"Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be." - Jim Horning

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On Transformers 2 being "racist":

Ezra Klein - More Than Meets the Eye

"Much of the movie's comic relief comes from a pair of Autobot twins named Mudflap and Skids. They look like monkeys. One has a gold tooth and satellite ears. The dialect is a parody of ebonics with words lifted from gangster rap, complete with frequent threats to "bust a cap" in this or that character. At one point, they're asked to read a symbol. "We don't much like reading," they say. They're not Autobots. They're Minstrelbots. As Ty Burr smartly said, "it's the first known example of robot blackface.""


A: I simply don't think Mudflap and Skids were "racist stereotypes." For one, they gleaned their lingo from pop culture and they clearly were taken with "gangsta rap" as many suburban teens are -- they are parodies of the idea of the gangsta as much as Jamie Kennedy, the characters in "CB4", the mainstream rappers in "Brown Sugar," and Kevin Federline. I didn't see them as necessarily racialized. Moreover -- the glyphs they were asked to interpret were thousands of years old and it was ONLY the ancient character in the movie who was able to read them. None of the young Autobots could.

B: I am a black man and the first few times they had appearances I was pissed. But I guess as the movie went on i just didn't focus on anything other than how funny they were. Besides that I also watch the Boondocks which I find hilarious which also has a lot of stereotyping in it. The gold tooth was a bit much, like they felt like audience just wouldn't get that they were supposed to be black without it. But the truth is in just about all cartoons you will find the same thing. Roadblock was a walking talking sterotype in the old GI Joe cartoons. One of the Thundercats talked almost exclusively in rhymes with an ethnic sounding voice. I am not excusing it but it kind of permeates the genre I would say. And besides, other than that the movie was teh Awesome.

[Ed: Roadblock is one of the most popular GI Joe characters]

C: it's racist and sexist (how DOES Megan Fox keep her lip gloss so pink and moist in the middle of the Egyptian desert? Why doesn't sand ever stick to it? Not to mention all the overtly sexual scenes.)

[Ed: I've not watchd it, but doubt I'll have have an idea why having perfect lip gloss is 'sexist']

D: Can you discern a person's race over the phone?

Do you honestly think that what you're detecting is their "race"?

E: "Funny like dumb black people,"

Yeah, there's never any of those.

F: I wonder if you were similarly troubled by the negative portrayal of white by the hillbilly towtruck in 'Cars'? Or how about the stoner-surfer turtle in 'Finding Nemo'? Both seemed like potentially negative (depending on how sensative you are) portrayals of traditionally white subcultures.

If 'gangsters' were a racially-diversified group we would find this portrayal funny, because quite frankly, they deserve to have fun poked at them. But because they are not diverse, we find it racist. What is more troubling, that a mediocre movie poked fun at a troublesome subgroup of American culture, or that the group in question, with obvious negative characteristics, is so closely associated with a specific race?