Bigotry makes for a great plot theme in most stories. The idea of a sector of humans disliking and attempting to exterminate another sector – or another race, where the Transformers are concerned – has been a prominent factor that leads to a lot of great stories and characters. The X-Men saga is a testament to this concept, with villains like Magneto, William Stryker and Apocalypse seeking to enable the survival and dominance of their own ethnicities.

But with Transformers, I’m not sure it works out. The recent TF IDW comics, some 1980s TF Marvel comics and AGE OF EXTINCTION explored with this theme, but I think by now they should drop it. I can’t really speak if these storylines were written well or not, but I would like to explain why such tales don’t really work out well.


NEGATIVITY
One single question: Why should the Autobots bother to defend the Earth if its denizens are going to hate/fear/exploit and anyway disrespect them?

So far, a fair deal of the humans cast in TF – namely the IDW comics and the films - have been portrayed as a bunch of jerkoffs. Are they justified in their actions? That’s debatable. But still, it would be difficult to empathize with these guys in what they do: take our favourite robots into custody, sell them out, even murder them. Doing that to bad robots is more or less acceptable, but doing it to the good robots, the ones risking their lives to protect those of Earth’s, is just plain mean and unfair.

The IDW comics had Spike Witwicky, a friend and ally of the Autobots in the G1 cartoon, become an army brat “action hero”-wannabe who cold-bloodedly executed Scrapper and dealt with Swindle to . He later ended up as a Circuit Breaker, an anti-TF superhuman.

Where the films are concerned, in DOTM the Autobots were exiled and getting executed, and in AOE they were being hunted down. Even Optimus Prime – and note the optimistic nature of his name – had decided the Autobots were done with Earth after witnessing their comrades being melted down by the race they were protecting. Granted, AOE was a plot carried out by an unofficial government squad and the Autobots received help from an Earth family, but still the fact that they’d be treated this after having saved the world THRICE doesn’t help matters.

The above-mentioned features treat the war generally as a matter of public/societal impact upon Earth, and thus brings in the human factor and humanity’s efforts to handle the situation and enable their survival. After all, humans get a major part nowadays in a TF story, it’s our world in the balance after all.

The thing is, it’s far less complex than that. Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons - most of the Transformers have had varied and shaded stories/characterizations over the years, but that’s the way it’s always been. Anyone who can’t spot the difference is idiotic or uncaring and anyway it’s Earth on the sidelines, they would do better to keep out of it and let the Autobots take the full brunt.

The contemporary viewpoint of war is as a matter of survival – it’s who’s left that counts and not who’s right, rules and ethics are discarded in an effort to obtain victory. But the downside of that view is that it devolves the parties involved into a cynical, animalistic scramble for survival. Causes matter, ethics matter, the ideals of good and evil matter. Even if the franchise is geared towards children, good and evil matter for adults too.
Transformers is built on the good vs evil concept, and disregarding that concept through bigotry not only takes a lot away from it, but casts a fairly negative light upon Earth.


PREDICTABILITY
When bigots get involved, you can be sure they will just make things worse. It’s a foregone conclusion that the actions of racists will not only complicate but also worsen matters; it’s the way they’re written to work out in the plot. And either they don’t understand the consequences of their actions, or they don’t care.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST had the Sentinel robots built to target mutants and preserve humanity... they ended up targeting ALL humanity as they had the potential to create mutants.

THE IRON GIANT had a federal agent launch a nuclear missile to obliterate the titular alien... not learning until it was too late that it was almost next to him and so he would also get wiped out in the blast.

In AOE, a company was guided by anti-TF human Harold Attinger to construct an army from dead Autobots/Decepticons to protect the Earth and make the Autobots obsolete... only to have them rebel and break out as Decepticons. Their leader Galvatron was in fact built from the body of Megatron, and they didn’t spot his reemergence coming (you’d think that they should have figured out the signs). The army got majorly wiped out in the end anyway, so that wasn’t too serious, but still Attinger was responsible for reviving the Decepticon leader.

Bigots do whatever they want to do for their own ends, fine. But we know their actions messes things up for everyone (themselves included most of the time), so that element doesn’t really bring anything new, especially not in TF.


THE APPROACH
As a storytelling element bigotry works better between divisions of the same society rather than between two different races. Just despising aliens because they’re from a different world/culture is much too easy; despising our own kind is more complex, and ironically more true to the concept of discrimination as finding means to bully people.

X-MEN is a premier example of this, with Magneto seeing mutation as the mark of a superior breed of human and Stryker seeing mutation as a threat to normal mankind (obvious examples, but as X-Men is built on this concept it stands firm).

The DC story SUPERMAN VS THE ELITE had Superman going up against a bunch of superhuman bigots who assumed that they could take advantage of his code of honour and fight dirty... then when he fought like them they got freaked out and said he’d broken his code. (Great feature btw)

And IDW has perhaps had better success with TF conflicts rather than Transformer-human conflicts. The divide of Autobots/Decepticons, the constructed-cold/forged schisms and the rebellions Optimus and Megatron led against the ruling Senate have worked out much better than whatever the Transformers were doing on Earth.


