Is the new Transformers movie racist?
Movieline was the first to take note of this, in a post published last week, where Kyle Buchanan pointed out that the two robots “are voiced in a way that clearly designates them to be the ‘black’ robots. Also, Skids has a gold front tooth (no, I’m serious) and both cannot read.” Whoops! For those of you who just experienced visions of Jar Jar Binks dancing through your head, you’re not alone: Both New York’s own David Edelstein and the New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis picked up on the same thing, the latter noting that the characters’ voices were “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.”
Not yet having seen the movie ourselves, we can’t exactly weigh in on whether Skids and Mudflap actually exhibit racially insensitive behaviors. For what it’s worth, though, Michael Bay isn’t having any of it. “Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything,” he told the AP. “It’s like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes.” Um, we’re not as well versed on the culinary arts as our brethren over at Grub Street, but we’re pretty sure he meant to say “vanilla” and not “melba toast.” Still, we’re going to give Bay the benefit of the doubt on this one, mainly because we’re fairly certain that he was way too preoccupied with inventing new and exciting ways for the camera to linger on Megan Fox’s breasts to even realize that people might be offended by a couple of illiterate, “jive-talking” robots.
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.”
But what I want is a transcript of the pitch meeting that produced them. At some point, someone, somewhere, had to tell the writers that they wanted funny robots. “Funny how?” The writes would have asked. “Funny like dumb black people,” the bosses would have answered (the excuse that ‘it was all improv‘ would be a bit more convincing if the robots weren’t physically designed to look like chimps, and if neither one had a gold tooth). And Mudflap and Skids, despite being the most obvious racial stereotypes in the movie, aren’t anywhere near the only ones.
Bill Flanigen in Reason:
On its way to earning more money than you can possibly imagine, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is drawing a small storm of indignation—and not just because it’s as godawful as every other Michael Bay flick. Apparently deeming it insufficient to heartlessly screw (for a second time) the collective memory of a generation of Transformers toy/cartoon fans, Bay has added crypto-racism to the mix, sending some critics into fits of righteous, apopleptic rage.
The movie features two new, controversial autobots named “Skids” and “Mudflap.” They shuck and jive in what amounts to an updated-for-the-21st-century Al Jolson routine. They speak in gangsta slang. One sports a golden tooth. Both are excitable and diminutive enough to draw comparisons to chimpanzees. The insensitivity is shocking, shocking, in our fine, post-racial age.
[...] Let us momentarily appreciate two philosophical oddities: film characters that are simultaneously racist and race-less, and critiques of the racial politics of a Michael Bay movie.
John Nolte in Big Hollywood:
As far as all the noise about ”jive-talking” ‘bots Skids and Mudflap being some sort of “racist” characterization, that’s simply absurd. Both are completely over-the-top in the satiric department. Like the flamboyant gay man we see everywhere today or Randy Quaid’s portrayal of a redneck Southerner in the “Vacation” movies, there’s not a hint of a mean-spirit anywhere in sight. Is Wednesday “Innoculate Blacks From Satire Day?” You see, I’m all confused, because last week’s uproar from part of the gay community over “Bruno” fell on a Wednesday, too. Anyway, CAIR must be happy. That leaves them the six other days.
Scott Mendelson in Huffington Post:
And the only remotely interesting robot, Optimus Prime, has far less screen time than you’d think, giving the spotlight instead to Mudflap and Skids (both voiced by Tom Kenny), two bickering robots who look like monkeys, talk in the most stereotypical Ebonics jive possible, and apparently can’t read. To say that these two are the most astonishingly racist caricatures that I’ve ever seen in a mainstream motion picture would be an understatement.
UPDATE: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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July 7, 2009 at 9:03 pm
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