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The Transformers movie has been running around my head since I saw it, but, surprisingly, it's not the aforementioned creepy thing that stuck with me. It's the other creepy thing.
It's what they did with Jazz.
So, Jazz. He's the Autobot introduced to us as a parody of black culture as seen on MTV and... that's it. That's his characterization. It's so over the top and delivered with such a straight face that I was grimacing during the scene, rationalizing to myself that it had to have been some sort of homage to his initial '80s appearance. Because we're over the blaxploitation phase, right? Right?
And then, I think he gets one speaking line between the initial "yo yo my homies" and the final battle scene at the end. And then he gets ripped in half by the bad guys.
And this is how important his death is to whatever there is of plot: When a couple of the Autobots sadly relate the news of his fate, it took me a few seconds to remember that it had happened. About as long as it took the on screen characters to get over it, in fact, and launch into a monologue on the subject of how easy it is to replace him with their new found human friends.
Nice.
The question that's been been going around my head is this: If Jazz is The Black Autobot, does that mean that the rest of them are The Not Black Autobots? IE, are they coded as White?
I've settled on yes. Except for Jazz, the Autobots seem to exist in a sort of cultural void. They don't even act *alien*, really. They're just as one-dimensional as everyone else in the movie, but they're exaggerated along traits. ("I like to shoot things!" "I like to heal things!" "I like to give badly written soliloquies that don't end until long after the audience is embarrassed on my behalf!" "I like my human charges perhaps more than is appropriate for a PG13 rated film!" "...I'm 'Black'."")
It's easy to say race does not apply, then, but. But they've *applied* it. They've set aside Jazz as Other, so, Other than *what*? Other than the cultural default that the rest of the cgi robots belong to? Well, okay.
But.
Our "cultural default" is White. There is no Everyman of Colour in western media. Every time a movie chooses to have a character be not white, it is saying something about that character.
As it should, really, because we none of us exist in a societal vacuum, but it's too easy to use "black" or "asian" or whatever as shorthand *for* character. It's how we end up with stereotypes: he's Black, therefore he listens to rap music. Of course. And he has a rap sheet? Who's surprised. Barely even have to bother mentioning it.
(And it's too easy to forget that if a movie chooses to use a white character, it is saying something just as important.)
In the case of Jazz, this is turned around. Since we don't have any visual cues to go on, the stereotyping is used to code him as Black. It's kind of bizarre; though, since we're talking about giant alien robots without proper human facial features, I'm not sure how you *could* set them apart along (human) racial lines without resorting to blatant stereotypes. You could have them interested in different things; you could play with the accents and word choice; you could could draw names from different cultures (Srsly, though. "Jazz"?). But none of that's really the same thing.
It's too subtle, too thought out, too much like individual variation. It's not "Race" unless there's a visceral identification.
But the thing is, would they still be coded as White if Jazz *hadn't* been set apart as Other?
I... can't decide.
Even pretending they had not all been voiced by white guys, I have no idea. Even - especially - if it's never brought up as an issue, the writers are going to bring certain assumptions to the keyboard, aren't they? Even if ALL the nominally humanoid robots belong to that same cultural default....
It's still White.
And I'm white, and so many of the assumptions the writers make are probably going to be the same as my own. I'm not going to *see* it.
It's troubling me, because it's not like Transformers is the only show with non-humanoid characters who can't act too non-human because then how would the kids identify. Do those characters read as, you know, *people*, or do they they read as White?
And it's troubling me that - judging by how they treated Jazz, who *didn't* - maybe you don't get one without the other.
Or maybe you just don't get one with the Other.
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*The ones we're supposed to identify with, at least. The Decepticons mostly struck me as Other in their own right. (And what does THAT mean?)
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OTOH, Te has said below (http://odditycollector.livejournal.com/147442.html?thread=1079026#t1079026) that even without Jazz, she'd probably still see them as coded as white.
I'm wondering if Jazz being excluded just makes US suddenly notice that they are.
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(It's like, I really really doubt the alien robots have anything we'd consider requisite equipment, but they are so very gendered as male. Male pronouns, male actors, male *assumptions* when it came to the writing. Imagining a female voice coming out of those things would be... okay, It would be cool, but I think we'd all do a double take.
