Blaster? No...

Megatron on the other hand......going by the Actual definition of "Racist", not the overused cliche' it is today IS a Racist. He believes that Cybertronians, specifically Decepticons, are superior to every other Life form there is, and must therefore rule.

 

*Facepalms all around...*

Personally, I think the twins were dangerously close to a racist stereotype, both in the way they invoked "wannabe gangsters" and combined that with grotesque caricature that recalled the tradition of the minstrel show. This isn't an issue that exists in a vacuum, but as part of a long-running socio-cultural trend with roots in the colonial era (which is also why Lucas got flak for Jar-Jar). One doesn't have to be a card-carrying racist to invoke culturally sensitive stereotypes... simply satirizing gangsta culture is a valid goal, but it's good to show a little bit of tact or awareness in how one goes about it.

Both Jazz and Blaster were characters with positive traits and often prominent roles, portrayed by black actors who were more or less playing versions of their own public personas. They are certainly meant to represent racially based cultural types, but it is handled respectfully. I think they get an easy pass.

I think people who jump up and declaim "RACIST!!" at every little thing are often overreacting. Some people are only interested in being offended.

On the other hand, the people who are like "nothing is racist!" are just being stupid. By planting your feet and taking it upon yourself to deny the fact that these insidious little cultural tropes DO have roots in racist attitudes, you're only showcasing your own ignorance. Read a damn book. These things aren't totally imaginary. Sometimes they represent a history that is bigger than your comprehension, and should be questioned at the very least.

That's not the same as gathering the kindling for a witch-burning though. There are extremes on both sides that should be avoided if any kind of intelligent, civil discourse can be engaged. But deniers get no sympathy from me either.

zmog

 

I thought Blaster only talked hip hop etc is because he was a tape deck. Just like Ratchet was a medic because he was an ambulance and the Dinobots spoke like cavemen because they were dinosaurs.

 

There is that.

If that were the case though, wouldn't the Twins talk like hipster graphic designers? I don't know any gangstas who drive subcompacts.  

zmog

 

chicken and the egg really. did the Jive talking come with being a tape deck or did Blaster choose it to reflect his personality?

well in the case of the Dinobots we have a few origin story's to show that they didn't have any input

from a toy makers perspective its just a case of making what they think will be popular in the time its made.

 

I don't really get how Blaster and Jazz are racist characters? How?

Blaster talks like a radio DJ "this is Blaster blasting at ya", while Jazz talked with soul and a cadence that had a rhythm to it. That was a choice by the voice actors: Scatman Crothers and Buster Jones.

If you are basing it off of the voices, you are being way too sensitive. They weren't portrayed in any negative stereotypical way, they were both shown as capable fighters and friendly beings who had a particular way of talking (a vocal choice to make them memorable like Latta's Starscream or Welker's Soundwave).

Skids and Mudflap on the other hand were shown as incapable, barely intelligent, they talked "Street", they had chimpanzee shaped heads, and one had a gold tooth. They played up stereotypes of black culture and were treated as objects of amusement because of it.

There in lies the difference. They "don't do no reading" is a lot different from anything Blaster or Jazz ever said. Not to mention that one of the voice actors was a white man.

Having soul in your voice should not be the measuring stick of racism, rather the entire package should be. Skids and Mudflap were robotic minstrels and their intent was to be "kid friendly" but they instead were walking embarrassments that I am surprised made it past any screenings.

Go back and watch Skids and Mudflap and compare it to anything Jazz or Blaster ever did, if you don't see the difference then there is nothing else I can say.

 

Now that you've said that, it occurs to me just how smooth and pleasant to listen to Scatman Crother's voice was......

 

Wow...just wow.

 

Something can only be offensive if you let it offend you.

 

I always thaught of him as a wight guy i never pictured him as a racist caracature more a wight raper like vanila ice or a radio DJ he just spoke that way.
mind you i was 8 at the time.

 

Did Jazz and Blaster have some basis in stereotype? I think that it's fair to say they did. Blaster's "jive" speak, combined with his name and alt-mode (think "ghetto blaster") are almost certainly aspects of the character that were meant to evoke an image of a specific ethnic group rooted in stereotype. Jazz as well, with his love for and use of slang, "culture" and music/light are also something I think you can make a strong case for being rooted at least somewhat in stereotype, though given his different alt-mode, it's not as apparent as with Blaster.

