People talk about mumblecore but I prefer bumblecore, hyper-realistic bee movies about how bees really are.

Kaling’s line is a playful riff on “mumblecore,” the indie-film label associated with low-budget, naturalistic dialogue and hyper-real everyday situations. By inventing “bumblecore,” she parodies the tendency to coin ever-more-niche genre terms and punctures the seriousness with which such categories can be discussed. The joke hinges on a pun (mumble/bumble) and an absurd escalation: taking “hyper-realism” literally by applying it to bees, a subject that is both mundane and inherently comic when treated with documentary gravity. The humor also gestures at how audiences and critics sometimes fetishize authenticity, suggesting that the pursuit of “realism” can become silly when detached from human stakes.