Reaching?: Is "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" Racist?

[cmoneymontana]

Originally Posted by AquaGrape2345

people just have too much time on their hands

Eactly. It's a movie about robots.

Who cares. There are more IMPORTANT things going on in the world.

 

[casperjr]

how can you say "who cares its only a movie"

you fools do understand with that type of thinking not only will racism not go away

but there will be alot more and clearer racist remarks made in movies and other areas of entertainment

NT really shows its age sometime

 

[rillo561]

Wait, these Transformers have gold teeth now?

!#$?!

 

[xxlil ryanxx]

Damn people will find anything just to make it seem bad...nothing seems wrong with them

 

[seasoned vet]

CasperJr wrote:

---

how can you say "who cares its only a movie"

you fools do understand with that type of thinking not only will racism not go away

but there will be alot more and clearer racist remarks made in movies and other areas of entertainment

NT really shows its age sometime


- i honestly dont think this one has anything to do with age just ignorance and an unwillingness to understand what its like for your race to be constantlyviewed in this way. some folks just dont see a problem with issues dealing with race, be it light hearted jokes, some racially motivated character orotherwise. to them its no big deal....happens all the time. im glad i dont have that attitude.




- its official though. i was on the fence about seeing this movie in theatres just off my hate of Shia alone, but these robots confirmed it....this is a moviei will not be seeing in the theatres. my decision has nothing to do with race, but anytime these big studios take a good story and try to inject some off thewall character to try and bring in more money (Jar, Jar) it turns me off altogether.


*did you know George Lucas wanted to also put NSync in The Phantom Menace?*

 

[bigtomgetsgwap]

It's def a reach...I didn't think much of it when I saw the movie...someone just told me about it at work

 

[KingParappa]

At first, I laughed at the article OP posted. Then I start reading reviews and every single review I have read so far brings up the twins and immediately talksabout the same thing this article does. Maybe this isn't reaching. idk I'll find out on Friday

 

[DownByLaw]

Originally Posted by eeBS7eez

possibly one of the biggest racism reaches i've ever come across on NT. why is it that some people feel the need to CREATE racism in every walk of life? it's not racist until someone purposefully makes it racist by manipulating useless details into "hateful" representations. sad sad world.

I am saying!

 

[Betonblck]

I mean, the "we can't read" was a bit too much. It's one thing to have them act silly and have gold teeth but I thought they went a bit farwith the "we can't read".

 

[blackmagnus514]

those depictions were a bit unneccesary

 

[ill legal operation]

Love to see how it'd be if they gave the robots some slanted eyes, glasses, and I line that said "I can't drive."

All this "reaching" talk is comin' from people whose race wasn't subjected to this stereotypical bull %@+#.

 

[rossh123]

Originally Posted by Crumbs

cant be serious with this nonsense

 

[hellaones]

X

@ some of these replies, I don't buy that red neck BS for one second. The only thing that kind of makes me think its reaching and I'm buggingis the choice of cars these two took control of being a Volt & a Spark. But I'm sure if they had taken the shape of a Cutlass, Caprice, or any othercar popular in the urban community you guys still wouldn't admit it.

 

[ill legal operation]

[h1]Racist robots? Jive-talking twin Transformers raise questions about racial stereotypes[/h1]
SANDY COHEN AP Entertainment Writer

11:59 AM CDT, June 24, 2009

LOS ANGELES (AP) - "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" introduces some 40 new mechanized characters of all shapes, sizes and even sexes - but it's a pair of jive-talking 'bots that critics are singling out as more than just harmless comic relief.

Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact Chevys, constantly brawl and bicker in rap-inspired street slang. They're forced to acknowledge that they can't read. One has a gold tooth.

As good guys, they fight alongside the Autobots and are intended to provide comic relief. But the traits they're ascribed raise the specter of stereotypes most notably seen when Jar Jar Binks, the clumsy, broken-English speaking alien from "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" was criticized as a racial caricature.

Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern described Binks in 1999 as a "Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit," a reference to a black character from the 1920s and '30s that exploited negative stereotypes for comic effect. Extending that metaphor to the "Transformers" sequel was AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire, who calls Skids and Mudflap "Jar Jar Binks in car form."

And Manohla Dargis, film critic for The New York Times, takes it a step further, writing that the "Transformers" characters were given "conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas."

Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling 'bots are just good clean fun.

"We're just putting more personality in," Bay said. "I don't know if it's stereotypes - they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it."

TV actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids. Neither immediately responded to interview requests for this story.

Bay said the twins' parts "were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters."

"I purely did it for kids," the director said. "Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them."

Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay's lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters serve no real purpose in the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely, notes Tasha Robinson, associate entertainment editor at The Onion.

"They don't really have any positive effect on the film," she said. "They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up and talk about how stupid each other is."

Hollywood has a track record of using negative stereotypes of black characters for comic relief, said Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, who has not seen the "Transformers" sequel.

"There's a history of people getting laughs at the expense of African-Americans and African-American culture," Boyd said. "These images are not completely divorced from history even though it's a new movie and even though they're robots and not humans."

American cinema also has a tendency to deal with race indirectly, said Allyson Nadia Field, an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"There's a persistent dehumanization of African-Americans throughout Hollywood that displaces issues of race onto non-human entities," said Field, who also hasn't seen the film. "It's not about skin color or robot color. It's about how their actions and language are coded racially."

If these characters weren't animated and instead played by real black actors, "then you might have to admit that it's racist," Robinson said. "But stick it into a robot's mouth, and it's just a robot, it's OK."

But if they're alien robots, she continued, "why do they talk like bad black stereotypes?"

Bay brushes off any whiff of controversy.

