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Racism In & At Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
Pardon me if I am a little sensitive on racial issues today. I picked up my New York Times an hour ago and on the front page is an article about Richard Nixon’s ambivalence on abortion. Newly released tapes showed that he feared giving Constitutional protection to abortion would foster permissiveness, but that he also felt that it might be necessary in cases of rape or when the baby was half-black and half-white! Well, at least it’s good to know that on Nixon’s watch, even if it was illegal there would have been some sensible exceptions.
This is only the second most disturbing racist thing I have experienced in the last 12 hours. Last night I saw a midnight IMAX showing of Transformers (not a good movie) and now the makers of Birth of a Nation and the crows from Dumbo can welcome new members to the pantheon of overtly racist cinematic characters. The twins in Transformers, two cars/robots come fully equipped with:
- ebonics
- charcaturish “black voices” as if they were from a bad early 1980s or late 1970s film
- lisps – somewhere between Tim Meadows’ The Ladies’ Man and how members of Don Imus’ morning show have made black people sound in impersonations in the past
- an actual line of dialogue where they admit not being able to read
I was expecting their names to be Samboand Stepinfetchit as I watched the film; it was that stupid and overt. The first Transformers film had an overtly “black” Transformer (Jazz), but he didn’t sound like a heroin addict or pimp from Serpico.
But that might have been the most disturbing caricature of black people of the night if not for the guy sitting next to me. He spoke during approximately 75 minutes of a 150 minute movie. Here is a sample of his dialogue and actions throughout the movie (names have been removed so as not to spoil the film):
Why are they doing all this talking – damn! – Ironic quote of the night – said about the excessive two minutes of dialogue giving plot background before returning to incoherent confusing fight scenes.
Oh NO! –said approximately 45 times
DAMN WHERE _____’s backup!!!!!! HOW THEY GONNA LEAVE HIM!!! – shouted several times during a pivotal fight scene
FU-K HIM UP!!!! YEAH _____!!! FU_K HIM UP – same scene and a later scene
HOW THEY GONNA HAVE ME PAY MONEY TO SEE ______ DIE!!! – during major fight scene
(grunts with lost of hopping in his seat and punching motions during a fight scene) – during climactic fight scene
DON’T STAND UP THE MOVIE AIN’T OVER!!! – more irony – taking a stand against people walking during the closing credits because there were some clips playing over the ending credits.
I don’t even think this guy knew he was a stereotype in action because of a few reasons: there were a lot of black people talking and shouting during the movie and he did not seem to mind or pick up on the racist Transformers so I guess he wouldn’t pick up on his own stupidity. I chose not to stop him because I sensed a great blog topic.
Question of the day: why are black people so much more likely to be talking during a movie than other races? See I am half black, but my father is not from America and he raised me white, meaning my Mom and Dad both agreed that people would not talk during movies for the most part. When I went to see Taking of Pelham 123 a few nights ago an argument broke out between a white couple, who wished permanent hearing loss on their antagonists, and a group of three talkative black people (older black woman in the latter group responded with – “if you don’t like it watch the movie at home” – which would be great if that worked when you did something wrong that annoyed someone else. “Oh you don’t like me urinating on you – perhaps you should stay home then.”).
So go to Transformers for the racist caricature robots, but stay for the possibility that there will be raciallycaricatured audience members.
But seriously the movie is sort of bad. Not Wolverine bad, but not good either.