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Yes, but it triggers me. I'm being flip but I'm less likely to revisit it because I just find myself squirming in my seat to watch it.
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Dec 8, 2013 21:24
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Yes, but it triggers me. I'm being flip but I'm less likely to revisit it because I just find myself squirming in my seat to watch it. Do you not watch horror movies?
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Dec 8, 2013 21:52
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Buzz Aldrin talking to Optimus is so loving insane in context it always makes me laugh whenever I remember that happened.
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Dec 8, 2013 21:53
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sassassin posted:Do you not watch horror movies? I can definitely understand not rewatching (or even initially watching), say Redneck Zombies or Vampiyaz, but something on the budget level of Transformers should be able to either not have the content or handle it in a way that it doesn't make huge swathes of the population embarrassed to be in the theater.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:39
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Neo Rasa posted:I can definitely understand not rewatching (or even initially watching), say Redneck Zombies or Vampiyaz, but something on the budget level of Transformers should be able to either not have the content or handle it in a way that it doesn't make huge swathes of the population embarrassed to be in the theater. What do "budget levels" have to do with anything?
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Dec 8, 2013 22:42
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Neo Rasa posted:I can definitely understand not rewatching (or even initially watching), say Redneck Zombies or Vampiyaz, but something on the budget level of Transformers should be able to either not have the content or handle it in a way that it doesn't make huge swathes of the population embarrassed to be in the theater. So cinema should only make you feel certain things relative to its budget?
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Dec 8, 2013 22:43
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sassassin posted:Do you not watch horror movies? There's a wide gulf between simulated violence and minstrelsy, even if the intent is to skewer American pop culture.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:45
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Maarak posted:There's a wide gulf between simulated violence and minstrelsy, even if the intent is to skewer American pop culture. Where does sex fit into this scale this is helpful
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Dec 8, 2013 22:45
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Maarak posted:There's a wide gulf between simulated violence and minstrelsy, even if the intent is to skewer American pop culture. What makes it "minstrelry", though? Considering the actual context of the films.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:47
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sassassin posted:Do you not watch horror movies?
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Dec 8, 2013 22:49
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RoadCrewWorker posted:I don't follow - the predictable discomfort/camp you expect and seek out is completely different from the surprise of how disgusted/regretful for paying the fee a movie makes you feel. But you don't have to regret watching a film just because it depicts or deals with uncomfortable things. Which is why the comparison to horror movies it apt.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:51
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Lord Krangdar posted:What do "budget levels" have to do with anything? sassassin posted:So cinema should only make you feel certain things relative to its budget? What I'm saying is that everyone involved in making these movies has some experience, they spent millions of dollars on effects, focus testing, marketing, etc. and along that entire process everyone thoughts the twins were a good idea. I think that's definitely worth calling out since they're awful. You can say it reflects culture in the US because of autobots studied our culture and the internet for some time before contacting us, but all that says is that through all their learning about human history and how people communicate with each other, the autobots came to the conclusion that black people talk like this. This is the opposite of "dealing with uncomfortable things." Maybe if they were parodying or idolizing one specific performer or personality they met they could possibly go somewhere interesting with that, but hey Optimus said they learned about humans from the world wide web in the first movie and the internet's horrible so let's just do whatever, can't please everyone, it's cool.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:59
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Lord Krangdar posted:But you don't have to regret watching a film just because it depicts or deals with uncomfortable things. Which is why the comparison to horror movies it apt.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:04
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Lord Krangdar posted:What makes it "minstrelry", though? Considering the actual context of the films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXSTcFjOHLE Is the blackface in Tropic Thunder not blackface because there's context?
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Dec 8, 2013 23:09
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Neo Rasa posted:You can say it reflects culture in the US because of autobots studied our culture and the internet for some time before contacting us, but all that says is that through all their learning about human history and how people communicate with each other, the autobots came to the conclusion that black people talk like this. This is the opposite of "dealing with uncomfortable things." Yeah, exactly. If aliens just learned about human culture through our internet and pop culture they would get some extremely skewed and offensive views about the roles and behavior of various races. Because our media collectively depicts skewed and offensive generalizations about the roles and behavior of various races. That is the uncomfortable fact. RoadCrewWorker posted:Oh no, of course not in general, but that certainly largely depends on the viewers subjective judgment of how well it actually "depicts and deals with" them. It's certainly an incredibly easy thing to gently caress up spectacularly. Alright. Maarak posted:Is the blackface in Tropic Thunder not blackface because there's context? I haven't seen that film so I don't know the context. But in theory someone could make a film about blackface or depicting blackface without the resulting film advocating blackface. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Dec 8, 2013 |
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Dec 8, 2013 23:11
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Neo Rasa posted:You can say it reflects culture in the US because of autobots studied our culture and the internet for some time before contacting us, but all that says is that through all their learning about human history and how people communicate with each other, the autobots came to the conclusion that black people talk like this. This is the opposite of "dealing with uncomfortable things."
