The Big Bang Theory: Social Outcasts In The United States

The TV show The Big Bang Theory has spent years as one of the top sitcoms in the United States, capitalizing on jokes about nerd culture and friendships between social outcasts. A group of scientists in California navigate their social lives, romantic lives, and professional lives with many difficulties backed by a constant laugh track. One of these characters, however, stands out as particularly even in a show based on people who are different from societal norms. Rajesh “Raj” Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) is the only person of color in the main cast, and the show and his friends appear to find all of his difference in his being Indian, and as such inherently other. Raj is created to be a character that is comically Indian, with an over-emphasized …show more content…
The fact that Raj’s character in comparison to the others is differentiated so heavily by his nationality indicates how the show’s conception of “fitting in” is heavily raced. Sheldon, Howard, and Leonard, find their differences from the mainstream in their interests, jobs, and styles of socializing. They also have notable differences from one another, showing the number of different ways that white men can be excluded from popular US culture. Raj is particularly excluded from forms of social capital that his friends are able to maintain. Being unable to relate to women and unable to fully understand the national identity of a country he’s lived in for years mean that for him, being an outcast is based in being from India. The show crafts and reflects a worldview surrounding what it means to be an insider and an outsider, and what levels of being different are acceptable and in what ways. The humor in the show is always around the ways that these men are different, however Raj’s white counterparts are allowed to have differences that are more than their races and he is shown to be different, and this is shown to be funny, just because he is not a white American. The various societal standards that people in The Big Bang Theory are allowed to be multifaceted and complex for other characters, but for Raj the societal standard …show more content…
Capitalizing on old, long-running stereotypes and surface level mocking characterizations of the character Raj allows for his differences to be rooted in his race. Being from India can be related to Raj’s inability to interact with women, his inability to fit in with the larger society that his friends too find themselves left out of, as well as an inability to understand and relate to America as a whole. Asian Americans have historically been excluded from the definition of what it is to be American, and differences have been exaggerated and mocked to the ends of subjugating and culturally overpowering others. Doing this confirms whiteness as the true American normal experience. None of the characters of the show are allowed to claim normalcy and belonging in the greater American culture, but positioning Raj as unable to do so because of his race and nationality furthers this pattern of excluding Asians and Asian Americans, and conceptualizing Asian culture as laughably weird and directly contrary to acceptable American culture. This abandonment of Asian Americans justifies lasting systems of oppression in the United States, and allows for interpersonal and institutional discrimination on the grounds that people from Asia are inherently weird and therefore un-American, and that this is something that is okay to laugh at and put down. Raj is made to be perpetually