For the most part, I would really rather see bigotry used between Transformers, rather than between Transformers and humans. Between humans I find it’s too depressing, and between Transformers I find it’s more fascinating.

 

I think it's interesting but at the same time impractical. At the end of the day these bigots are going to crawl back to our heroes to tell them to save them. They look like total asses doing so.

 

yeah, human bigotry sucks

 

These plots would be fine if they did not ALL end in "Look out! Decepticons!"

 

Its not like human on human bigotry looks any better.

 

This.

Yeah, simply putting the bigotry aside to face a bigger threat doesn't mean it will go away. It'll just pop up again at a time where there's nothing to distract them from the issue, like the many truces between Autobots and Decepticons over the years.

One particularly good example of well-written prejudiced characters is Nina Einstein in Code Geass: Lelouche of the Rebellion. She's undeniably racist, but she's one of the few cases where it isn't out of hate, but fear. When she develops a new science that can change the world, she finds the strength to overcome that fear.

An example of how sympathetic racists in TF could be done well is if Jack's mother forbade him from seeing the autobots in Transformers Prime. She's been at the business end of a gun and has been threatened by an alien psychopath that can disguise itself as anything, so she has every reason to be terrified to the point of prejudice. Even moreso when she finds out how negatively it's been affecting Jack's life and how one has been hiding in her garage for a long time. Unlike Nina, I don't see a way for her to overcome her prejudices in a way that isn't contrived. But hey, I think it'd be a step forward if the series ended with that loose end. Either that, or have her join the army and kill a few vehicons.

 

I see a lot of great potential to address issues like bigotry in TFs. But not from the human perspective. The Transformers are lager than life, older than we can possibly imagine, and I could see human prejudices being so far beneath them as to not care. That's how I'd address it. Especially to a Decepticon, human prejudices would be laughable. Make human prejudice look as small and insignificant as possible, because that's exactly how a 'con would see it.

It's basically the same way the 'cons look at all human culture. They're dismissive of it and think little of it.

Like, what human cares about the beliefs and grudges that one ant colony holds against another?

 

In G1 cartoon they did have that world power chip that was worth fighting for.

 

Agreed. They never really go anywhere.

Touche.

 

as long as they bring back Carbombya I'll be happy....lol...

 

Isn't that the point of bigotry, especially in a war between good and evil? You blame the good guys for bringing their conflict to your doorstep, but making them leave just invites the bad guys over to take you down. It's the way the story goes down when bigotry is in the story.

And most of bigotry is based on hate (fear is more sympathetic, and could definitely work better). As a plot element it leads to it being overcome or its instigators being put down. Like I said, it's predictable and doesn't offer too much.

 

I don't think bigotry has to be used in that way.

Although a foregone conclusion, in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, there are lasting consequences as a result of bigotry, past the point for recovery. Movies like Days of Future Past have a status quo to keep because we need our dose of Wolverine every couple of years or so and it's easier to distinguish good and evil than in Apes, but I was invested enough in the story and characters that I can forgive the formulaic plot. I enjoyed both films greatly.

I'm interested in a human bigotry against Transformers storyline, it isn't an idea that is doomed to fail from the start, it just hasn't been done well yet because of the quote above. Still haven't begun reading season 2 of IDW's Robots in Disguise though, so maybe they salvaged Costa's run.

 

As far as I am concerned, the whole "bigotry" or "racism" discussion is a bullcrap one. First, nobody can or will agree what "bigotry" is. The Twins are racist! No they aren't- you are for thinking it! No, I'm fighting it and that's why I keep identifying it!

And, if you ask me, the way some refer to "Geewunners" is pretty prejudiced in the negative.

Humans are the flip sides of the same coin. It's been my experiences and observations that those who scream the loudest about intolerance are just as guilty of it themselves- if not more so. They often preach open-mindedness, yet their narrow minds prevent them from accepting the ideas of those who disagree with them.
Hell, even the COEXIST bumper stickers promote more intolerance than unity if you stop to think about it.

Even calling someone a bigot is taking a stand against other people and pre-judging them.

 

If I see someone dressing like a nazi, wearing swastika tattoos or being a general asshole "dem jews/******s/minorities suck!", of course I´m gonna call him a bigoted asshole. I don´t see any reason to be "open minded" of rotten and corrupted ideologies (which would probably put me against a wall and shot) which have shown to have practical and horrendous results. I don´t believe in the silly notion of unlimited liberty, but I guess the americans need to learn what is to live under a fascist regime, and why those things should NEVER be tolerated again.

So yeah, I´m intolerant of intolerance, with practical reasons, sue me.

FYI, it´s called the Paradox of Intolerance. Paradox of tolerance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Heh, so I guess I can label a straw man argument when one presents itself

 

Classical response from someone who once said a gem like "racism industry."

 

Not a denial.
But yeah, still do. A lot of people make a lot of money "fighting racism", and would be unemployed if racism actually died.

 

Maybe, just maybe, people still fight racism because, holy shit, racism actually exists. Jesus H. Christ, how can you be THAT dense, especially in the land where the KKK is a legal organization. Fuck!

 

Well, this thread's going downhill fast...

 

Sooo... What's the solution? Legislate morality? Criminalize opinion? Thought? Incarcerate dissent? Reward people who turn in their neighbors?