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Dec 8, 2013 23:20
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Lord Krangdar posted:I haven't seen that film so I don't know the context. But in theory someone could make a film about blackface or depicting blackface without the resulting film advocating blackface. Agreed, but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Bamboozled certainly doesn't advocate blackface, but it's grueling to watch the segments of the Mantan minstrel show within the film. Arquinsiel posted:To be fair, the international reaction to it was much less vehement than in the US. To us not-yanks this is how America portrays black people pretty much all the time. This gets at why, at least for me, Skids and Mudflaps inclusion are a cause for worry.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:38
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Maarak posted:Agreed, but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Bamboozled certainly doesn't advocate blackface, but it's grueling to watch the segments of the Mantan minstrel show within the film. Okay. Well I'm not going to try and dictate to other people what they can and can't be uncomfortable with. But just for me discomfort is not necessarily a bad reaction to art. For example I used to suffer from panic attacks so some parts of Antichrist were quite hard for me to watch but that doesn't mean I think its a bad film or even a bad experience.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:44
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sassassin posted:Do you not watch horror movies? There's not a lot of horror movies about Stepin Fetchit. Incidentally, I find sexualized violence really tough to watch in horror movies (though you're oddly more likely to see that in a serious drama than a horror movie nowadays). My point is not that I'm so deeply offended, because I'm used to tone deaf portrayals of black people in movies, my point is that it's just cringingly awful, and not in the compelling King of Comedy sort of way. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Dec 8, 2013 |
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Dec 8, 2013 23:57
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Lord Krangdar posted:EDIT - And before someone says "lol ironic racism", I'm not saying the film was being racist ironically but rather that you can see it as about racist stereotypes rather than as advocating them. It's an easy formula. Humor that takes the piss at yourself or someone more powerful than yourself is good humor. Humor that that takes the piss at those without power is bad humor. It may or may not be "text" that the twins only act this way because they learned the behavior from a racist society, but either way those characters are the ones who suffer direct mockery for it, while the institution that established their behavior -- the societal values that the film is said to critique in secret -- is established at face value. No other characters in the film act particularly racist or spread any particularly racist values, knowingly or not, so it doesn't feel like the film is mocking "an institution of racism," just the victims of that institution. In the meantime I have no idea what horror films have to do with it unless we're conflating "scared of ghost women that might crawl out of TVs" with "being revolted at racist depictions that may affect yourself or people you know in real life."
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Dec 9, 2013 01:09
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It's also not how the Twins talk and act but how they look - big ears, ape-like appearance, gold teeth... Jazz took on an African-American personality in the first film, but he didn't become a racist caricature.
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Dec 9, 2013 02:04
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As much as I enjoy Terry's takedown of the Transformers franchise, it's important to keep in perspective that even if this is the intentional reading of the film, it's still not the reading the clear majority of audiences get out of it. Most people see Transformers as unironically being a big dumb robot movie. Contextual excuses for the Twins being racist caricatures are pretty weak when most people watched those scenes and thought "lol look at those robots acting like dumb niggas". I seem to remember at one point Terry mentioned that in the DVD commentary Bay for the second movie often says "that was the writers' idea" and that this clearly isn't meant as a compliment. Whatever he was trying to do with the Twins, if he was trying to do anything at all, just isn't as clearly presented as the whole "Optimus Prime is a psycho" storyline, which as we can see is constantly reenforced. Granted, normal viewers unironically see him as a hero, but...again, fans who've never heard of the critique will admit Optimus Prime acts kind of psycho. They'll just straight up pretend the racist implications of the Twins don't exist.
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Dec 9, 2013 03:15
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Milky Moor posted:It's also not how the Twins talk and act but how they look - big ears, ape-like appearance, gold teeth... You mean the Autobot with a low voice, breakdances and strikes pretty cheesy "word-to-your-mother" poses and finds places to "kick it," right? Or is there another Jazz I'm missing?
