Mudflap and Skids - Racism in Transformers 2

I excitedly walked out of the local AMC 24 at roughly 3:00AM on Wednesday morning, probably just as excited as I was as I had walked into the theater. The parking lot was swarming with late night movie-goers, lending to a difficult hour of parking lot traffic and Transformers 2 mayhem. I turned to my buddy, Josh, who was walking beside me to my jet black, tinted windows, '99 VW GTI when I turned to him and said, "I expect their to be a thing in the newspaper in the morning about the two comedic robots (Mudflap and Skids).

Lo and behold, here it is:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090625/ap_en_mo/us_film_transformers_jar_jar_again

I think it's absolutely rediculous. People and the media are so outrageously predictable. I knew race would be brought up with the two robots, and honestly, it's pathetic. People just can't let harmlessness remain harmless. Labelling two RED and GREEN robots as african-american and associating their traits with blacks in itself is the most racism I've seen come from the whole ordeal.

 

Not familiar with the movie,but playing the race-card has become a big thing with the media,especially US media.--Look at it this way US media caters to people that are stupid,plain and simple.The very people that play the race card are the true bigots.--There was a tv show called "Amos and Andy" that aired in the 1950s,I never saw it.However it supposedly is banned from being shown in the US.From what I know about that show it did stereotype black people,however the characters were likeable and it was nice clean family entertainment.They ban a show like that but hardcore rap is ok?--Fuck the US media and politically correct morons in general.

 

Your fault for watching that horrible shit.

 

Also the Disney classic movie "Song of the South" is banned.It's probably a harmless entertaining movie,but because of rampant political correctness,alot of people can't get a chance to see what may be an all time great Disney movie.I'd like to see that movie and judge for myself,just as I'd like to see Amos and Andy and judge for myself.

 

There is always someone to be offended. Remember Tropic Thunder - big outcry from the advocates for developmentally disabled because of the character Simple Jack.

Silence of the Lambs had an outcry from some gay orgs because ONE of the killers in the movie pranced around naked in drag with his penis tucked away.

My argument for that one was "So what?" Aren't gay ppl allowed to be villains? (not that the character was identified as being gay, just weird) Wouldn't it be discriminating to exempt them from being villains? What about Dahmer, the real gay murderer?

I really loathe PC. It is one of the most subversive forms of censorship causing artists and writers to second guess how a particular thing will play out. Only the bold artists will go ahead and do their art - but producers are interested only in appeasing the masses (money).

But, quite often they find that the naysayers, those who bitch about something being insensitive, racist, sexist whatever are a distinct minority so a work can go ahead with its controversial content as long as the masses come to see it.

Saved by the insensitive masses. :cheers2:

 

I agree about how much I hate Political Correctness, but I like decency. Having seen only the first Transformers, I can't say much about this new character. But I didn't find the one that's in the first indecent. It was making fun of the rap culture. That the naysayers associate it with black people, is, if anything where racism comes in.

And I HATE defending these terrible terrible films, or the makers, but really, no racism seemed intended.

This reminds me of the MTV Awards before last. Russel Brand made some stupid joke about the Jonas Brothers' promise rings, asking if the rings go on their fingers or somewhere else. Jordin Sparks, was so offended by this non-offensive musing, that she said "and I just want to say something about teens that wear promise rings, not everyone wants to be a slut" effectively calling me, and every other teen at that time, that was not wearing some stupid ring, a slut.

So I agree with you completely.

 

i'll defend amos and andy on t.v. i remember watching it in reruns thinking how funny the show was.about 10 years ago i watched a video with some episodes.they were some talented people brought together for that show.they were on par if not better than the other shows of the same era and certainly better than anything being done today.i watched an episode on you tube today.i didn't see anything racist from what i saw .it was just very entertaining and funny.i've also heard clips from the radio program of the same name and it wasn't quite up to par with the television program from what little i've heard....song of the south in my opinion was kind of a crappy movie as i remember.i did read some of joel chandler harris' stories that the movie was based upon and i think the stories are better being read than watched...from the silent era up to the modern era a popular film genre was race movies.films useing,for example, an all black cast etc.thankfully these are still shown on channels such as tcm.most of them are very well done films.in my opinion it's too bad many people don't have the oppurtunity to watch many of the old television programs for whatever the reasons.i think sometimes people are too sensitve but maybe it's me.maybe i'm not sensitve enough.

