The Big Bang Theory is one of the most popular sitcoms that sets itself apart by having unconventional leads as the show’s protagonists. It initially follows Physicists Leonard and Sheldon at Caltech. They find their nerd-centric social circle with pals aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali expanding when aspiring actress Penny moves in next door.
The other characters which were introduced later on include neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, microbiologist Bernadette Rostenkowski, and comic book store owner Stuart Bloom. But the show is primarily about four male friends who are characterized by essentially every cliche and stereotype, there is about the nerds who are plagued with underconfidence, anxiety and awkward personality quirks.
The cast includes Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Mayim Bialik, Melissa Rauch and Kevin Sussman. While there are many things that have been pointed out time and again about the show, the one thing that comes to mind again after seeing the backlash against Velma and Mindy Kaling’s self-deprecating version of Asian representation – is how Raj was portrayed and maybe etched the mould for further Indian representations.
The portrayal of Raj in The Big Bang Theory
Many would argue that it’s just comedy and one should take it as such, but they forget how these popular caricatures often form a mass opinion that could hamper the real-life experience. For example how Raj’s Indian accent and eccentricities are exaggerated for the sake of comic relief. These stereotypes often get imposed on real people when they don’t behave or talk the ‘Indian’ way and are often questioned on where did they learn to talk the American way.
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Although the show’s mainly about the four friends and their romantic tribulations, as they overcome their geeky traits. But for the most part, Raj is the ‘other’ of the group as you can see in the image above as well. Pick out any episode from the show and the sitting arrangement will be like this most of the time, with all the cast on one side and Raj on the other. Also, he is described by Sheldon as – a loveable foreigner who struggles to understand our ways and fails.
It perpetuates the idea of the other and that no matter what, he will not be American enough to understand his friend’s culture. Even in the pilot episode, when Penny comes across Raj and Howard and he isn’t able to reply to her back due to his selective mutism her immediate response is – Do you speak English? While it is used as a comic element but it makes you think why not some other character with this trait?
It would have been equally funny if perverted Howard suffered from it, despite being so invested in women, him being not able to talk to them. Another aspect of the show that makes you think that maybe Raj deserved much better, is when talking about his achievements. Raj is a successful astrophysicist who’s actually made some pretty significant contributions to his field.
For instance, he helped design a space probe on pluto and discovered several celestial objects however, his friend’s achievements are usually celebrated and glorified many times. Every other major character on this show has had a chance to grow beyond their initial archetype, even Sheldon’s character grows a lot with the introduction of his love interest.
Sadly for Raj, his love life often becomes the butt of jokes with his metrosexual identity as he jokes about liking women and their products. Which I fail to understand why a neat, put-together man is considered gay and not only that, the show mixes up cross-dressing in it, when in an episode he is set up with a girl named Lakshmi. She tells Raj the rumours about him in India, “that you’re, how shall we say, comfortable in a sari?”
The metrosexual notion was constantly mocked and the Lakshmi one was used to show how conservative the country is, which can be taken as a joke here and there but not when it’s recurrent and used as a ploy to desexualise people like him. Similarly, the show often portrayed the whole country as Raj himself says – hot and loud and there are so many people. This is further supported by statements like – India is a strange, uninteresting place they wouldn’t even consider visiting.
In conclusion, the South Asian characters are cast and portrayed with some or other flaws – mainly being the exaggerated accent, inability to have a normal conversation with the opposite sex and resentment towards their native origins. These stereotypes should be done away with at this point in time and not handed down like we are seeing in Velma.
The Big Bang Theory is currently available on Netflix.
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