It's not that they do anything that would be *less* appropriate if a female did it. It's just that male is assumed as the default, and more to the point, WOULD be assumed as the default even if the autobots had insisted on using ungendered pronouns. The human characters refer to Bumblebee as a "he" before the other autobots back them up on that.)
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Possibly using less human and more robotic voices could have avoided this issue as well.
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Which is interesting, because if it were a movie, these things would all be obvious. You'd be able to SEE that my protag has East Indian heritage, despite her name; that there are all of three "white" team members on one of the groupings, and even that classification gets problematic; and so on. Within the text, you can't, because the point of view character I use does not give a shit, and it would be completely out of character for her to do so.
(not to mention the difficulty I have with the non-humans of that series, and how BIZARRE and non-sensical they find our "race" categorisations at all.)
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Well they ARE.
Within the context of the story, sexual orientation is going to get noted a lot more than visible "race" or religion, due to the fact that lovers and past relationships get mentioned and play into the story.
I wonder, have you read anything by Richard Morgan? He's got a sci-fi series where race... not isn't relevant, exactly, but doesn't matter very much. (It's a society where people can change bodies for a shot at immortality.) The character does notice race - he's not colourblind, after all - but it's pointed out in a way that makes it pretty clear there's not much weight to the observation.
(Or Morgan'll pull a trick where he won't give details (though more often gender than race) until he's already characterized minor players a little. It really pulls assumptions into focus.)
It gives a feel of a fairly equal society... but one that doesn't feel White.
I'm not sure that's what you're asking, exactly, but Morgan's one that always jumps to my mind as someone who does it Right.
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If you don't indicate it somehow, in your text,
Given that a lot of readers didn't get that *all* the main characters in Anansi Boys were black, until it was specifically mentioned that So-and-So was *white* (tho' it was pretty damn obvious to me at least that Charlie's family and friends were black West Indian living in the US and UK, given all the cultural clues and tip-offs early on, e.g. young Charlie's dilemma at not being able to speak in stereotypically "black" (American) ways when rap and hip-hop became popular in Britain) you can *guarantee* that 1) white readers will assume that the characters are just like themselves, the way that Hollywood and mainstream fiction always presents main characters as Default White, and 2) readers of color will assume that they've been excluded again, since there's no evidence to the contrary.
Saying "my viewpoint character doesn't notice color" is a cop-out: is your viewpoint character in a coma? No? Then she will sort of kind of have to notice how *other* people in the world react to her color, won't she? And to other people's around her? Because not *everybody* is as happily non-biased as in an afterschool special, you know. "I couldn't help but notice how Sarah flinched when Pete jokingly asked Vince if he was a Jew after he picked up the dime from off the pavement," would be a plausible sort of "noticing" - and yes, that is based on something I really saw someone who thinks of themselves as non-racist, not an anti-Semite, nice middle American do, a few years ago.
Besides which, there are other ways of coding ethnic background than something as cringe-inducingly-blatant as "I looked into the mirror at my mahogany-hued countenance". Offhand references to the kinds of household names/colloquial expressions/injokes/pop music/other *differences* that make visiting an Asian friend's house even in Utter Suburbia a different experience from visiting a European-descended family. What snacks are on the table, frex.
"Hey, what is this stuff? This isn't Chex Mix! It's really good! Ow, it's HOT!" (Been there, done that, inhaled the dal...)
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Re: If you don't indicate it somehow, in your text,
Thank you for re-articulating my point for me. Because this is precisely the point, and the problem; despite the fact that there is actually every reason to assume (including off-hand remarks, if not focused ones) that the characters are in a multi-racial environment, without deliberately drawing pointed attention to it, the majority of people will assume everyone is white, and I am not in a position to draw more pointed attention to it without mangling my novel.
Within the plot and the set-up, along with the point of view premises of the novel, none of your suggestions are particularly viable/relevant, but thank you for your phrasing. I appreciate the implications of it. However, may I point out that your example of Anansi Boys demonstrates how clearly those more subtle forms of pointing it out can be missed? Likewise to yourself, I knew that the default race in the book had been switched, because I did pick up the coding involved (and was massively pleased with its subtlety). Very obviously, many people didn't. It is unfortunately not appropriate to my viewpoint character to be any more blatant than that in 90% of cases, and thus my "hmmmm" worry.