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Dec 9, 2013 04:30
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BrianWilly posted:The reason why this is such a suspect defense that no one ever comes away with is because the twins themselves are often the butt of the racist jokes on the film instead of the institution of racism itself. The film is not mocking people of color through the Twins because the twins are not people of color, neither literally/diegetically nor symbolically. Diegetically they are alien robots acting out human stereotypes, and symbolically they represent the stereotypes themselves. If "minstrelry" is mocking black people then mocking minstrels is mocking the oppressors, not the oppressed. All of the Autobots do act blatantly racist, actually, and especially in the second film. Terry went into detail on that in her analysis. Milky Moor posted:It's also not how the Twins talk and act but how they look - big ears, ape-like appearance, gold teeth... Remember, they're Transformers. They transform their appearances and personalities based on Earth culture. Again, that's not even subtext its just the basic premise. The progression you point out between films just means the second film made the not-even-subtext even more blatant, but people still didn't get it. Some Guy TT posted:As much as I enjoy Terry's takedown of the Transformers franchise, it's important to keep in perspective that even if this is the intentional reading of the film, it's still not the reading the clear majority of audiences get out of it. Most people see Transformers as unironically being a big dumb robot movie. Contextual excuses for the Twins being racist caricatures are pretty weak when most people watched those scenes and thought "lol look at those robots acting like dumb niggas". I'm not going to limit my interpretation of any film to a vague assumption of how the majority of people must interpret the film. That seems like a total dead end to interpretation, criticism, and discussion. Even in your made up example of the hypothetical viewer's thought process the key word is "acting". Acting out or depicting stereotypes in a cartoonish way is placing them in the realm of cartoons, no more real than coyotes dropping anvils on road runners. If someone can't understand that then the issue is with their basic thought processes and not any film. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 04:57
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Well there's that approach, but I started to go back through the series again with the document open so I could compare but I pretty quickly noticed that it wasn't matching up. The whole "autobots are inherently violent because we see it happen" thing would make sense, were all modern tech not based on Megatron to start with.
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Dec 9, 2013 05:28
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Lord Krangdar posted:The film is not mocking people of color through the Twins because the twins are not people of color, neither literally/diegetically nor symbolically. Diegetically they are alien robots acting out human stereotypes, and symbolically they represent the stereotypes themselves. If "minstrelry" is mocking black people then mocking minstrels is mocking the oppressors, not the oppressed. I'm sure someone who is better with words than I am can explain in detail why that line of thinking is entirely wrong.
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Dec 9, 2013 05:54
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Olibu posted:I'm sure someone who is better with words than I am can explain in detail why that line of thinking is entirely wrong. Hey, good addition to the discussion! That's all this is, after all. Entirely wrong, really? So what, the Twins are diegetically oppressed people of color and not alien robots? Wow, and some people thought SMG and Terry's readings were far out.
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Dec 9, 2013 06:06
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Excluding popular readings of the film from discussion is myopic.
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Dec 9, 2013 06:18
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Lord Krangdar posted:Remember, they're Transformers. They transform their appearances and personalities based on Earth culture. Again, that's not even subtext its just the basic premise. The progression you point out between films just means the second film made the not-even-subtext even more blatant, but people still didn't get it.
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Dec 9, 2013 06:21
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Maarak posted:Excluding popular readings of the film from discussion is myopic. Who said to do that? Not me. Lord Krangdar posted:I'm not going to limit my interpretation of any film to a vague assumption of how the majority of people must interpret the film. That seems like a total dead end to interpretation, criticism, and discussion. Include them in the discussion, sure. But a vague and cynical idea of what "the masses" think (without actually thinking about it) should not be the final world nor should it constrict how we're allowed to interpret a film. I choose to do better. Because Tyler Durden is not the hero of Fight Club. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 06:24
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The twins are Jar Jar Binks characters. They're also related to Bai Ling in Crank 2, the 'prawns' in District 9, the islanders in King Kong 2005, and Gollum. Bai Ling plays a screeching 'me love you long time' asian whore stereotype - but one who is, specifically, screeching her love of 1992's interracial romance The Bodyguard. This is obviously deliberately provocative, an attack on its middlebrow sensibilities. People like Ling's character do actually exist, but would be 'intolerable' to fans of The Bodyguard. (She specifically compares herself to Whitney Houston's Oscar-winning actress/singer character - the joke being that Bai Ling ain't going to win an Oscar.) The message of Crank 2 is to reverse the logic of 'real people don't act like this' to 'those who act like this are real people'. King Kong 2005 opens with an Al Jolson song, and features Andy Serkis as the world's biggest metaphor for blackness - it's about blackface as a historical phenomenon, and something still happening with performance-capture tech. Jar Jar Binks mixes things up further by being a black dude in blackface - an appropriation. I'd remind that Jar-jar is the de facto protagonist of his film, and is badly mistreated by the white dudes around him even if he is clumsy and stupid. So what if he is? The extreme of this are the prawns in District 9 and the islanders in Kong, who are totally dehumanized by the conditions they're forced into. They're inhuman and bestial because they've been reduced to that level. They shamble like the undead. Instead of complaining that the twins are fairly illiterate (though not totally so; their ice-cream truck mode is scrawled with custom English graffiti) the important thing is to ask why they are illiterate, why they are nonetheless a high-ranking part of NEST, why they are coded as 'good' minorities while the decepticons are monstrous and mercilessly slaughtered.... That's why they're in there.
