Racist Transformers?

[CyberHustler]

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies....race-issues-ap

LOS ANGELES - Harmless comic characters or racist robots?

The buzz over the summer blockbuster "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" only grew Wednesday as some said two jive-talking Chevy characters were racial caricatures.

Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact hatchbacks, 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 their traits 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 caricature.

One fan called the Transformers twins "Jar Jar Bots" in a blog post online.

Todd Herrold, who watched the movie in New York City, called the characters "outrageous."

"It's one thing when robot cars are racial stereotypes," he said, "but the movie also had a bucktoothed black guy who is briefly in one scene who's also a stereotype."

"They're like the fools," said 18-year-old Nicholas Govede, also of New York City. "The comic relief in a degrading way."

Not all fans were offended. Twin brothers Jason and William Garcia, 18, who saw the movie in Miami, said they related to the characters ? not their illiteracy, but their bickering.

"They were hilarious," Jason said. "Every movie has their standout character, and I think they were the ones for this movie."

In Atlanta, Rico Lawson said people were reading too much into the characters. "It was actually funny," said Lawson, 25, who saw the movie with his girlfriend in Atlanta.

That was the aim, director Michael Bay said in an interview.

"It's done in fun," he 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."

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."

Actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids.

Wilson said Wednesday that he never imagined viewers might consider the twins to be racial caricatures. When he took the role, he was told that the alien robots learned about human culture through the Web and that the twins were "wannabe gangster types."

"It's an alien who uploaded information from the Internet and put together the conglomeration and formed this cadence, way of speaking and body language that was accumulated over X amount of years of information and that's what came out," the 40-year-old actor said. "If he had uploaded country music, he would have come out like that."

It's not fair to assume the characters are black, he said.

"It could easily be a Transformer that uploaded Kevin Federline data," Wilson said. "They were just like posers to me."

Kenny did not respond to an interview request Wednesday.

"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 aren't integral to 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."

[$5 submissions]

The same thing was said about the LOTR series

[Darkland]

People are idiots... No matter how far we advance towards equality and try to put racism behind us there will always be those people who want to look for it where ever they can. I call it an obsession, and not a healthy one either. It is these people, as well as anyone who relies heavily on the race card in a supposed attempt to make things better, who are doing nothing more than pumping life into it.

Begs the question... Who is REALLY keeping racism alive? Those once accused of it or those who are or claim to be victims of it?

[Si]

oh yeah and the "black entertainment awards" ain't?

Try starting the white entertainment awards and see how much bullshit you get

[Diomed]

I thought that from the first Transformers,

where the black robot had a fucking boombox and said some dumb "supposed to be black" shit.

[David!]

Why are you surprised, a bunch of retards more interested with Miley Cyrus elected the worst piece of fuck as President and now we are stuck with fucktards who are going to tell us that Big Bird and the Cookie Monster are racists!!!

[Pornwolf]

Just taking a wild guess here but I don't think people like BradM would make comments like the one below if he wasn't constantly bombarded with the worst possible black stereotypes in the media.

Originally Posted by BradM

No. I am white and have zero interest in that culture. Besides, I can't understand what half of them say.

[fpmk]

Originally Posted by Diomed

I thought that from the first Transformers,

where the black robot had a fucking boombox and said some dumb "supposed to be black" shit.

[GrouchyAdmin]

po-tae-kfc

[JD]

oh ffs people... always throwing out the race card. get over it god damn...

[Mr.Right - Banned For Life]

why is it only white people can be rasist?

[NaughtyRob]

Those twin robots were hilarious.

[David!]

Originally Posted by Mr.Right

why is it only white people can be rasist?

Because we started African slavery.....
Oh, but wait, African slavery was started by Arab merchants, dayum.....

[BlackCrayon]

what i don't get is why make the characters that talk "black" illiterate? Nothing wrong with jive talkin robots that make people laugh but its pretty wierd that they are illiterate.

[$5 submissions]

I finally got around to see this movie. It's purely entertainment and eye candy. No more, no less. Not worth seeing again but okay just for purely escape.

[Pete-KT]

that was a waste of a minute to read

[Horny Dude]

Originally Posted by Mr.Right

why is it only white people can be rasist?

Agreed, how many times do you see commercials or movies use some sufer/stoner dude acting like an idiot. Do you hear white people calling foul because of it? Activist need to spend their time on more important shit then CGI movie characters.