Transformers: Revenge of the Racial Caricatures

And aside from the voice, I don't remember Crothers' Jazz being all that "urban" anyway. He had kind of a cool way about him, but he wasn't a walking caricature like the movie version.

 

It's not so much brushing history aside, as saying "Yeah, it happened, now lets move past it."
Pretending it never happened isn't the way, but dwelling on it isn't either. Equality means equality, not special rights for everyone who's not a white man.
And no, I'm not saying "poor little white man, losing all the perks" I'm saying if everyone is equal then treating some people as though they're special breeds problems, not solves them.

 

I think the problem is people overreact. Al Sharpton is already engaging on a crusade against these characters.

Yes, something can be done in poor taste, or found to be racist or stereotypical. Doesn't mean it has be the next major race issue.

Like I said, I found them to be tasteless and embracing stereotypes, but doesn't mean I have to constantly express this view in public or make it an issue on my agenda. I simply acknowledge my distaste and share with others if asked is all. Who is to say the producers intended it? If it really was so intentional or so offensive it needed to be a subject of nationwide outcry and public apologies, wouldn't the voice actors had said something before the film was finished or released?

As the old saying goes, there are bigger fish to fry.

 

That's true to.

 

Did he really have a gold tooth???

 

Yes, there's a shot where you clearly see a good front tooth.

 

Why is it an issue when it's Transformers but nobody says a word when the Wayans bros do it IN EVERY SINGLE FILM THEY MAKE?

 

Because they're black, and they can be stereotypically insulting if they wish to be...

 

Because their movies suck and they are usually viewed as comedies? I don't know.

 

Straw man. Who ever said I don't take offense to those films? By "things like these" I meant complaints about caricatures, or racial jokes or statements, or so on found in movies. Usually their benign enough or don't pervade the film enough to make me find it in poor taste. But again, as I stated earlier, even if I did take offense to it, I'm not out to cause an uproar about it.

 

It was a general question, I didn't mean you directly.

 

Exactly. It's not that hard a concept to grasp.

And it's not like various black leaders and spokesmen (like Bill Cosby) HAVEN'T been speaking out about it.

 

I thought it was the most blatantly racist thing I've seen since Jar Jar Binks. Actually it was worse. With Jar Jar there was room for interpretation. There isn't any here. Micheal Bay I don't think is a racist so much as a fucking idiot. But who thought this was a good idea? Surely someone there remembered the outrage over Jar Jar? Surely some producer would have thought that this is way too racial and might piss people off?

I went to see it with a black friend of mine, and he liked the movie more then I did. But we both argreed they crossed a line that should have never been in the movie in the first place. Half the audience was black and I think most of them were just laughing along with it because they didn't want to make the white folks nervous. And most of the White Folks must have figured that since the black folks are laughing at it, then it must be OK. I was kind of laughing at first because of this, then I just stopped and looked at everyone's nervous laughter and thought "Why are we all laughing at this when it's obviously not that funny?".

And too be honest, I was more pissed off that we had The Al Jolsen Brigade as the main Autobots and not the cool ones like Ironhide or Arcee.

 

Of course my first post in months and it has to be about race. But I wouldn't be Galactus if it wasn't

Actually I am more offended that rappers and others of the hip hop culture act like this and they are not robots. Maybe they would have a beef if most of the icons of black culture didn't act like a fool and clown in the first place, but were claim to be black leaders. I mean Snoop and Lil Wayan are virtual heroes and I know Snoop has done many a character just like this.

Black people need to stop getting offended at simple crap. When the POTUS is black complaining time is over. Michael Bay's Transformers will be offensive enough on its own without having to hunt for things.

 

Aren't these robots from outer space or something? Why do they follow Earth stereotypes at all?

 

I want to say one of the robots was voiced by a black man and the other by the guy who does SpongeBob (white guy). They both decided on the poser voices. They're not meant to be a characiture of urban blacks, they're meant to be acurate representations of posers, white, black, hispanic, whatever. Can you seriously say you've never encountered some loser in high school, college, on the street that wore his pants down around his ankles, a trucker hat and talked/acted like how he thought cool rappers would? I bump into these fools all the time. And since when are gold teeth the sole province of blacks? Ignorant fools come in all colors.

That said, they were largely unfunny and their design was weak. I haven't been a fan of the movie Transformer's faces from the start (though the Decepticons are better than the Autobots) and these guys with their big ears, little heads and floppy teeth were just dumb.

They had a few good lines (funny hearing a Transformer swear, talk shit in a fight) and one decent fight towards the end but were largely an annoyance. You know things are bad when the Sector 7 agent is the least irritating of the half-dozen comic relief characters.

I liked the movie a lot (though the first was better), but it would have been greatly helped by the excising of most of the parents' scenes, the roomate all-together and less of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

 

Have you seen the movies? They do explain that. They did in the first one anyway.

 

I haven't and won't see the film - the first one killed more than enough brain cells - but I have one question: what's the film's explanation for robots being programmed to be unable to read? That seems like bad robot progmamming, even by the shite standards of the Autobots.

 

I haven't seen TF2 yet, this is the first I've heard that some of them can't read. Yeah, I don't have an explanation for that one.

But the reason given in the first film for their "cultural" and grammatic behaviour is that they were monitoring earth communications for some time before they came. If an Autobot had the kind of personality that gravitated toward a "hip hop" personality, for instance, wouldn't it make sense that he'd act like some MTV rapper? What is the predominant black cultural image out there? Sidney Poitier? Hardly.

Maybe we should pick a beef with BET and MTV and ask them why most of the black people they've put on TV and beamed out into space for the past 15 years is an annoying, gold-toothed, ill-spoken idiot?

I'd also point out that Jazz and one of the two annoying little buggers are voiced by black voice artists, since that seems to be a big part of the reason no one had a problem with Blaster, a robot that turned into a ghetto blaster, liked to dance and talked like a hip hop radio DJ. This criticism isn't new, people had a problem with Jazz in the first TF movie too, and that was a pretty mild stereotype. I know people who act and talk like Jazz.

I'm not trying to defend Bay's creative integrity here, like I said I haven't seen TF2 yet. Probably will today, I'll let you know what I think about it.

 

Skids and Mudflap didn't explicitly say that they were incapable of reading -- but they were unable to read "ancient Cybertronian." In fact, only the "older" Transformers could read it -- Jetfire, presumably The Fallen, etc.