Thursday, October 15, 2015

Transformers, Racism in Disguise

Transformers is a series of American science fiction action films directed by Michael Bay, and based on the toys created by Hasbro . The movies revolve around robots that can change into different vehicles bringing their war to Earth. The Transformers series promotes racial stereotypes through its movies. From the “urban” transformers mudflap and skids to the Samurai transformer named Drift. In the transformers movie Revenge of the fallen two new Transformers are introduced into the audience named Mudflap and Skid. Although voiced by white voiceover comedian Tom Kenny, a.k.a. the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, they speak stereotypically “black”. the two transformers are stereotypical and offensive in many ways like how one of the robots has a gold tooth or the scene where the main character ask if they can read ancient glyphs, they nervously respond, "Read?! Nuh-uh..." "No, we don't really do much reading'!" to add to this they also constantly fight and snap on each other in inappropriate situations, and even refer to Leo, the Latino college student played by Ramon Rodriguez, as a "shrimp taco." It has seemed though that Michael bay has not learned from his mistakes as the cast of the latest transformer movie “Age of Extinction” has a transforme named Drift who also promotes racial stereotypes. In the movie Drift can be heard calling other transformers sensi while donning a completely yellow face literally. the way Michael Bay uses racial stereotypes to just get laughs without at least trying to defy or question these stereotypes is appalling. 

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