"It’s not racism if they’re robots, right?" by Jake VanKersen

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)
Directed by: Michael Bay
Written by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, and John Turturro

I’m not sure if I would ever use the phrase “socially irresponsible” to describe a film. In all honesty it seems far too dramatic. I mean I have seen a great number of bad films in my day but not a film that I would say is bad for society. Such a film would have to go far beyond having poor cinematic qualities. It would need more than a high dose of sexuality, violence, and a bit of racism. It would need to be such a film that uses those elements with glee and it would only be successful if audiences accepted it without realizing it.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, directed by Michael Bay, is such a film. Now, before I get to carried away here I want to be careful. I’m a pretty liberal guy and I feel that people need to make their own choices. I don’t want to tell anybody what they should and should not see based on my own opinion.

That being said this is not a call to revolution it’s a call to education. I believe that people have taken the media for granted for far too long without learning how to digest it. We teach students how to recognize and understand literary techniques to read novels in English classes but we don’t have widespread Media Literacy classes to teach them how to digest the films, TV, music, and advertisements that they are subjected to day after day. This is creating a problem in our society in which at the very least they will flock to see bad movies and at the very most believe that what they see on screen is socially acceptable, responsible, or appropriate.

Seeing as how the film earned just over 200 million dollars this weekend I think it makes the strongest case for the need to have a discussions about Media Literacy. I don’t think people understood some of the images that they were seeing on the screen in this film. I would like to think that if they did there would have been more of an outcry about this it instead of validating it with such a high first week gross.

So what is so wrong with it? Well, first of all like all Michael Bay films this one is incredibly violent. There might not be much blood and guts, but in the opening moments of this film there is the implied deaths of hundreds of people. When giant robots tear through buildings and run through the streets stomping on cars do you think there were people in them? Do you think that every building was empty and every car was automated? Chances are there were people in them and when a giant robot falls into traffic people were crush beneath them.

This is a time-honored tradition in Michael Bay films. The man loves action sequences and he very good at them. They are very exciting and personally, they are a bit of a guilty pleasure. Still I can’t help shake that feeling every time the heroes’ car slams into another car that the other person gets hurt. Or when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence drive through countless Cuban houses in Bad Boys 2 they mowed down somebody’s brother, sister, mother, or at the very least, a puppy.

I mean he is making a car chase and two cars slamming into one another is kind of exciting. Also, it would be pretty disturbing to see the aftermath of one of these accidents. Actually, it would be down right grisly. As Alfred Hitchcock would say, “it’s only a movie,” and there is something to that point of view. Michael Bay does action films and car chases are an action film staple. More than anything I bring this up as food for thought. I don’t want to get too caught up on it because the other two issues with this film are more pressing and offensive.

One such is issue is that Michael Bay’s films are terribly misogynistic. The man tends to show woman as nothing more than the lustful desires of men. For men in the film and for men in audience women are nothing more than something to ogle. Basically if a Michael Bay film was my sole tool for shaping my view of women I would be terribly disappointed that they didn’t look or stand like a woman in the calendar in a mechanic’s garage.

There are many problems with this but in the case of Transformers there are going to be young boys watching the film. I’m not about to yell out, “The children! The children! Won’t somebody please think about the children!?” but seriously think about the children watching this film.
If Michael Bay wants to portray woman like this in his rated R fare it’s still offensive but not as much as an influence on that audience. Adults realize that this is not realistic. They might not agree with it but hopefully it won’t play a part in shaping their gender roles. Honestly, my hope would be that they are either too intelligent or too far along in their negative development to believe that only big breasted blondes are beautiful.

With the kids though it might be sending terrible messages. Think about a young boy watching this film for the robots but also seeing an upshot of a young girl’s skirt. That might have a lasting impression on him. Or a young girl feeling very self-conscious because she doesn’t look anything like Megan Fox does as she straddles a motorcycle in tiny tiny denim shorts. Incidentally Megan Fox’s first on screen role was as an extra in Bad Boys 2. She was an extra in a club scene wearing an American flag bikini and a cowboy hat because two things Michael Bay loves is America and women.

Finally, the greatest offenses in this film are the pretty racist characters known as The Twins. They are two robots named Mudflap and Skids who have African American voices, gold teeth, speak in Ebonics, and admit to not being able to read. I honestly was at a loss for words when they appeared on screen. Somebody at some point in production had to stop and ask what was happening with these characters. That can only mean that Michael Bay intentionally created the characters to be portrayed that way.
I’m not really sure what Michael Bay was trying to accomplish with these characters. I understand that they were meant to be comic relief but why did he use negative African American stereotypes for laughs? It’s not the voices it’s everything that comes along with them.

Also, for some unknown reason, on top of everything Michael Bay milks laughs out of an African American character that looks just like the robots. The character works at a deli and he is an African American man with bad teeth. If the point was to make a quick joke why did he have to use that actor? Why did he have to get cheap laughs from another African American character? Honestly, maybe I wouldn’t have taken it that way had it not been for the robots, but together I have to wonder.

Evidently even the writers, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were taken by surprise when they saw these two characters on screen. In an interview with Film School Reject that had this to say about the situation:

Orci: Number one, we sympathize. Yes, the gold tooth was not in the script, that’s true.

Kurtzman: It’s really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it. I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie.

Cole: Were you offended by them?

Kurtzman: I wasn’t thrilled. I certainly wasn’t thrilled.

Orci: Yeah, same reaction. I’m not easily offended, but when I saw it, I thought, ‘Someone’s gonna write about that.’”*

So again I find myself worrying about the audience because when I saw this film they loved it. They were laughing at these two characters without any regard for how they were portrayed. If people think that is funny will they try to make do that kind of impression to make other people laugh?
As I mentioned before I’m not trying to use Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to create a new Seduction of the Innocent, which was a 1954 book written by Fredic Wertham that claimed comic books had a direct link to juvenile delinquency. He believed, among other things, that Batman and Robin celebrated and encouraged a homosexual lifestyle. What I’m trying to say is that people need to be more aware of what they are seeing on the screen. If they are more educated they might begin to question the intent of the director. Then maybe a film with such blatant sexism and racism won’t gross nearly $200 million in five days. The fact that it almost beat The Dark Knight in the five-day gross contest is sort of embarrassing for the country.

So can a movie be deemed socially irresponsible? Well, if we start to see more films treat women like objects and use minstrel show characters for comic relief then we will know that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was in deed socially irresponsible. As it currently stands the film is just in the poorest of taste.

*(Source: Film School Rejects)