Transformers 2 : racist?

LOS ANGELES – "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 isguised 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."

Is Transformers 2 Racist?



One should expect explosions and cleavage in a Michael Bay film, but should one expect the perpetuation of racial stereotypes?

If you snoop around movie sites today, you’ll find references to Mudflap and Skids, twin Autobots from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen who bear more than a passing resemblance to minstrel show depictions of African Americans. CHUD.com aptly dubbed them Little Black Sambots. The wider story is that Mudflap and Skids are just the tip of the insensitive iceberg in Bay’s newest film.
Here is a list of what you can expect when you go to see the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Mudflap and Skidz - the aforementioned “from da hood” Autobots with gold teeth, poor grammar, the inability to read (or
speak with inside voices) and, final sigh, actual simian features. The voice work (by Spongebob Squarepants’ Tom Kenny) is more of the Howard Stern/Amos & Andy style as opposed to the Chris Rock “daaaaaamn!” variety.

Old Chinese Man Eating Noodles
- because an opening fight in Shanghai wouldn’t be complete without battling robots busting through a wall and disturbing a sage old man
over his steaming iron rice bowl. He has no lines, but he mugs to the camera with a nice blend of fear and wisdom.

Secret Agent Schlep
- John Turturro’s character from the first film is back, but he’s been run out of the spy game and has moved in with his mother in Jew York
City. There he sells whitefish to angry old women (who, no doubt, asks for a bissel sable lox on the side.) “Leave me alone, I’ve got bagels
to shmear!” he cries when Sam Witwicky (and the fate of the human race) dares to call him back into action.

Bucktoothed Angry Black Muslim
- I don’t know what stereotype exactly was going on with this guy other than baffling. Turturro’s mother’s delicatessen is obviously only
kosher-style. When a worker is moving a giant hog carcass, an “uppidty” meat slicer shouts out (from behind a wall of teeth) something to the tune of “don’t touch me with that pork!” (Surely, this man should find some other place of employ.)

The Wopticon - A supporting character in the film is a mini-decepticon RC vehicle portrayed as an Eye-talian stool pigeon. Did you know the natives of Cybertron had a fear of getting’ whacked? This li’l guy does.

Jetfire, Old Boy
- In this iteration the Decepticon-turned-Autobot is a dusty old Anglo-Scots codger. Cheers to ILM for figuring out a way to turn metal
into a beard and a cane, jeers for putting The Major from Fawlty Towers in the middle of an action film.
Das Torture Bot - When Sam Witwicky is pinned to a slab of concrete (because "Megatron wants what's in my mind!") a Herr
Doktor Mengele type droid appears to do the drilling. Talk about OUCHwitz!

The French - The UK is clearly shown among the coalition of the willing (to keep Energon from Megatron, of course) but
other than a shout out to a noble Jordanian helicopter, the rest of the world seems to be neutral in this worldwide struggle. The French
particularly so. When Mr. and Mrs. Witwicky are seen on their Gaullic vacation, all we see are quick flashes of typical French behavior:
annoying mimes and repulsive edible snails.

The Arab World
- According to Michael Bay’s logic, the entire Arab World is nothing but sand, camels and pyramids. Also Aqaba, Petra and Giza are all
within walking distance. (But, hey, you also have to take the Ben Franklin Bridge to get from New Jersey to New York in this film and
there are mountains in Washington DC, but that’s another story.)

The Female Gender
- Every single female in the world is young, slender, wearing very little clothing and is if not ready to copulate, at least wiggle
lasciviously. Every single female in the film. Even the randy and lithe Mrs. Witwicky.

If one really wants to read into things, one can easily find a repudiation of the Obama administration. The only
non-Robot bad guy is a pusillanimous, bespectled worm who thinks that a strong military showing is not the best policy (he is WEAK) and when he is forced to jump from an airplane he cries like a little girl.

Sam Witwicky’s roommate Leo is played by Ramon Rodgriguez who, unless I’m forgetting a stereotype, doesn’t do anything disgrace the Latino community. He kinda acts like a yutz and chases a lot of tail, but I’ll chalk that up to him being a lusty college freshman rather than some sexed-up Latin lover.

Indeed, one could surely chalk the whole thing up to, “hey, it’s a movie about robots and explosions” and “relax a little and STFU!” Or, one could argue that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be watched and beloved by young and impressionable teens who,
whether they know it or not, have their opinions in some way shaped by the media they consume. Either way, the evidence of racial tereotyping in the film is undeniable.