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Dec 9, 2013 06:39
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Lord Krangdar posted:Hey, good addition to the discussion! That's all this is, after all. It's the more the idea of "This racism is okay because it's criticizing racism" that is entirely wrong.
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Dec 9, 2013 06:45
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Olibu posted:It's the more the idea of "This racism is okay because it's criticizing racism" that is entirely wrong. Good thing I didn't say that at all, then. I've written a number of posts on the subject, why not quote one of them instead of making up that quote which says something else? I'm not defending racism, but rather saying that its not racism in the first place. Nobody is able to give a good argument for why we should see it as the latter at all. If you changed your fake quote to say "depicting racism is okay if it's criticizing racism" that would be more accurate to what I've been saying, and that applies to many films besides Transformers 2- such as Django Unchained, or Schindler's List, or Roots, and on and on. Maybe, like you said, someone who is better with words than you are can explain in detail why my line of thinking is entirely wrong. I'm waiting. Honestly, I would love to have an actual discussion about this; that's why I'm posting here. But "someone else can explain why you're wrong" as your only position does not make for a good discussion. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 06:54
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Sorry, give me a moment, I'm still twitching after reading you saying that the twins are in no way racist. They are stereotypical depictions and safe ones at that. They push racism away, in a way of "haha look at this funny thing". They are on the side of the good guys, so even though they speak their mind and are brash they are still subservient to Optimus and whoever else, gently caress, pretty much everyone is above them. They are on the lowest totem pole. Even that thing that humps Megan Fox's leg arguably gets more importance, as far as characters that can actually be recognized in the film as more than a cameo. If it is, as you say, a comment on minstrelsy, it's hard to see. This is a movie that is known for low brow humor, barely makes any attempt to set the bar higher than that, and frankly is not a fitting place for that type of commentary at all. It serves no purpose and has no point. Again, the movie hardly deals with this. We get a few throwaway lines in the first movie about them learning the language through satellites broadcasting god knows what media, and in a movie that talks down to people as much as this they then expect the audience to carry that point forward and apply it in such a manner that they should clearly take this as bashing their own culture? Maybe, I can certainly see that line of reasoning. Again, the issue boils down to it still being racist because in the end it offers no further point. In fact, the film is so embarrassed by them that after that film, they are never seen or mentioned of again. It's like their entire reason for existing never got explored. The movies you listed off have points to them, the racism depicted in them is a central tenet of the entire goal of the movie, instead of useless joke characters that made everyone cringe. It's bringing minstrelsy into the present for no god drat reason. Again, I admit I'm not the best with words, some of that is rambling, but there is a reason Terry kept ending entire blocks of text throughout the analysis with, "And yet people on the internet claim the twins aren't racist."
