More Than Meets the Eye.

Transformers went from bad to worse with the latest installment of the films that continue to ruin my fond memories of Saturday morning cartoons.

I thought part one was awful, mainly because the fight scenes looked like close ups of shopping carts being slammed together (if you can't clearly see the robots kicking each other's asses, what's the point?) but luckily they addressed those issues in Transformers 2; the fight scenes are incredible. They're shot wide enough and high enough to clearly see all the action, without looking like you're in the bad seats at a ball game. Megan Fox is still hot as fish grease, but I have no idea why she's in the film other than to run around in slow motion.



In fact, I could lose all the humans and just keep some generic army guys to fight the Decepticons. Although Julie White, as Mrs. Witwicky, did steal every scene she was in despite her character's absurdity. Oh, and Tyrese had about 8 lines with some eye rolling thrown in for good measure. Despite those shortcomings, the scenes I wish could be extracted from my brain hole featured twin robots named Mudflap and Skids.

They should have named them Mantan and Sleep n' Eat, because they were definitely coonin'. These two fools make Jar Jar Binks look like Farrakhan in comparison. They were the most blatantly racist stereotypes of Negroes I have seen in a major motion picture in my short life.

I take great offense to the fact that these characters are being used to market and promote candy, (M&Ms) toys, and who knows what else- to children. Mudflap and Skids bicker and fight with each other throughout the film and speak broken, slang riddled (I dare not say ebonics) English.

Oh yeah, and Skids has a gold tooth.

Yes, a robot with a gold tooth! In a scene where our hero needs to decipher some Autobot writing, he turns to these two clowns for assistance. Not only do they identify that they can't read, but they have no interest in learning how. Huh? In response to criticism of the characters, director, Michael Bay contends that "it's good clean fun" and he wanted to add some "personality" to the movie.

He further mentions that the characters were to represent whites trying to be black. Huh? I considered walking out of the film, but I had already given these fools my money and I wanted to see how much further this nonsense would go. I'm not at all surprised that these characters made it to film or that there has been little to no protest. Black folks still have no real control over how we're represented on screen. I don't count the Wayans brothers or Tyler Perry because they perpetuate many of these inane stereotypes themselves.

Black men are emasculated by wearing dresses and being hollow caricatures of thugs, promiscuous players, and buppies; while our women are unhappy, ungrateful, and constantly in search of validation through terrible relationships. Of course there are folks that exhibit some of these traits and are the source material for these ugly stereotypes; however, Black folks do not own the patent to foolishness.

As a byproduct of the slave economy and the racism it beget, we have never been able to truly identify ourselves, for ourselves, in a tangible way in America. The racism we indure is reflected even more by virtue of having to expose and rebut this sort of nonsense in the first place. White folks don't have to defend themselves against "trailer trash" stereotypes because those ideas are dismissed as anomalies and personal poor behavior; whereas, Black folks are identified as a whole with that nonsense.

Based on Michael Bay's comments he doesn't see anything wrong with his characters because as far as he's concerned, that's how Black people behave. I'm off my soapbox now. I had considered boycotting this film, but then I would have to boycott Medea and Meet the Browns too.

Exeunt!