#314. Movies Where Black People Don't Save the World

In two days time, the United States will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Landing on the Moon. Contrary to those who believe in hoaxes, the US really did go to the moon. Making it to the moon was mankind's (to be truthful, European man's) greatest achievement, as visiting the stars and breaking free of the earthly shackles of confinement for adventure and progress was a major step forward in human evolution.

However, that moment of actually walking on the moon was overshadowed recently by one of the truly great moments for Black people, when in the 1996 Science-Fiction film Independence Day Black people finally saw a Black man save the world.

Will Smith is one of the first Black guys to ever save the world in a movie - granted he had help from a lot of white guys and really only flew the captured alien spaceship to the alien mother ship - and this marked a major first in motion picture history.

Smith played a Navy F-18 fighter pilot who aspired to be a NASA astronaut, but he was continually denied for, among other things, dating a stripper. Now, in reality Black people make up only 1.9 percent of United States Air Force Fighter Pilots (granted he was a Navy Fighter Pilot in the movie, but those numbers aren't available as USAF numbers are), but remember, movies are a form of escapism from reality and project what people want to see or what people want you to believe:

"Only 1.9 percent of Air Force pilots are black, according to AFPC. Of 14,130 Air Force pilots, 270 identified themselves as black; another 620 declined to report their race.

“We’ve been trying for 20 years to get more black pilots, but it’s a little lower than it was 20 years ago,” said Stewart, who is a pilot.

The drop in pilots is harder to explain but probably stems from blacks being underrepresented in the sciences and technical fields, where the Air Force gets many of its pilots, Dorn said."

What Black people don't like that much though, is the scene at the end of Independence Day that shows the alien ships being destroyed by aircraft around the world. In a montage scene, ships are seen destroyed in Australia, Egypt and Africa. In the Africa scene, a number of Africans are shown with spears celebrating, with the spaceship smoldering in the distance.

This scene is one Black people don't like very much, because it shows why all alien invasion movies are silly and, militarily, poorly planned (like why in Signs did the aliens attack a planet made of 70 percent water, when H2O kills them?): if aliens wanted to invade earth, logically they would invade Africa first, which is a continent completely devoid of air defenses, or for that matter ground defenses. Then, after establishing a foothold on earth, they could work on pacifying actual threats, like Russia, the United States, China, Israel and NATO countries.

Seeing Black people with spears - celebrating the destruction of a massive alien ship - in Independence Day reminded Black people that without European technology they would be subjected to the old adage of the gatling gun:

"Whatever happens
we have got,
the Gatling gun
and they have not."

Independence Day is one of the few movies to depict a Black person saving the world, as most movies depict white guys saving the world, which Black people do not enjoy seeing.

Take for instance two 1998 films centered around the same theme of threats from space - a giant asteroid headed to earth, heralding our eventual destruction. Deep Impact and Armageddon came out months apart and both are about the end of the world.

In both movies, a Black person is thrown onto the shuttle crews that hope to thwart the evil rocks as they traverse through space and head to earth. But both Black characters play minor roles in the movies.

However, the film Armageddon might be one of the more depressing movies for Black people to watch, as it is a glorification of everything white and perhaps the movie that both implicitly and explicitly lets the viewer know that "whiteness" is the reason the end of the world won't happen.

In that movie, all of NASA's astronauts are white; almost all the NASA crew team in Houston is white; all but one of Bruce Willis' oil drilling team (which is picked to drill a hole on the asteroid and planet a nuclear bomb into it) are white; and the President of the United States - a white guy - gives a speech that reminds Black people of the image of Africans carrying spears in Independence Day:

"I address you tonight, not as the President of the United States, not as the leader of a country, but as a citizen of humanity. We are faced with the very gravest of challenges, The Bible calls this day Armageddon. The end of all things. And yet for the first time...in the history of the planet, a species has the technology… to prevent its own extinction. All of you praying with us need to know… that everything that can be done to prevent this disaster… is being called into service. The human thirst for excellence, knowledge every step up the ladder of science, every adventurous reach into space, all of our combined modern technologies and imaginations, even the wars that we’ve fought, have provided us the tools… to wage this terrible battle. Through all the chaos that is our history, though all of the wrongs and the discord, through all of the pain and suffering, Through all of our times, there is one thing that has… nourished our souls. And elevated our species above its origins. And that is our courage. Dreams of an entire planet are focused tonight… on those 14 brave souls… traveling into the heavens. And may we all, citizens the world over, see these events through. God speed and good luck to you."

