they really should do an episode where Dr. Hibbert is found out to be a serial rapist.Comedy gold.
America’s decent into infinite stupidity is complete. I guess Krusty needs to be voiced by a Jewish person now. Idiotic fake wokeness at its worst.
I’m sorry your country doesn’t have any pop culture and you are stuck with ours.
Have Hank voice Krusty and Dan voice Luigi!Only when someone’s eligibility for a roles is exclusively defined by their ethnic background will we have TRUE PROGRESS!
Oh no! Your cartoon is ruined!
I haven’t cared about the Simpsons in 25 years. It’s the principle. I don’t stand for this shit even on a shitty dated cartoon. It’s a poison on the industry.
I hear you, but what if it turns out to be not that bad? The principle of it is… complicated. Because, frankly, the ‘principle’ of white actors voicing non-white characters was always problematic in the first place. So the principle of correcting this is, in theory, a good thing.
I love Hank Azaria. I was always impressed with the sheer range of his voice talents. It’s a skill to convincingly portray someone else, let alone, half a population, and in a time where more and more voice actors are just doing their own damn voices, I always pointed to The Simpsons cast as an example of what the actual art of this profession sounds like. That said, as a black guy, it was still weird to me he was voicing Carl. But back then I thought it was part of the joke; Like Bart being a girl (which was even weirder to me as kid), and I saw all of this as another level of The Great Gag that is “The Simpsons.”
So yea, even though it was weird, and even though I never took offense or anything, I still felt some kind of way about it. Same with The Cleveland Show. And Missy in Big Mouth. (At least The Simpsons originated on the cheap in a different era, and things just kind of stuck and became tradition- there’s no excuse for these newer shows.) Just trying to explain my point of view. Because, as someone who favored Simpsons tradition, I have mixed feelings on these matters. No, the white-washing wasn’t my favorite aspects of these shows, but it was never anything I need to cry about or be outraged by. It’s whatever. This is an incredibly sensitive generation taking over, and it… sure is something.
I won’t bully pressure creators about changing how they make their art, but it should be noted this never would have happened if The Simpsons just ended years ago like it should have. They really have lived long enough to see themselves become the villains.
I’m done arguing (hey good argument at least), I’m just appalled because art is fucking art, don’t fuck with it, leave it at that.
Don’t breed. If you have? Drown them.
I haven’t yet. You offering?
To drown them?
Only if they have your features.
That’s a dangerous road to go down. I’m probably your father.
It’s starting to happen in food now too. I’ll give you $10 of Amazon gift card if you come back in five years and there hasn’t been a national story about a non-POC celebrity chef making POC food, and that chef dropping the item from the menu. Seriously, bookmark this.
Exactly. What about Willy and Fat Tony? Can Patrick Warbon even play JOe on Family Guy since he is not handicapped? It is going to led to less diversity. You think Family Guy is
going to hire some spic just so she can say “NO” and “We need more lemon
pledge” And some wop to for a 2 second “Bada-bing!” What’s even worse, is I have no idea where they are going to get a gay baby and a talking dog from.
Unfortunately, the show is still going to suck ass.
Are they getting a real closeted gay assistant to an elderly billionaire to voice Smithers? I’ve been saying for years they didn’t get the voice quite right.
When have you said that?
Well obviously I didn’t say it around you.
Lindsay Graham may be looking for work in a couple of months.
ohohohohohoho
They should also redub his first appearance from season 1 when he was black.
If a character gets a voice change on the Simpsons, and no one’s around to watch it, does it make a sound?
he’ll be voiced by Alex DésertI was going to say nice gig for a blind guy, then remembered he only played blind. (I’m sure it will be fine, but he’ll always be the blind guy from Becker to me)
Has he apologized for playing a differently sighted person yet?
Just dropping in to say that Alex Desert was always very good in a pretty underwritten role on Becker. Glad to see him getting work here.
Nothing was good on Becker. And yet I have ssen every episode.
Oh, do you mean when he took a role from a vision-challenged actor? Disgusting. He needs to publicly apologize.
Just cancel the fucking show.
I remember back in the good ol’ days when a comment thread like this would be full of good Simpsons quotes and a couple interesting discussions about race and representation. As opposed to now when there are no good quotes and just a bunch of racists throwing a hissy fit because there will be a different voice on a show no one actually watches anymore.
Leave then. No one likes you
Yes, I miss the old, less trolly AV Club too.
You and me both.
This was honestly the thread that broke me. Times have changed. Where tf is Dikachu??
♫ Where have you gone ol’ DikachuA nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you…♫
There’s a bunch of old AVC members at the-avocado (put a .org after it. I didn’t want to post the link just in case they delete it for some reason)
I’m an old man, I hate everything but Matlock. Ooh, it’s on now.
“Disco Stu doesn’t need to advertise!”
I am on hunger strike outside Fox Studios until they get an actual Omicron Persei Eighter to voice Lur. Join me if you are a TRUE ALLY!
Futurama was canceled ages ago, so you’re going to get REAL hungry there.
A true ally would know that the number of R’s in Lrrr is equal to the number of L’s in Melllvar.
I think I’ve done enough conventions to know how to spell ‘Melllvar.’
Ok . . . I’m . . . Spartacus. . .
Why not just have Desert also voice Hibbert?
Carl’s the black one?
Omg this is sooooooooo brave and is going to do so much good in the world.
I have been a simpsons fan since they began and my mom would send me vhs tapes of the episodes when I was stationed overseas in the military. This is causing me to completely boycott watching any new simpsons episodes. When the current race climate in the US causes these pussy big-wigs to makes absolutely absurd rules like this, it forces me to not give them my attention. For Christ’s sake, the simpsons has made fun of all races equally over the years, this is just a poor decision by people who are just scare of offending even one person, where were they when all of the other offensive characters and situations took place. Get off the bandwagon and keep simpsons like it was
I can’t imagine giving a shit about this. That must be a really terrible life
I’m just enjoying watching it all burn..
I liked him as the Voice of Nick Fury in the Avengers cartoon
This comment section is so full of toxic waste, Homer could get a job in it.
This is so fucking stupid.
I heard that Clint Eastwood wasn’t really a gun slinging cowboy. Why is nobody calling cultural appropriation here?
Anyone still watching the Simpsons deserves the dreck it has become.
Late to the party apparently,Haven’t heard the new voice, but I keep thinking of Carl’s new voice being suddenly super baritone, like Barry White or James Earl Jones and everyone acting like nothing happened.It doesn’t stop being funny.
So is Phil Lamar going to be replaced for every white and asian character he voices?