Soul Reasonings:.. Autobots, rollout, BITCHES!!!

*There is a very minor spoiler in this post. If you are one of the few anally-rententive people who read this post, please skip this one. Now, on to our show...*

So I had the fortune/pleasure of taking in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen on Wednesday night. It was an enjoyable flick (definitely no Star Trek), easy to follow along, nice action, funny dialogue, the works. It isn’t the best movie of the summer, but I recommend seeing it. It was $45 well spent. That being said, I have one issue with the movie. It isn’t a major issue, but it is symbolic of how some Hollywood and social stereotypes live on to this day. Quite simply, what is the real purpose of The Twins???

The Twins, in this movie, are meant to portray the original Autobot characters Skids and Mudflap (see the links for personality breakdowns). However, this is where the similarities end. The Twins are basically clownish caricatures. They are fairly animalistic in appearance (facially, looking monkey-ish), and speak with a hybrid Brooklyn/Dirty South twang and vernacular. They make heavy use of the term “bitch-ass”. One has a gold tooth! I think by now you can catch where I’m going with this. Now these facts, by themselves, don’t necessarily affect me. It’s sad that Hollywood has to resort to such obvious stereotypical moulds when it comes to character creation, and it does annoy me mildly, but I have come to expect as such. What I did not expect, was what played off ¾ of the way through the movie. A situation popped up where Skids was asked to translate some Cybertronian text. His response: “Sorry, I ain’t much into reading, but it is Decepticon…” Hold on a sec, wha??????????? You “ain’t much into” what???????? N*gga WHAT??????

I have grown sadly accustomed to Hollywood painting minority characters with broad strokes from a generalized brush. It is the nature of the beast, especially those of the “summer blockbuster” variety. It is virtually impossible to properly develop multiple characters, push the plot and choreograph the action plus keep it all within a reasonable time frame. So we get the hero/anti-hero, the damsel in distress, the comic-relief, the token minority person. Further complicating this matter in Transformers, is the fact that half of the characters, the protagonists, are largely colour-free and unencumbered from personality types. There are few ways to say “ok, this is the funny guy”, or “ok, this is the black guy” without putting some blatant race/character types in there. Therefore, I was willing to live with the vernacular, the accent, the over-the-top behaviour, even the gold tooth (ok, maybe not the gold tooth). But the “I ain’t much into reading” is pushing it way over the boundary.

The belief that black people don’t read is steeped in one of worst, and most stupid, misconceptions that continues to exist in the world today. It basically implies that all black people are ignorant, and wouldn’t know what the marked thingies on the inside of a bound volume are if they came up and bitch-slapped them. It also caters to the belief that black people have no interest in improving themselves, and raising their level of knowledge. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. And what is the best source of knowledge? Books. Well, second best after the internet (according to some people), but that is another topic for another day. So, by having one of the only two black characters (who are already shady in their make-up), assert that he “ain’t much into reading” (Lord, even the grammar of the statement is deplorable), Michael Bay is maintaining that young black people are not interested in bettering themselves. He is perpetuating and even promoting the stereotype. And for those persons who would counter that this is typical of the modern hip-hop generation, I say bullshit. I know many ambitious young black persons who, while displaying many of the preconceived characteristics of The Twins, are part of the hip-hop generation, and who also go out of their way to gain as much knowledge as they possibly can. Nope, this is a purely racist stereotype.

But the real problem lies in the fact that this isn’t the first time that Michael Bay has slipped in this kind of nuanced bias. We all know the standing joke about black people in action/horror movies. If you are a black actor in a movie, pay your respects, and get a good friend to write your eulogy from the get-go. Because, chances are, you are not seeing past the half-hour mark. Hollywood has done a pretty ok job of combating this particular problem in recent years (after much bawling and complaining from minority groups). Michael Bay seems hell-bent on making sure it doesn’t die an easy death. In the movie adaptation of Miami Vice, Tubbs goes from being a best friend and true partner to Crocket in the series, to pretty much being his lackey in the movie. In the first Transformers movie, anyone remember what happened to Jazz, ostensibly, the only black Transformer in the movie? Yep, he’s the only Autobot who died. And fairly quickly in the final battle, too. And now, this. Anyone else see a pattern emerging?

Listen, I’m not expecting perfection from Hollywood. This isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t think we’re going to see ridiculous misconceptions about minorities disappear anytime soon. At the same time, I would hate to have to skip Transformers 3, just because Skids’ dumb ass still hasn’t figured out that it’s time to pick up a friggin’ book.