The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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June 25, 2009

Our View: Filmmakers need to think twice

As long as there have been films, there have been critics taking exception to filmmakers’ wont to engage in stereotypes.

The latest dustup involves the movie, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” a piece no one will mistake for high art on the level of “Citizen Kane,” or even “Caddyshack.” But the film has become controversial, anyway, due to a pair of jive-talking robots accused of sending racial sensibilities back a few decades.

The bots are drawn as compact Chevys, they are named Skids and Mudflap, and they are intended as comic relief, bickering incessantly in rap-inspired street slang. They can’t read. One has a gold tooth, and some have argued that they are reminiscent of the black stereotypes that movie-making should have overcome generations ago. They have been compared, in fact, to a character in a fairly recent movie phenomenon, Jar Jar Binks of “Star Wars” fame, who offended minority sensibilities in much the same way.

“There is a persistent dehumanization of African-Americans throughout Hollywood that displaces issues of race onto non-human entities,” said Allyson Nadia Field, an assistant cinema professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The flap that has emerged with “Transformers” is shrugged off by most movie-goers. After all, there are escapist movies and there are serious films, and this one belongs in the former category. To be honest, this controversy will probably last no longer than other famous celuloid controversies — like the argument that the “Teletubbies” cartoon and the “Happy Feet” film (produced in 2006, featuring tap-dancing penguins) promoted gayness.

But perhaps, in the interest of creative freedom, we dismiss these arguments too quickly.

Yes, we have (thankfully) come a long way since the days when racial stereotypes were permitted in films without so much as a second thought. But negative stereotypes still get through, and they can still carry an effect. It’s a little disconcerting, in fact, to note that the director of “Transformers” was quoted as saying, “I purely did it for kids. Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”

Stereotypes. Directed at kids? Surely, creative freedom is paramount, but is it going too far to ask that film producers think a little more carefully about what they intend to portray?

It wouldn’t hurt Hollywood to do a little soul-searching now and then, and not just in regard to how African Americans are portrayed but other groups as well. The creative trap is easy to fall into, too many filmmakers have jumped in.

Case-in-point: Many of us remember being a kid and seeing those early Walt Disney films for the first time, and how the mold seemed to be broken each time another one was made. Animated children’s films today, generally speaking, are more technically advanced but cookie-cutter in their themes. The failure to think creatively has affected popular non-animated films, too — which is why characters like Skids, Mudflap and Jar Jar seem to crop up every now and then.

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