I still really like the Transformers movies

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > I still really like the Transformers movies

BrianWilly: Apr 24, 2007; There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

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.

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.

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."

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 01:09

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# ¿ May 6, 2024 14:06

BrianWilly: Apr 24, 2007; There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

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.

All of the Autobots do act blatantly racist, actually, and especially in the second film. Terry went into detail on that in her analysis.

The Autobots do act racist towards each other. But by your analysis these transformers are not literally black humans, so what does their institution of racism have to do with ours? Nothing. When I said that no other characters in the film act particularly racist or spread any particularly racist values, I was talking about racist values as it relates to the type of racism the twins perpetrate. The film can take potshots at ancient alien racism all day long and it wouldn't say a thing for or against the type of cultural stereotyping perpetrated by humans against other humans. Y'know, "diagetically." The film is not suddenly somehow lambasting black stereotypes because space robots don't get along.

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.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 07:58

BrianWilly: Apr 24, 2007; There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

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.

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".

If you find the situation funny because of how you personally interpreted the situation, that's your thing. I'm talking about there, objectively, being no verbal or physical humor directed at racism or racist acts, in contrast to the various verbal or physical humor directed at stereotypical blackness.

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.

You get what "represent" means, right? Metaphors? Allusions? Things don't have to actually be another thing in order to be coded that way. The text is that these robots are not literally black humans, but for all intents and purposes they read as representations of 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?

Oh, but I didn't say that. The film depicts minstrelry, but Skids and Mudflap aren't minstrels; in-text they aren't coded as, per definition, white people dressing up as caricatures of black people for a show and taking off the costume when they're done for the day. They take on the role fully, to the extent that there is little difference between their original alien selves -- which we never, ever get to see -- and their new identities as idiot race clowns. Could they even revert to their old selves, even if they wanted to? For all intents and purposes, they are these new identities, just as Bumblebee is the current Bumblebee and Optimus is the current Optimus.

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?

You tell me. I'm not the one who thinks there is a link. What does the Autobots and Decepticons' race war have to do with minstrelry or perpetuating negative black stereotypes?

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 09:14

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > I still really like the Transformers movies