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Anyway. Thank you!
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Thanks - Although that's the conclusion that I was really hoping I didn't have to draw. The blank character slate *isn't*.
*frowns*
It's just what has been drummed into me. I'm *always* going to be the Other, so even if "I" am not there at all...
It's hard for me to wrap my head around, because for me it *hasn't*. Even if I'm watching a show with no white people (RARE)... Even if I'm the only white person in the room (actually fairly common through my university career), I'm not going to feel like the Other unless something extraordinary happens to point that fact out.
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Did you read Ragnell's recent post about Arcee, the female Transformer, and how they left her out? I think it applies COMPLETELY to what you're saying. The default is male; everything is male until specifically stated otherwise, and therefore, to have had a female Transformer would be WEIRD. Even though they're GIANT ROBOTS and so it's *just as weird* for them to be male. I mean, why should they have a gender at all? But no one would ask that question of all male robots, because being male is "normal." Apparently it's when a female Transformer appears-- that's when people would suddenly notice, "hey, that robot has a gender!" Same with race, I suppose. Maybe there are black, Asian, Hispanic kids who look at the Transformers and see *someone like me*, but a lot of them have probably internalized somewhat the rule that white is the default and anything else is a huge exception and must be Marked Clearly As Other.
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Maybe there are black, Asian, Hispanic kids who look at the Transformers and see *someone like me*, but a lot of them have probably internalized somewhat the rule that white is the default and anything else is a huge exception and must be Marked Clearly As Other.
Which makes me want to kick things.
There's got to be something that isn't "You can play but none of them are yours really" or "LOOK here is a robot of your very own so you don't need to use ours anymore." There does.
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One thing possibly worth considering along your thoughts: Is there a contrast between the Autobots' heavy-handed stereotyping and the Army squad's...well, still heavy-handed stereotyping?
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That said, everyone in this movie gets one character "trait". And the Army guys are
Hispanic Soldier Guy : *is Hispanic*
Black Soldier Guy : *is tough* (Is his portrayal stereotypically Black in some way? If so, I did not see it.)
White Soldier Guy : *has a family* (And is the one the audience is set up to identify with.)
And... yeah.
So it's not like the human part of the equation is not problematic, but... it's easier to think about?
I know that some people had problems with ALL the black characters being *racial* caricatures in the movie, but I didn't pick up on that. They just seemed to get a one line character description each. (OTOH, I'm not sure my assumptions about racial stereotypes are *exactly* the same as an American's, for all I'm sure they're pretty close. Alt., just because *I*m not seeing them, doesn't mean they're not there.)
Other than Generic Hispanic Guy, the one human race-related thing I actually noticed during the movie was that there's one Asian guy
with a speaking partin the computer room, and the camera does its damndest not to focus on him, and his speaking part is "Maybe it's the Chinese?" (Because I usually notice that, because an all white computer team looks weird to me.)From:
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I don't think it really makes a difference, except that it took an 80s style blaxploitation character in their midst for me to make the connection.
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*points to icon*
I believe the pirates are officially giving this one a thumbs down. :(
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Get a grip
Why don't you get offended by something that's actually important, like Darfur or the Oil-- I mean Iraq War?
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Sorry Karen, I linked to you in the gwog blog.
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(And anyway, I was linked from Newsarama as well, so if I was going to bet....)
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Although maybe I oughtn't talk, because *which* one of us introduced herself to a comics writer while pretending that her blog post affected editorial decisions...
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Link me to the Newsarama link? I'm sort of interested in coverage of this thing.
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I'm actually surprised I haven't seen more dialogue about it. I mean, not links to my post in particular (which I'd argue isn't really ABOUT the Transformers movie, except that it made me go "oh"), but discussion in general, between all the posts of "yay robots go smash!" It was really quite obvious.
I mean, if *I* noticed it...
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Even the first AICN reviewer was floored by the racism
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autobot Jazz in racial culture
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all that jazz
Its a film.
Its make beleave.
Transformers is amazing. Great toy line from 80s when i fell in love with it, great charectors : robots with personalities and feelings. Jazz is one of the greatest autobots ever. Its a alien race. Nothing to do with black or white.
He will return.
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Re: all that jazz