racial caricatures in new Transformers film?
Posted by: Rich Watson on June 24, 2009 at 11:44 pm
“…To be completely shocked by this is admittedly kind of foolish. Quite a bit was made of Jazz, the black Autobot in the first film, who did a breakdance move and got killed. But The Twins make Jazz look like a paragon of taste, and they make Jar Jar Binks look like he belongs in a production of A Raisin in the Sun. Simply put they are offensive beyond measure, and if their names were Stepin and Fetchit I could maybe argue that they were a joke or a bit of meta-commentary or anything except horrible, horrible racial stereotypes.”
I haven’t seen the film, and I really don’t wanna have to pay good money just to see these minor characters, so can anyone who has seen the movie comment on this?
David June 25th, 2009
I believe the character can be misconstrued and thought of as Black, but they could also white kids from the suburbs who want to be a part of hip-hop culture.
I enjoyed the movie (and I’m black, btw) and I think that this is way too silly a ‘thing’ to get upset over, and it shouldn’t be a controversy – it’s a movie about giant robots period!
William Satterwhite June 25th, 2009
Within the context of the film, they aren’t really that big of a deal because Michael Bay and his team really go out of their way to offend just about everybody. David makes a great point, the way the characters come across it seems more like someone trying to “act black” than anything else, then again I think that may be even worse than an outright racial caricature.