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Dec 9, 2013 07:06
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If you're literally, or even figuratively, twitching over a disagreement about movie interpretation (and not even a particularly hostile one) maybe you should calm down before continuing the discussion further? Where I mainly disagree with you is that you've decided the parts of the film I've cited are "throw-away" and therefore not meaningful/relevant for no particular reason. Actually its more than just those lines in the first film, its a pattern throughout. That includes the character of Jazz in the first film, Bumblebee using clips of Earth media to communicate with the humans, and really the whole premise of the films: the Transformers transform based on what they see from Earth culture. Why do you think Optimus has flame decals on him? What do flame decals mean to an alien, any more than human racial stereotypes? You're also doing that thing where those other people won't get my line of reasoning from the film therefore we shouldn't, but again no matter how many people think Tyler Durden is the bad-rear end hero of Fight Club I'm still not going to see that as a good interpretation of the actual film (because it ignores half the film). And again, even in the most basic surface level reading of the film the Twins are still alien robots acting out human stereotypes, and not straight depictions/employments of those stereotypes. The films I listed are more focused on racism primarily than Transformers 2 is, yes. But the point was that its possible to depict racism on film without advocating it. I'm not sure what points you're making with that first paragraph. quote:Again, I admit I'm not the best with words, some of that is rambling, but there is a reason Terry kept ending entire blocks of text throughout the analysis with, "And yet people on the internet claim the twins aren't racist." IIRC those people were denying that the characters had anything to do with racial stereotypes at all. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 07:29
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Lord Krangdar posted:The film is not mocking people of color through the Twins because the twins are not people of color, neither literally/diegetically nor symbolically. Diegetically they are alien robots acting out human stereotypes, and symbolically they represent the stereotypes themselves. If "minstrelry" is mocking black people then mocking minstrels is mocking the oppressors, not the oppressed. Skids and Mudflap are not oppressing black humans, literally or symbolically, so they make poor targets of racism critique; mocking them means very little. More to the point, making it out as if they represent "the stereotypes themselves" instead of victims of stereotypes is a strange tautological distinction in this case because -- and this is key, here -- the twins aren't the butt of jokes because they act racist, they're the butt of jokes because they act "black." That right there is the oppressor/oppressed humor dichotomy spelled out in plain English. The joke, the mockery, the entertainment value, whatever we want to call it, does not come at the expense of the twins for being racist or for their mimicry of Earth racism. Like, that isn't even some subjective thing up for debate here, there is simply no humor whatsoever directed at the expense of human racist attitudes or the transformers' imitation of human racist attitudes. No, the joke is that jive-talking and flapping jaws and monkey ears are funny, whether it's real black people with those traits or alien robots adopting those traits for our amusement. The film doesn't mock minstrels; the mockery it portrays is minstrelry, to the tee, dictionary definition.
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Dec 9, 2013 07:58
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To me the joke is that they have misunderstood human culture by mistaking media depictions of race for reality, becoming blatant stereotypes that stand out in the name of fitting in. I found that pretty funny when I watched the film, and that's not some subjective thing up for debate even if your experiences differ. Oh but I forgot I'm only allowed to judge the film by how those other people interpreted it. And they, all of them, think "jive-talking and flapping jaws and monkey ears are funny". quote:More to the point, making it out as if they represent "the stereotypes themselves" instead of victims of stereotypes is a strange tautological distinction in this case because -- and this is key, here -- the twins aren't the butt of jokes because they act racist, they're the butt of jokes because they act "black." They don't represent the victims of the stereotypes because they're alien robots acting out the stereotypes that they learned from humans, and not black humans. How can you argue that they're both the victims of the stereotypes and then in the next paragraph say they are the minstrels doing the mocking? Why can't we relate the racism between the robots to human racism? Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 08:23
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72 new posts in the Transformers thread today? I thought a teaser trailer might've been released or someth-- Oh, racist robots. Goons. 
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Dec 9, 2013 08:33
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Lord Krangdar posted:To me the joke is that they have misunderstood human culture by mistaking media depictions of race for reality, becoming blatant stereotypes that stand out in the name of fitting in. I found that pretty funny when I watched the film, and that's not some subjective thing up for debate even if your experiences differ. You asked why the film's so-called critique of racism doesn't read to everyone. Don't get bitchy when they give you their answers. Lord Krangdar posted:They don't represent the victims of the stereotypes because they're alien robots acting out the stereotypes that they learned from humans, and not black humans. Case in point... Lord Krangdar posted:How can you argue that they're both the victims of the stereotypes and then in the next paragraph say they are the minstrels doing the mocking? Which means that they can't be the perpetrators of their own victimhood. The real, active minstrels in this allegory would be Bay and the other filmmakers, the ones who enacted this race show for entertainment and profit. Lord Krangdar posted:Why can't we relate the racism between the robots to human racism?
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Dec 9, 2013 09:14
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I understand what "represent" means non-literally, which is why I said they represent stereotypes themselves. You know that. They don't represent actual black people because they are acting like black stereotypes and not actual black people. Which is why they represent black stereotypes. The robot racism is related to human racism because both are racism. And both are in the films. And the robot racism follows patterns of otherizing, stereotyping, generalizing, us vs. them etc. jus like human racism. And because of how the third film begins. Not sure why those other people's sense of humour is objective but mine is just interpretation.
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Dec 9, 2013 09:30
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