A pair of twin “Autobots” has been getting hit hard with a lot of flak lately, and it’s not just coming from those evil “Decepticons”.

Offended movie fans have been criticizing the “gangsta wanna-be” twins (Skids and Mudflap, who disguise themselves as Chevy compact hatchbacks), for portraying negative black racial caricatures. They talk in “street slang”, fight each other constantly and use crude language. One of them even sports a gold tooth. The twins are unable to read; with their excuse being that they’re too busy “kickin’ butt”.   Actually, they don’t use the word “butt”… I’m not allowed to use that other word here, but you get the idea. 

Michael Bay, the director of the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”, insists that the twins were meant as comic relief, and that the twin’s mannerisms actually came from the voice actors, one of whom is black. 

Reno Wilson, the black voice actor behind “Mudflap”, stated that he “never imagined that the twins would be considered as racial caricatures”.   When he accepted the role, he was told that the twins had downloaded their information about human culture from the web, and that they had focused on the “gangsta rap” culture.   Therefore, that’s how they turned out. Reno took Mudflap’s personality in that direction, and his fellow voice actor, Tom Kenny (who is white, and voices “Skids”), followed his lead.

“If he (Mudflap) had downloaded country music, he would have come out like that” said Reno.

Don’t try convincing Tasha Robinson, associate editor of “The Onion” of that, however.

“They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up, and talk about how stupid each other is (sic)”.  

Ms. Robinson also complained that the twins do not play a major part in the story, and “disappear” when the action heats up in the end.

That’s like going to a restaurant, complaining that the food is horrible, and then whining that the portions are too small.

At any rate, I disagree. The twins, despite their shenanigans, actually do a good job of protecting their human charges. One of them even plays a role in heavily damaging a huge Decepticon near the end of the movie (named “Devastator”, which is a combination of several evil “Constructicon” robots that fuse together to form one monster robot), which resulted in saving the lives of his brother and human charges.   I won’t say how, in order to prevent more of a spoiler than I may have given already, but I just wanted to point out that the twins were more than just “bad ebonics”. 

On a sidenote, I suspect that those blacks (as well as white, liberal apologists) who were offended by the twins may have also been somewhat negatively influenced by the movie’s pro-military, pro-America, and, worst of all (for them), anti-Obama undercurrent, even going out of its way to say his name during a CNN newscast, just to make sure that the audience knew who the president running the show was. At one point, the camera goes out of its way to get a shot of a war room soldier sporting a “McCain” name tag on his uniform answering a phone (you’ll have to watch for it. If you blink, you’ll miss it).   

It probably didn’t help much when an Obama lackey named “Galloway”, who keeps insisting to the soldiers that they must, by direct order of the president, observe a policy of “diplomacy, negotiation and sound military strategy” in order to deal with the aggressive Decepticons.  The annoyed soldiers finally get rid of him in a (in my opinion) hilarious manner. I’m going to assume that Michael Bay is not an “Obamamaniac”.

Getting back to the “gangsta twins”, let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that Michael Bay deliberately went out of his way to create this negative caricature of blacks with the twins. Let me ask you this… who could he have possibly gotten the idea from? 

Who was it that embraced the hip-hop and “gangsta” rap style (and the gold teeth, crude language, and tendency for violent behavior that came with it)?  

Who was it that made it a point to be proud of being “street smart”, and not “book smart”, up to the point of belittling those of their race who acted intelligent, even accusing them of “acting white”?

I bet you thought I was going to place all the blame on the blacks. I’m going to surprise you and say that this isn’t actually a “black” thing. Being black has absolutely nothing to do with embracing the “gangsta” lifestyle. It’s more of a cultural thing. It just so happens that the majority of the people in the public eye who embrace this particular culture are blacks, though it should be noted that average American blacks do not approve of this type of culture, so I suspect that they cringe and inadvertently lash out whenever they see caricatures of this type, pretty much the way I cringe and mumble under my breath when I see some shaven-headed, tattooed, white kid with facial piercings acting like he’s the next Eminem. 

Who knows? Maybe for his next Transformers film, Michael Bay will have a couple of redneck Decepticons shooting beer cans off the top of each other’s heads… and one aims a bit too low.   That should bring a few laughs, by blacks and whites.

Sources:

Are ‘Transformers’ Robots Racist?: Associated Press, 06/26/09