had he shown, what would have gone down?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Baxter" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 12:33:54 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
And aren't those racist clowns sad to behold? Back in the early
Mesozoic, when I was a host in MSN Chat, I had a real redneck on my hands,
liked to call me every name his not-so-fertile imagination could conjure. At
one point, he bragged about being a Marine 1st Sergeant who'd been dishonorably
discharged for beating up a Black 2nd Lieutenant who had just become his
company CO, because he didn't want to bother taking his orders. When I LOLed
him and basically said that he was porbably making it all up, he offered to
meet me as well, anytime I was in Macon. When I told him that I was living in
Stone Mountain at the time and offered to drive down, he sorta changed his
mind, wanted to meet at a neutral site. I chose Lenox Square Mall, namede a
time and made certain to be there (warning the police on du! ty that there
might be a ruckus).
Never showed.
For the next four days, everytime he turned up in Chat, I greeted him with, "I
missed you."
He never spoke to me again.
---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------
Subject : Re: [scifinoir2] Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
Date : Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:10:32 -0700 (PDT)
>From : Augustus Augustus <[email protected]>
To : [email protected]
Martin,
before u dismiss this one too, u need 2 see it. i have been reading all over
the net about this and i honestly did not notice it during the movie. sure, i
saw the 2 bots, but it never cease 2 amaze me how people will always revert 2
anthropomorphism. the movie was fun. one of those nice summer escapes that i
was able 2 sit and enjoy for 2 1/2 hours with nothing but explosions, robots,
cars (and some nice concept one's too), plans and humans. throw in some humor
from both robots and humans and it was fun. so i really wish people would stop
all the hate. i just wanted 2 see what people were saying and i went 2 a couple
of websites just 2 see and got into a couple (o.k. 5) typo's with some really
simple minded people. i always find it funny how racist people can be on the
net when they are hiding in obscurity. s i told them, it's one thing 2 call me
out my name when u are wherever, but forget me being a Marine. i g! ave them my
name and
location and told them, whenever they are ready, let's get it on. sad 2 say, no
takers.
Fate.
--- On Thu, 6/25/09, Martin Baxter wrote:
From: Martin Baxter
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
To: [email protected]
Date: Thursday, June 25, 2009, 8:46 AM
That's another one on the banned-for-life list.
---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------
Subject : Re: [scifinoir2] Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
Date : Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:04:50 -0400
>From : Mike Street
To : scifino...@yahoogro ups.com
I wasn't that jazzed up to see this cause I hated the first film. This
makes me never want to see it cause when I saw Star Wars/Jar Jar Banks
I was totally outraged. Until we control our own images these type of
things will continue to happen.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:36 PM, sincere1906 wrote:
>
>
> Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
> Jive-talking twin Transformers raise race issues
>
> By SANDY COHEN
>
> 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."
>
> ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -------
>
> My two cents-- I haven't seen the movie. As a person who loved Transformers
> as a kid (from Soundwave's menacing voice to Starscreams whiny-ness), I
> wasn't all that impressed with the first movie. I didn't dislike it, but
> there was too much silliness for me to enjoy it beyond the very nice special
> effects. On a note of race, a few things in the first movie made me
> "uncomfortable" --the banter between Bernie Mac and the main character (he
> calls an elderly black woman a b*tch and she flips him the bird); Anthony
> Anderson's character was annoyingly stereotypical, and that whole scene out
> of COPS where his overweight friend ends up being tackled into a pool just
> seemed over the top. By the time I heard Jazz's voice (which sounded like he
> was about to sell me a Colt 45) I decided this was one of those summer
> blockbusters where black folks were going to be the butt of jokes, minus the
> big black buck Tyrese. Wondering what this movie would have in store, I just
> read a review of it two days ago in which a reviewer (white) commented to
> look out for the "Amos n Andy" autobots. A friend of mine who is a professor
> of black images in media (of all things) saw the movie at a 12:00am showing
> last night, and confirmed for me earlier that the Amos n Andy bit was no
> exaggeration. What I find interesting here is that Bay both says he is
> surprised there's controversy, and then "brushes off" people's concerns. Oh
> to be white, male and privileged.. .
>
> Sin
>
>
--
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