Just ask Jar Jar Binks.
Liberals pride themselves on being the ones to instruct us all on the merits of sensitivity and tolerance. However, Hollywood liberals are the ones who tend to exhibit a disproportionate amount of stereotyping. Whether it be the perpetuated portrayal of black men and Latinos as gangbangers, light-skinned black women as the intelligent and preferred, dark-skinned women as the poverty mom, and gays a-flamin’, there just seems to be something in the liberal water that leans towards blatant bigotry.
If you snoop around movie sites today, you’ll find references to Mudflap and Skids, twin Autobots from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen who bear more than a passing resemblance to minstrel show depictions of African Americans. CHUD.com aptly dubbed them Little Black Sambots. The wider story is that Mudflap and Skids are just the tip of the insensitive iceberg in Bay’s newest film.
Of course, when liberals go all racist, they claim it’s art. When they accuse everyone else of racism, we’re supposed to accept their accusation and cease the questionable behavior.
Now, I’ve never been a Transformers fan, cartoon or movie, thus I didn’t miss anything.
Well I AM a Transformers fan…though for the Cartoons/comics of the 80s only and the Beast Wars series of the 90s.
I have skipped the first movie altogether because I was insulted that Bumblebee (the main character’s “pet” transformer) is now a Dodge Charger…
Bumblebee was…a VolksWagen Beetle!!
Both movies are insulting to hardcore Transformers fans. Most people I know who have seen these movies aren’t “old school” fans, but kids and teens who have seen the newer (and crappy) cartoons from the 2000s. (Optimus Prime as a Fire Truck??? He’s a flatnose Mack!)
For the sake of comparison…(check out picture on top of Bob’s post)
this is what Skids looked like back in Transformers G1: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/transformers/images/6/69/Skidsg1.jpg
not very similar are they?
So I guess the “little black sambot” design was the idea of whoever did the concept art for the movie…
Mudflap was actually invented for the movies though, as he did not exist in the old series, and actually, Mudflap was an insult used profusely by the characters.
Don’t forget how they display women, too (i.e., dumb, only cares about superficial things like cosmetics, having fun, no stress, don’t have cares in the world and are easily convinced to have sex with.)
@cindy:
That is the staple of the Action Movie and is not confined to this one…but you are right, of course.
The day we actually get an “average” woman as one of the main characters in an action film, we’ll take notice.
(quote)
I have skipped the first movie altogether because I was insulted that Bumblebee (the main character’s “pet” transformer) is now a Dodge Charger…
(/quote)
It’s not a Dodge Charger. It’s the new Camaro. The first movie was basically a paid commercial for GM. They paid a crapton of money to get all their cars into it.
Cindy, you just described Megan Fox actually.
@rickh:
Both models look rather alike. I simply mixed them up.
Not a big fan of any GM/Chrysler vehicle manufactured after 1987, so my mistake
Either way, they went from a cheap Beetle (which fits the character’s name, Bumblebee, as he’s yellow) to a hot-rod…
which begs the question:
Why didn’t they simply erase Bumblebee and simply replace him with Hot-Rod, who was the child character’s “pet bot” in the 1986 movie and later on in the series. It would have been less of an insult to do that…
Then again Hot Rod is a lamborghini, so some would have been insulted nonetheless.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1155/848600678_0bdadb87e0.jpg
I think Optimus is still a semi in the movies. Just watched the second one yesterday with my son, I liked both of them, but then again I’m easily entertained.
And yes, the two little autobots were dripping with the kind of dialog that would usually send a leftist into convulsions.
As a 30 something black man who grew up on 80′s cartoons and whose favorite had to be Transformers, I was appalled by the little “Sambots”. I took my son to see the movie with me and was ready to walk out when those two started talking. I haven’t seen G.I. Joe yet just because I’m expecting the same behavior from Marlon Wayans character.
For all the liberals in Hollywood that claim to be the most tolerant people on the face of the earth, it still kills me when I see and hear actual, blatant racism. One of my other fond examples was when I watching “The Good Shepard” with Matt Damon. There’s a scene where they’re talking to Joe Pesci’s character who happens to be an Italian, and he’s commenting on the ties that bind the ethnicities that the WASP-esque Damon’s character seems to lack. During this diatribe, Pesci’s character finds it proper to use the word “nigger”. To be exact, he says “even the niggers have their music”. At that point a very well thought out and intelligent movie had been reduced to garbage in two minutes.
That’s Hollywood for you…