Thespeckledkiwi
Vice Admiral
^ that's a good point too. With Cars, Mater was a very good character and portrayed the 'redneck' stereotype actually a little bit positively.
Transformers: Revenge of the Racial Caricatures
- Thread starter nx1701g
- Start date
Well, after finally seeing TF2 I have to say that you really have to desire to be insulted, to be insulted by the twins.
Are they annoying and stupid ? Hell yes.
Are they a waste of screen time and useless characters ? Hell yes.
But for them to cause all this internet racial discussions is a real stretch. At least in my opinion.
And in any case they really didn't have that much screen time. Certainly not to the extend i was lead to believe by many posts.And most of that time was towards the end of the movie.
Are they annoying and stupid ? Hell yes.
Are they a waste of screen time and useless characters ? Hell yes.
But for them to cause all this internet racial discussions is a real stretch. At least in my opinion.
And in any case they really didn't have that much screen time. Certainly not to the extend i was lead to believe by many posts.And most of that time was towards the end of the movie.
I'd have to watch again but yes, he was potrayed as illiterate and with the "country" mentality of a stereotype. Although they did not imply him having sex with his cousin (this was a G/PG rated movie) he was shown to be quite limiited. And the twins were shown positively too in TF2. You can't say they were failures. They helped to save the day. They were goofy show-off comic relief. What'd you expect? There have been other "black" autobots too but they get overlooked because it's easier to find something to complain about than acknowledge that maybe people are over reacting.
Context is everything but it is also easy to play around with it and find your own conclusions as is clearly obvious. People choose to see the twins as a racist stereotype as opposed to just a bad urban stereotype played up for comic relief and some people choose to see Mater as not a stereotype at all, despite the fact he was voiced by a man who if not a redneck, makes a living acting as one. I doubt Larry the Cable Guy is what we truly believe all rednecks are like, even if he is the personification of the stereotype.
Context is everything but it is also easy to play around with it and find your own conclusions as is clearly obvious. People choose to see the twins as a racist stereotype as opposed to just a bad urban stereotype played up for comic relief and some people choose to see Mater as not a stereotype at all, despite the fact he was voiced by a man who if not a redneck, makes a living acting as one. I doubt Larry the Cable Guy is what we truly believe all rednecks are like, even if he is the personification of the stereotype.
Maybe not the best film review I've read lately, but certainly my favourite. Michael Bay finally made an art movie 
I can see it.
But I'd still do her.
But, seriously, at the very least that Madonna tat on her arm has to go.
And she needs to learn to close her mouth and stop bearing her teeth. What is she? A mouth-breather?
As a black person with kids who saw Revenge Of The Fallen, I saw no problem. This is the same thing that happened when the Dukes Of Hazard movie came out and there was "controversy" about the Confederate battle flag on the roof of the General Lee. It seems like the people most offended are the ones who aren't the target of the racism i.e. white journalist trying to score PC points. Most of the people in my community didn't seem to have a problem with Skids and Mudflap. It seems that Michael Bay can't seem to catch a break. People complained that, with the exception of Prime, Megatron, and Bumblebee, the robots in the first TF movie were just props for the humans to react to. They addressed it in the second movie and the PC media cry racism that's not there. And if I seem to recall, there were tons of stereotypes in the G1 cartoon (remember Blaster, the music loving, jive talking robot that turned into a radio and Perceptor, the British accented scientist who turned into a microscope?). Fallen is just par for the course. And to clear up a little discrepancy, the PC police were saying that the Twins were illiterate. That's not true. In the movie they said they couldn't read old Cybertronian. I imagine that Prime couldn't have read it either if it was shown to him. But I will admit that, growing up, there were a few of my classmates and peers that weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. In fact, my brothers and I were considered somewahat of anomolies due to our literacy. I'm not slammin' my people. I was what I saw growing up. But I digress.
Interesting definition of "cool."
He couldn't read, had the I.Q. of pocket lint and tipped "cows" for fun. So yes, double standerd still stands.I haven't seen TF2, but I did see Cars, and I don't think it's a double-standard at all. Was Mater portrayed as having sex with his cousin, being incapable of reading, being a gun-nut, a racist, and dumber than a bag of nails? I seem to remember his being portrayed fairly quite positively.