This speech is not a celebration of anything more than "whiteness", that field of academics that studies how evil white people are, and theorizes about ways to destroy the sin of whiteness.

As Armageddon shows, without those vile white people and their technology and their desire to send rockets into space - and to invent flying - and to have the courage to fail and then try again, the world would be left in the hands of those Africans with spears from Independence Day.

The movie was made by Michael Bay, the same Michael Bay who directed - gasp - Transformers 2, which has been called a racist movie for its depiction of the two robots who have Black personalities.

Remember, the idea and goal of "whiteness studies" is to:

"The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race, which means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of white skin. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in U.S. society."

Of course, if this where to happen, there would be no more technology from white people to save the earth in movies, or in real life. It would be left to the capable hands of Black people, as demonstrated in Independence Day.

Stuff Black People Don't Like include movies where they don't save the world, because only through the mythical powers of cinema can such an idea ever be made reality.

#400. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay has made a number of movies that Black people love to see. Those titles include The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Transformers and Pearl Harbor. He has endeared himself to Black people for casting Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as cool cops in the Bad Boys franchise, roles which are denied to white people because white cops are never cool in real life or movies. In movies, white cops are always evil racists that want to restore Jim Crow laws to America. Or, white cops in movies are the comedic fodder for their funnier, cooler Black counterpart.

Black people however, were none to pleased with Mr. Bay's latest offering, the horribly conceived film, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. The movie made a fortune at the box office its first day out - $60 million - which will ensure another horrid sequel, but critics were not to thrilled about the cinematic value of the film.

Regardless, Black people and most white reviewers of the film are in agreement: Transformers 2 is a vile piece of Hollywood fat, tossed to the masses so that they can gnaw on the inedible movie that showcases the "talents"of Meghan Fox - her looks - and the highly annoying Shia LaBeouf.

Black people - who are known for making a lot noise in the theater - have been up in arms though for the inclusion of two new robots in the film, Mudflap and Skids. In the words of one reviewer:

"If you snoop around movie sites today, you’ll find references to Mudflap and Skids, twin Autobots from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen who bear more than a passing resemblance to minstrel show depictions of African Americans. CHUD.com aptly dubbed them Little Black Sambots. The wider story is that Mudflap and Skids are just the tip of the insensitive iceberg in Bay’s newest film."

The so-called Little Black Sambots, are just robots - good guys who fight for the side of justice against the evil robots - were largely in the film for comic relief and never did anything that resembled courageous action. They just loitered in the background of the action a lot. The Little Black Sambots display Black people characteristics and mannerisms.

One reviewer wrote:

Mudflap and Skidz - the aforementioned “from da hood” Autobots with gold teeth, poor grammar, the inability to read (or speak with inside voices) and, final sigh, actual simian features. The voice work (by Spongebob Squarepants’ Tom Kenny) is more of the Howard Stern/Amos & Andy style as opposed to the Chris Rock “daaaaaamn!” variety."

Perhaps a better explanation of the two Black person inspired robots can be found here:

"The characters in question are Skids and Mudflap, who after an initial appearance as a ratty old ice cream truck are upgraded to be green and orange Chevys. More to the point, both characters speak with voices that sound like urban black stereotypes, have big ears and buck teeth and proclaim that they ‘don’t do much readin’‘. Skids even has a gold tooth."

Yes, the Black robots in Transformers 2 are based off of the urban Black male, and yes, Black people are aghast that this would be how Black robots are depicted in the film. To quote Kurtz,"the horror, the horror." One of the Black 'bots even has "grillz".Black people love to act Black, but they don't like to have a mirror held up so that they can see how their actions look on film. It hurts their feelings.

One of the Black person inspired robots does actually say, "don't do much readin," which must be inspired by the literacy rate in Detroit, where reportedly 50 percent of the population can't read.

Black people are horrified when reality is shown on film, instead of a fabricated lie and the portrayal of Black robots is just too much truth for the Black community. The negative depiction of Black robots is a disgusting reminder of the brutal truth Black people have been trying to suppress: that Black people aren't all as articulate and charming as Barack Obama.

Michael Bay has done a disservice to the Black community. He has shown Black people what Black robots would be like, and that is just something that can only be found in Stuff Black People Don't Like.