"Listen, you're going to have your naysayers on anything," he said. "It's like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes."


http://www.fox2now.com/entertainment/sns-ap-us-film-transformers-jar-jar-again,0,4425903.story

 

[halftime718]

All i'll say is that everybody loves to laugh about streotypes about other races and then when its about their own they get all but hurt

 

[seasoned vet]

Originally Posted by ILL LEGAL OPERATION

Love to see how it'd be if they gave the robots some slanted eyes, glasses, and I line that said "I can't drive."

All this "reaching" talk is comin' from people whose race wasn't subjected to this stereotypical bull %@+#.

- it always does.

hellaones wrote:

---

X

@ some of these replies, I don't buy that red neck BS for one second. The only thing that kind of makes me think its reaching and I'm bugging is the choice of cars these two took control of being a Volt & a Spark. But I'm sure if they had taken the shape of a Cutlass, Caprice, or any other car popular in the urban community you guys still wouldn't admit it.


- if the caprice and cutlass were still made id bet they would have been in there. using the Volt and Spark is just a marketing decision.

 

[im not you]

Originally Posted by ILL LEGAL OPERATION

All this "reaching" talk is comin' from people whose race wasn't subjected to this stereotypical bull %@+#.

Yeah that +$%# kills me on here. Dudes act like you gotta spit in your face and called a ###! in order for something to be racist.

 

[ninjahood]

Jive talkin robots.....big deal.

Jazz was a lot worse, lol....

I dunno, I guess hispanics take stereotypes a lot better then black or white people (speedy gonzales was

Resurected because he was overwhelmingly popular in latina america, regardless of the fact that the WB was hyper

sensitive of da issue.)

 

[seasoned vet]

Originally Posted by ninjahood

Jive talkin robots.....big deal.

Jazz was a lot worse, lol....

I dunno, I guess hispanics take stereotypes a lot better then black or white people (speedy gonzales was

Resurected because he was overwhelmingly popular in latina america, regardless of the fact that the WB was hyper

sensitive of da issue.)

- big deal eh?

- why not just have 2 regular talking robots to try and inject the same comedy. they could have still had the punchlines, fighting, and jabs at one another.no? tell me when and where jive talk in movies is even acceptable today besides blatant parodies mocking such?

- and we arent talking about a 1960' or 70's cartoon....this is 2009 if you havent noticed.

 

[rome357]

Originally Posted by ILL LEGAL OPERATION

Love to see how it'd be if they gave the robots some slanted eyes, glasses, and I line that said "I can't drive."

All this "reaching" talk is comin' from people whose race wasn't subjected to this stereotypical bull %@+#.

QFT!

 

[38816]

Originally Posted by ILL LEGAL OPERATION

[h1]Racist robots? Jive-talking twin Transformers raise questions about racial stereotypes[/h1]
SANDY COHEN AP Entertainment Writer

11:59 AM CDT, June 24, 2009

LOS ANGELES (AP) - "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" introduces some 40 new mechanized characters of all shapes, sizes and even sexes - but it's a pair of jive-talking 'bots that critics are singling out as more than just harmless comic relief.

Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact Chevys, constantly brawl and bicker in rap-inspired street slang. They're forced to acknowledge that they can't read. One has a gold tooth.

As good guys, they fight alongside the Autobots and are intended to provide comic relief. But the traits they're ascribed raise the specter of stereotypes most notably seen when Jar Jar Binks, the clumsy, broken-English speaking alien from "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" was criticized as a racial caricature.

Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern described Binks in 1999 as a "Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit," a reference to a black character from the 1920s and '30s that exploited negative stereotypes for comic effect. Extending that metaphor to the "Transformers" sequel was AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire, who calls Skids and Mudflap "Jar Jar Binks in car form."

And Manohla Dargis, film critic for The New York Times, takes it a step further, writing that the "Transformers" characters were given "conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas."

Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling 'bots are just good clean fun.

"We're just putting more personality in," Bay said. "I don't know if it's stereotypes - they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it."

TV actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids. Neither immediately responded to interview requests for this story.

Bay said the twins' parts "were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters."

"I purely did it for kids," the director said. "Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them."

Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay's lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters serve no real purpose in the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely, notes Tasha Robinson, associate entertainment editor at The Onion.

"They don't really have any positive effect on the film," she said. "They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up and talk about how stupid each other is."

Hollywood has a track record of using negative stereotypes of black characters for comic relief, said Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, who has not seen the "Transformers" sequel.

"There's a history of people getting laughs at the expense of African-Americans and African-American culture," Boyd said. "These images are not completely divorced from history even though it's a new movie and even though they're robots and not humans."

American cinema also has a tendency to deal with race indirectly, said Allyson Nadia Field, an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"There's a persistent dehumanization of African-Americans throughout Hollywood that displaces issues of race onto non-human entities," said Field, who also hasn't seen the film. "It's not about skin color or robot color. It's about how their actions and language are coded racially."

If these characters weren't animated and instead played by real black actors, "then you might have to admit that it's racist," Robinson said. "But stick it into a robot's mouth, and it's just a robot, it's OK."

But if they're alien robots, she continued, "why do they talk like bad black stereotypes?"

Bay brushes off any whiff of controversy.

"Listen, you're going to have your naysayers on anything," he said. "It's like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes."

http://www.fox2now.com/entertainment/sns-ap-us-film-transformers-jar-jar-again,0,4425903.story

real talk.


the original article posted is corny though and actually detracts from the emotions you're trying to appeal to...

 

[hellaones]

Jazz had nothing on these two

 

[duba169]

I'm just glad I have another reason to hate michael bay

a robot with a gold tooth that can't read lolol.

 

[halftime718]

Originally Posted by Halftime718

All i'll say is that everybody loves to laugh about streotypes about other races and then when its about their own they get all but hurt

 

[neosole]

This aint just here, ive read it on many other boards