The name of Punch-Out! Wii’s only Indian character is “Great Tiger.” He wears an oversized turban, tiger-skin pants, bears a huge upturned mustache, and is regularly depicted on a flying magic carpet. He is, objectively, a caricature. 

He’s also one of my favorite characters in the game.

In modern media discourse, we often delineate whether a representation is racist through the presence of stereotypes. Only Indian guy is a nerdy IT sidekick? Probably racist. The one Arab dude is a thick-bearded terrorist? Doesn’t take an anthropologist to recognize the potential problems with these scenarios. 

This method can be helpful. But there’s a lot more to media racism than these clear-cut tropes; there are ways depictions can be offensive in absence of stereotypes, or acceptable in spite of them. And one of the most important factors is effort. 

Yes, I am sort of saying that stereotypes are okay, if you try hard enough. I will henceforth be referencing two categories: high- and low-effort caricatures. While they both sound bad, I aim to prove that these often don’t constitute the same level of offensiveness.

Let’s start with low-effort. A possibly controversial example, and one that inspired me to write this piece in the first place, is Apu from The Simpsons. Now, I’m no Simpsons buff — I’ve only watched two or three of the “golden age” seasons — and there are elements about Apu that elevate him above the lowest-effort, walking-stereotype level of minority depiction (the fact that he’s shown having his own interests/life, him not always being the butt of the joke, etc.). But a particular moment from Season 4, Episode 21 has stuck in my mind ever since I saw it. 

Marge (the mom of the Simpsons family) was caught shoplifting at Kwik-E-Mart, the convenience store run by Apu. As her husband, Homer, comes in to try and get them not to press charges, we see Apu celebrating behind the counter with his brother Sanjay — belting gibberish and jumping around to a mess of Sitar sounds playing over his radio. 

Now, I know what the knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people will be here: The Simpsons is a comedy show, obviously it’s not saying Hindi or Indian music actually sounds like that; it’s just meant to be funny. But the problem here isn’t the attempt at humor. If anything, it’s the fact that The Simpsons is generally a funny show that emphasizes my issue with the scene. 

For a show filled with subtle, clever, and witty writing, this joke is just lazy. It’s simply “haha, look how unintelligible foreign things are”; a joke that could literally play out the same in any context, swapping in any other minority. Compared to other jokes in the episode — heck, even other jokes in that exact scene — this gag of “Apu Nahasapeemapetilon” bouncing around the Kwik-E-Mart just comes off as a phone-in. To me, that’s what makes it feel offensive. 

There are other examples of low-effort caricatures across media. In my experience, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II calling its terrorist group Al-Qatala (literally translating to “the killers”) comes to mind. 

So what makes Punch-Out! different? Again, it comes down to the effort. Yes, Great Tiger — like the rest of Punch-Out! Wii’s international cast — is a design covered in tropes. But also like the rest of the cast, there’s a heart to him. They actually had him do lines in Hindi; his voice actor doesn’t just phone it in with a goofy Indian accent, but provides a cheesy, grandiose delivery befitting his Bollywood villain vibes; the game’s main theme is adjusted in pacing and style to actually fit the Indian instruments. To me, all of these elements represent a genuine care that went into the character beyond the stereotypes. And I find, in the face of that care, the inclusion of tropes feel irrelevant. 

Now, there are caveats here. Punch-Out! Wii itself has characters who are better and worse in this regard (with his continuing story between games, Glass Joe feels like even more of a character beyond just his French-ness; it’s less impressive, meanwhile, that the principle trait of the Irish boxer Aran Ryan is essentially mental illness). There’s also certainly a spectrum in regard to how people interpret this sort of thing. Some people might find themselves particularly sensitive to certain tropes, or less impressed by different kinds of attention to detail. 

But the central point remains poignant nonetheless. Punch-Out! Wii overshoots racism; it couples exaggerated tropes with such love and genuine effort, that the result is a game that is somehow filled with caricatures but difficult to find offensive.

I think that’s a valuable thing to consider in today’s discourse. We are more sensitive to racism in media than ever, but in constant back-and-forth about the subject, we often lose sight of what makes it important in the first place.  The issue was never the mere presence of tropes and stereotypes. It was the message it sent — whether it actively felt dehumanizing, violent, or just uncaring of what minorities were actually like. When those feelings are supplanted by actual effort, the stereotypes present become a bit racist, maybe — but not offensive.