![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficOkay, maybe I'm not the best person to say this. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about political correctness or social justice. I'm not one for the self-flagellation that tends to accompany a lot of fandom's conversations on race, homosexuality, and gender. My f-list doesn't include racialicious posts or deadbrowalking. I may laugh at the occasional bit of hipster racism. But I do try to stop and think instead of just going "there's no racism anymore lol black president." I go by the Black Comedian Rule. If I can imagine it as a joke a black comedian would tell, then it's not racist.
Admit it, you laughed.
But I do quantify that some. The humor there is based around being shocking, doing things that you aren't supposed to do and acting in ways good people aren't supposed to act. It's edgy humor, and it's okay to be offended by that since it's trying to be offensive. But while I trust adults to get the irony of that, I really don't think kids should be exposed to that sort of thing. I know, I know, hand-wringing, "won't someone please think of the children," but yes, sometimes we should think about the children. You should think about the children before you take your family to see Hostel. You should think about the children before you use language you don't want them to repeat. You should think about the children when you're ordering pizza for the third time in a week instead of making a salad.
, and by extension Michael Bay. Now I'm not a hater. I liked The Rock, because that was Michael Bay at the top of his game, before he lost the plot with Transformers and the techno-bukkake robots (yes, very impressive technically, but in Avatar, you could render the Na'vi so that the audience can see their muscles and blood vessels instead of skin, but then we couldn't tell them apart) and the action scenes that look like you're inside a car crash. And I didn't mind much the screaming black guys in the car chases or when meteors were hitting New York because, hey, I think whatever your race, you'd be screaming too in that situation.
Unless you're Lucas Lee, in which case a meteor is just an asteroid whose ass you kicked.
And now we come to Transformers 2, which is aimed at children. And like all kid films, it needs some comic relief to offset the nightmares your kids will have after the naked lady tries to tell secrets to good ol' lovable Sam Witwicki and then transforms into a rape-beast from mecha-hell. So, who will be the wacky jokester? John Turturro, he's a pretty funny guy. Maybe Bumblebee, just play some old audio clips out of context, YTMND does it all the time. Or Jetfire, crotchety old robo-grandpa, comedy gold there.
Or you can have the comic relief be Skids and Mudflap. You can give them most of the screentime, since they're clearly the funniest thing since the banana peel. Even give them more lines than Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, you know, the heroes? And I used to watch Beast Wars as a kid, so I know there are all sorts of ways you can make an Autobot funny, like having them be outrageously noble or snarky and cynical or young and naïve. Or, you can have the joke be that they're niggers.
That's the joke.
It's not that their portrayal is ironic or edgy, because I don't think Michael Bay understands the concept of irony anymore than he understands the concepts of subtlety or "small children will be seeing this." It's not that they're stupid. It's that they're stupid because they're black. They're ignorant, violent, vulgar, illiterate dumbasses. Because they're black. And when you put something like that in a movie, especially a movie aimed at kids, it goes beyond the realm of political correctness or unfortunate implications or any of that. At that point, you're doing the things bad people do. It really doesn't take that much effort to be a good person, but you've failed at it. On an artistic level, on a human level, you've committed a very real sin. In your own small little way, you're hurting humanity. And I do find that offensive and I do worry about what children take away from that and I do feel shame for supporting that with my dollar. So to say the least, I don't think I will be in the audience for Transformers 3. It's not that I find Skids and Mudflap annoying, although there is that. It's that I find them to be evil.
Admit it, you laughed.
But I do quantify that some. The humor there is based around being shocking, doing things that you aren't supposed to do and acting in ways good people aren't supposed to act. It's edgy humor, and it's okay to be offended by that since it's trying to be offensive. But while I trust adults to get the irony of that, I really don't think kids should be exposed to that sort of thing. I know, I know, hand-wringing, "won't someone please think of the children," but yes, sometimes we should think about the children. You should think about the children before you take your family to see Hostel. You should think about the children before you use language you don't want them to repeat. You should think about the children when you're ordering pizza for the third time in a week instead of making a salad.
, and by extension Michael Bay. Now I'm not a hater. I liked The Rock, because that was Michael Bay at the top of his game, before he lost the plot with Transformers and the techno-bukkake robots (yes, very impressive technically, but in Avatar, you could render the Na'vi so that the audience can see their muscles and blood vessels instead of skin, but then we couldn't tell them apart) and the action scenes that look like you're inside a car crash. And I didn't mind much the screaming black guys in the car chases or when meteors were hitting New York because, hey, I think whatever your race, you'd be screaming too in that situation.
Unless you're Lucas Lee, in which case a meteor is just an asteroid whose ass you kicked.
And now we come to Transformers 2, which is aimed at children. And like all kid films, it needs some comic relief to offset the nightmares your kids will have after the naked lady tries to tell secrets to good ol' lovable Sam Witwicki and then transforms into a rape-beast from mecha-hell. So, who will be the wacky jokester? John Turturro, he's a pretty funny guy. Maybe Bumblebee, just play some old audio clips out of context, YTMND does it all the time. Or Jetfire, crotchety old robo-grandpa, comedy gold there.
Or you can have the comic relief be Skids and Mudflap. You can give them most of the screentime, since they're clearly the funniest thing since the banana peel. Even give them more lines than Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, you know, the heroes? And I used to watch Beast Wars as a kid, so I know there are all sorts of ways you can make an Autobot funny, like having them be outrageously noble or snarky and cynical or young and naïve. Or, you can have the joke be that they're niggers.
That's the joke.
It's not that their portrayal is ironic or edgy, because I don't think Michael Bay understands the concept of irony anymore than he understands the concepts of subtlety or "small children will be seeing this." It's not that they're stupid. It's that they're stupid because they're black. They're ignorant, violent, vulgar, illiterate dumbasses. Because they're black. And when you put something like that in a movie, especially a movie aimed at kids, it goes beyond the realm of political correctness or unfortunate implications or any of that. At that point, you're doing the things bad people do. It really doesn't take that much effort to be a good person, but you've failed at it. On an artistic level, on a human level, you've committed a very real sin. In your own small little way, you're hurting humanity. And I do find that offensive and I do worry about what children take away from that and I do feel shame for supporting that with my dollar. So to say the least, I don't think I will be in the audience for Transformers 3. It's not that I find Skids and Mudflap annoying, although there is that. It's that I find them to be evil.
