You must be kidding me

[yendi]

From this article about Transformers 2: The Quickening (ganked from curt_holman):

Arcee, the female Autobot, who will be Megan Fox's pink motorcycle. She was actualy supposed to be in the first movie, but Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci felt "we needed to win the audience over before asking for that suspension of disbelief: a feminine alien robot."

Um. Accepting male robots? Sure. Accepting black robots who get three lines and a silly death? Fine. Accepting Megen Fox as an actress? Whatever. Accepting robots that fucking transform in the first place? No problem. But a robot with a robo-vagina instead of a robo-penis? Now that's just silly.

Comments

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

WAT.

[reannon.livejournal.com]

I am not nearly as infuriated that OMG there's gonna be a girl Transformer as the INSULTING choice of a "pink motorcycle." COME THE FUCK ON. The girl was the daughter of a felon and knew more about cars than her boyfriend, and she's gonna pick a PINK VESPA as her ride? Give a girl a Harley, goddammit!

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Does exposure to Michael Bay make people stupid??!

[dustyskinandall.livejournal.com]

yes.

[zodarzone.livejournal.com]

muchly

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

It's been one way I've held onto my sanity after watching that Transformers movie. Knowing the same writers were on Star Trek, I've been thinking "Okay, guys, I'll assume you wrote down to Michael Bay and are writing up to J.J. Abrams...or, maybe, that you got infected by a Cloud Of Stupid emanating from Bay and that that cloud has dissipated. Please." (Star Trek fan since 1983, is what I am. I really want this film to be good.)

I actually like The Rock a lot, but I'll put it this way: giving Bay the script to The Godfather would've resulted in a bad film.

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

Man, where's robot Germaine Greer when you need her.

[curt-holman.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the nod. Feel free to cross-post your comment here:
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/culturesurfing/2009/04/02/quote-of-the-day-fembots/

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

Countdown to someone dubbing it the Autotwat - nine... eight...

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's kind of an interesting point about human psychology there.

See, looked at objectively, the Transformers are essentially androgynous, or gender neutral. But, because we have this cultural construct of gender as well as a biological one, we tend to impose the dominant paradigm upon them unless there's indications otherwise. I.e we assume that neutrals are male unless there's clear signs they are female.

So, giving an autobot a pink paint job and robo-boobies does require more of a suspension of disbelief, insofar as it serves no useful purpose, other than to differentiate one robot out from the others as conforming to the cultural expectations of what 'female' is. Which is silly, basically, in the context of the film universe. Transformers don;t reproduce like we do, so why would they have genders? And even if they did, there's no way they'd conform to our cultural expectations of male and female.

The only reason I can think of that they'd do this, is meta to the film universe, and that's they think they would get complaints if it was perceived as a male robot getting between Megan Fox's legs...

[amokk]

Arcee was in the cartoon, though; she was a pink car. ;)

The robots tend to become the voices, more often; white, male voices = white, male robots. Which is why Jazz, of course, had to be done by a black voice actor and have such witty, timely dialog such as "what's crackin', little bitches?"

So yeah, they don't need robo-boobs or pink paint jobs, but that's how they think it needs to be. I think it comes off the, "we have to dumb it down for the director to understand, he has to dumb it down for the producers to understand, and they dumb it all down because they think the audience is mentally retarded."

[nishar.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the Decepticons will have an evil femme fatal type in the next movie now?

[chebutykin.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the real reason for the pink robot to be excluded from the first movie is that Michael Bay accidentally blew up the CGI render farm dedicated to her.

[thegreatjohnzo.livejournal.com]

oh, but youre forgetting about grampa simpson autobot! with his cane and his alzheimers, he's gonna be the hip old robot that's gonna have the Greatest Generation getting their freak on! they're gonna cash their retirement check and take it to the skateboarding park!

michael bay ruins everything.