So, why do characters like the Twins get a lot more vitriol thrown their way than Blaster and Jazz ever do? Well, two reasons, really. First, because the stereotypical attributes of Jazz and Blaster were not effectively the extent of their characterizations. I'm not a fan of any use of stereotypes in character development (I feel its at best a sign of lazy writing and at worst an offensive act against a specific group/ethnicity), but Jazz and Blaster had more going on for them than being "black". They were both proficient combatants, honorable Autobots, friends to humanity, witty and quick-thinking, brave and inquisitive, etc. etc. They also had well-known comic incarnations that (especially in the case of Blaster) approached the characters differently than in the cartoon, and treated them in an even less stereotypical manner. Comparably, the Twins (like many movie-verse characters) received very little characterization (due to a relative lack of screen time as well as what I can only attribute to deliberate choice on the part of the writers) beyond the Stepin Fetchit stereotype. If anything, they are a prime example of the reliance on stereotype, rather than actual characterization, in the recent movies (to their detriment, IMO).

The other reason, and probably more important, is that the stereotypes Jazz and Blaster draw from are much, much less ugly than the ones many people see in the Twins. As I said before, I'm not a fan of stereotypes, period, but the stereotypical view (both in popular media and public perception) that african-americans are into loud, energetic music has been far less damaging than the idea that african-americans are ignorant, quarrelsome, and generally incompetent. This is probably also a reason why movieverse Jazz doesn't get hated on as much as the Twins, because his stereotypically brusque dialogue and breakdancing transformation are less repugnant than the "minstrel show" image that the Twins seem to appropriate. The former may be something of an off-color adaptation, but the latter was a pervasive element in popular media that was used to denigrate, mock and publicly malign african-americans for nearly a century.


So is Blaster a racist character? I would say not. Not because he doesn't have stereotypical aspects, but because he has managed to overcome them and be portrayed (and perceived) as more than what they describe.


Blaster's more than rhymes and jivin, s'why his character's still survivin.

Untrue, it can be offensive if it offends others, even if it does not offend you personally. The term offensive does not limit itself to each individual.

 

... doesn't that kind of avoid any kind of accountability on the part of people who offend others? I mean, that's a pretty simplistic (and utterly unrealistic) perspective to put forward.

zmog

 

The right to *not* be offended doesn't exist.

 

No. Though I would accuse Sunbow Blaster of being a Jazz knockoff. I wish they just stuck with his personality being his Marvel incarnation that Bob Budiansky created.

 

Seemed to me like Sunbow Blaster was actually a smidge closer to the package bio description than Marvel Blaster, for once.

 

Blaster is a weird case where Budiansky's comic portrayal was fairly different from Budiansky's full bio for Blaster.

However, I agree... he did come off as a bit of a Jazz wannabe, which I think misses the point. The driving point of Blaster's bio is not that he's a "cool cat" who rhymes. It's that he loves rock n' roll and he likes it LOUD. On one level, that's why I kind of like Blaster's brief FOC bio... it emphasizes that Blaster is about hard rock, about pushing it "up to eleven", about being EXTREEEEME!  

Jazz, by contrast, is smoooth. He's a culture junkie, a jazz enthusiast... relatively speaking, a scholar and hipster, while Blaster is pretty much just a metal-head who fights hard and parties hard.

Not sure quite what that means.

There are some who insist that if "someone" is offended, then it must be "offensive". I disagree with that approach. There are extremes, when you feel like someone just needs to get a life (or perspective, or whatever). It isn't an either/or social contract...it's something that is governed by nuance and social history, and needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Saying everything is offensive, OR that nothing is offensive, is not helpful either way.

zmog

 

If you have to ask if it's offensive, you're trying too dang hard to find something offensive. In other words: no.

 

I don't think this is the case, unfortunately. Offense is an extremely subjective thing, and is based on perceptions that may stem from completely different cultural contexts, personal experiences, or other situational factors. There are tons of situations where one person can offend another without intending to, which is why asking these sorts of questions, and endeavoring to understand the viewpoints of others, is important to broaden our intellectual horizons and improve our ability to communicate or relate to each other more effectively.

 

I got half way through this before I realized this sounded like something Perceptor would say.

 

It means that of all the natural rights man has, the right to not be offended isn't among them.

I don't think anyone has the right to never be offended. Indeed, I think the claim that one has the right to never be offended is just an attempt to avoid saying what is really in view: a claim to have the right to silence those who say things that one finds offensive. It is an attempt to cast the matter as about one's own rights rather than what it is really about, namely the taking away of the rights of others.