 

I agree,very well said and so true .--It's also one of a few reasons contemporary movies and tv have sunk to it's current low level.Political correctness really IS just another term for censorship.And the masses(money) they try to appeal to in contemporary tv/movies seems to be 12 year old children. --I also wonder how many great 'older' movies and tv shows are kept off the air because of a very small minority of people and a PC media who are just overly sensitive idiots,and who do NOT represent the majority of people.

 

Mater: [Out tractor tipping] I tell you what, buddy, it just don't get better than this...

thats not racist..

 

HEY! U makin' fun of white, blue-collar workers?

Elitist!!!

 

Seems like a wonderful show that should be brought back on the air.--It's ironic that people criticize countries like Russia and China etc. for limiting what people are able to view on tv,yet the US does the same thing to a smaller degree.

 

As an african american I’m personally offended by these caricatures which play upon the racial stereotype of blacks, and someone’s head should roll at dreamworks or paramount studios

Writer ehren kruger was born in america but apparently still hasn’t forgotten his nazi roots


Hotwater

 

I'm offended that you say a nice Aryan would make such a character. Clearly the character is a wigga, or someone else wrote that part.

 

You pasted the post with the link, but apparently you never read the article it linked to. Here is an excerpt:

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.

So, it is an assumption that the characters voiced are black - and if the black actor who voiced them was not offended, why should you be?

 

*facepalm* and this can make billions of dollars... =(

 

The individuals in question are simply trying to cover their own ass and those of paramount studios by proffering a perfectly logical explanation for their insensitivity towards the black community

Hotwater

 

transformers isn't one on my to see list anyway...i know a movie like song of the south came up in this discussion.saw the disney film as a kid and they'd show episodes from it on tv....i was more interested in reading the stories that disney didn't really succeed at.i read some of the stories of harris's books.the animals in the cartoon isn't what i read ans saw.it;s better with your own vision of stories taking place in backroads georgia.i think they were written in the 1880's pretty sure.but i believe joel chandler harris pretty much retold folk tales of that part of the world.reminds me kind of like the comic strip pogo....anyway i'm sure the stories are what would be fun to hear.harris tried though the best he could.the book definetly over the disney film.....the jungle book stories by rudyard kipling are best read compared to the disney adaptation also.

 

i'm not really an action movie fan.i'm more into the classic films which got me thinking .through the years there have been many instances where actors have taken parts they really didn't believe in.often times i suppose it's been they've needed the money,they needed to eat and there were'nt other roles available to them.perhaps they felt it would lead to better roles.typecasting of people of nearly every nationality has occured in films and on stage.things seem better certainly then they did in the old days.like i said earlier i don't really plan to see the film in question but i did read some about the two actors playing or voiceing the parts.they both seem like succesful and established actors.like most art a film can be interpreted in differant ways by differant people.this film,at least these two characters,sounds controversial to me.

 

As I was watching the new Transformers, the characters of Mudflap and Skids constantly reminded me of the crows in Dumbo. Sure, I thought they were racial stereotypes but I found them more retarded than offensive. I think it's funny the article mentioned above claims the characters were never envisioned as "black" and yet the one had a gold tooth just to drive the point home. More than anything, I just found the characters annoying as fuck, further ruining every scene they were featured in.

As much as I enjoyed the first movie, this one was a pretty big disappointment so these two were just bonus headaches. I've found the best way to describe the movie is "visual clusterfuck". On a related note, what did everyone think of the inclusion of balls on Devastator?

 

Gold tooth = black person?

And the first movie sucked too.