#AzizAnsariToo?: Desi Masculinity in America and Performing Funny Cute

Abstract

By attending to racialized tropes of masculinity and sexuality in U.S. media, this article explores how the #MeToo response to comedian Aziz Ansari is supported by a history of Asian American masculine media representation in the United States. The article forwards two theoretical concepts—Desi masculinity and performing funny cute—to explain the cultural response to Ansari as simultaneously desexualized as sexually undesirable and sexually deviant in his noncompliance with white normative masculinity. Through a critical cultural approach, these concepts thus offer a theoretical feminist approach to #MeToo that is positioned within histories of accumulated and perpetually reiterated tropes of racialized gender and sexuality.

Keywords:

• #MeToo
• Aziz Ansari
• Asian American masculinity
• cuteness
• humor

Notes

Notes

1 At the time this article was written, Ansari had only two public appearances: once at a Knicks basketball game with other celebrities, including fellow comedian Chris Rock; and a five-night stand-up comedy appearance, always as a surprise guest, at Manhattan’s Comedy Cellar. The Babe.net piece was published during awards season, and Ansari notably did not attend the 2018 Screen Actors Guild Awards, at which he was nominated for outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series for Master of None. Prior to the Babe.net piece’s publication, Ansari was seen walking the red carpets in solidarity with feminist movements in Hollywood, notably Time’s Up, established in response to #MeToo’s reach in the entertainment industry. The movement works against sexual assault, harassment, and inequality in the workplace and provides legal defense funds for sexual assault and harassment cases. Since acceptance of this article, Ansari has released a new Netflix special, Right Now. In it, he addresses his #MeToo controversy, among other cultural issues of racism and sexism. Two moments are particularly relevant for this article. First, Ansari begins the set with a joke about how he is mistaken on the street for the comic Hasan Minhaj. Minhaj is also from a Muslim Indian family and was born and raised in the United States. This is meant to highlight the dominant perception of interchangeability among minoritarian people. Ansari rebuffs this racial conflation and the person on the street realizes the mistake, instead listing Ansari’s major television roles. Ansari repeatedly says, yes, that is me, until the person mentions sexual misconduct, at which point Ansari delivers the punchline, “that was Hasan.” Ansari then proceeds to speak seriously about how he has felt “embarrassed” and “terrible” about the “whole thing.” Later in the set, Ansari also reflects about how his 2019 self sees the problematic nature of his prior roles, highlighting how he would not now accept a script that he did in the past, in which Tom Haverford spies on his girlfriend Ann Perkins, played by Rashida Jones, with a hidden nanny cam. The special arguably does some of the work that many critics requested of him in earlier responses to Grace’s story.

2 Some news media responses were critical of Babe.net’s reporting rather than of either party. See Filipovic and Escobedo Shepherd. Many take the angle that Ansari’s actions represent ordinary and deeply problematic sexual practices that need to be addressed to reconfigure cultural norms. See also Gray and North.