Apu Nahasapeemapetilon - Simpsons

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Apu is a heavily stereotyped character in The Simpsons universe. His background and culture is from India with the practice of their religion. He also has a workaholic nature and with being married with 8 children, the audience may emphasize with the character since he works all the time leaving his family at home; he is always polite - even when he was held at gunpoint within the series.

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It is important for the audience to connect with and care about the character since Apu is one of the main characters outside of the Simpson family. He also owns the “Kwik-E-Mart'' which is quite stereotypical to real-world life where a lot of people from countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh will come over to countries like the USA or UK to open up shops likewise the Kwik-E-Mart.

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My opinion on the use of stereotypes in the making of media varies from one end to another. For example, if you are making a program like Citizen Khan then of course stereotypes will be okay to a certain extent. Since this makes the audience engage with the characters for empathy and comedic reasons. However in a circumstance in which you do not need a stereotype whatsoever, but you give this particular character a stereotype then again it depends. If it is racist then in my opinion the media should be axed because it just teaches the audience racism and to be racist to a particular race on a stereotype which is not true for most cases. 

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Stereotypes can be useful for making ideas for different media projects which can be going against the stereotypical suggestions such as Bruno Mars with Uptown Funk. Or used to bring characters to life or for comedic reasons.