Context is everything.
The further we hurl into the 21st Century, the more it can be said to be a double standard.
The origins are clear though. The stereotypes targeted differ in this respect: unflattering stereotypes about African-Americans were used to reinforce negative ideas about an entire race from the majority who held the social/economic power, came in little contact with them and viewed blacks a monolithic whole. This in turn played out into real life to become harmful to individuals of that race based on views held about them from these constantly reinforced negative portrayals.
Unflattering stereotypes about whites were a comment on a specific subsection, or individual, but was never used to make assumptions about the group as a whole. The white majority never viewed themselves as all the same.
So, the question is: are we far enough along and sophisticated enough to understand that negative portrayals of a religion/race/ethnic group is not a comment on the whole?
If the answer is yes, then no harm done by these portrayals.
If the answer is no, then people becoming upset is to be understood*.
*this is assuming there is anything offensive about them in the first place. I have not seen them, so I can not comment.
The whole racism thing with Jar Jar Binks was just something overblown by people who look to find racism in everything, who aren't happy unless they're offended. It's like when the protest groups cry offense at Native American sports mascots and somehow they speak on behalf of the Native Americans who aren't offended by the mascots.
Skids and Mudflap were more noticeable, but do you take into account that one actor was white and the other was black? Does the black actor have no say in the nature of his own performance? Does it matter if the actors were doing a lot of ad-libbing and going off with the characters? Yet the simple fact is that they are robots. When you have white characters acting all gangsta like in Havoc or Alpha Dog, is that racist toward blacks?
Skids and Mudflap were more noticeable, but do you take into account that one actor was white and the other was black? Does the black actor have no say in the nature of his own performance? Does it matter if the actors were doing a lot of ad-libbing and going off with the characters? Yet the simple fact is that they are robots. When you have white characters acting all gangsta like in Havoc or Alpha Dog, is that racist toward blacks?
It's not about blacks specifically though. That is the false assumption. The twins were spoofing urban black youth, and a specific subsection of it at that. I've never known anyone who acted as much like a urban ghetto or a country redneck as these two examples were played as. I've lived in the city and in the country and I've known both blacks and whites who leaned towards the stereotypes but neither was a full-on stereotype. It's still unflattering either way but since it's still more acceptable to dismiss racism against whites, it's just written off like the above.
You can't go and say one is about a particular race when it's clearly not, then turn around and say the other is about just a specific subsection of another.
You can't go and say one is about a particular race when it's clearly not, then turn around and say the other is about just a specific subsection of another.
SUBSET. if you have a race: White, and a group: Jewish, from a place: Florida, who happen to be: Old --- and there are two robots acting and talking like two old white jewish men from florida, is that racist?
If not, then automatically two "urban youth" robots aren't
Those robots seem really smart, obviously stereotypes of korean school children, shame.
Get over yourselves.
T'Girl
If not, then automatically two "urban youth" robots aren't
Those robots seem really smart, obviously stereotypes of korean school children, shame.
Get over yourselves.
T'Girl
Hear, hear!
I am sick of this notion that only white people can be racist. It's as if black people and Asians are all accepting and welcome everybody with open arms into their neighbourhoods/countries.
x 1000
The worst kind of hatred is self-hatred and white people seem to be full of that these days while they bend over backwards to apologize for PERCEIVED wrong doings against every ethnic group around.
It sickens me.
I am sick of this notion that only white people can be racist. It's as if black people and Asians are all accepting and welcome everybody with open arms into their neighbourhoods/countries.
x 1000The worst kind of hatred is self-hatred and white people seem to be full of that these days while they bend over backwards to apologize for PERCEIVED wrong doings against every ethnic group around.
It sickens me.
By the unholy power of thread necromancy, exhausted topics shall rise again!
Damn, get a gun and shoot the thread in the head before it bites you and turns you into a zombie.
Ayup. We've all heard of the Nation of Islam, but there's others. For instance, the Black Israelites. I see groups of them every so often on the streets of NYC. There's some vitriol there that would put the KKK to shame. Fortunately, everyone else ignores them.
So would the Thundercats call this "thread-ra"?
