As I was sitting inside the theater before this new Michael Bay film I could only think of what seeing this movie really meant: intellectual suicide. However, I didn’t realize what was really about to happen to the audience: a brutal raping of the senses for two and a half hours. The interesting thing about these happenings was that I was the only one in my group (and perhaps the whole complex) that recognized the film in this manner. The theater was full of bright-eyed children, teenagers, and, inexplicably, a large collection of grown men who were just way too into this movie to be taken seriously as important members of society (I mean, they cheered at the sight of new robo-characters). Now the part of this whole part of the movie that got to me was not the burning sensation that G.I. Joe would be a hit or that the type of grown men that are into Transformers are just straight creepy, but that in no, way, shape, or form have I ever seen a film that so perfectly represents the American Zeitgeist. Now, this may sound like a stretch but think about it: the studios gave Michael Bay ten bagillion dollars to make this movie, and it’s on a successful track to make about ninety gazillion dollars (I hope these numbers make sense), which means that in basic terms: this movie is a big deal.
Remember that first time you heard Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and how you felt this warm sensation of meaning and community? Now do you recollect other moments where people try to convey this same sense of importance from some sort of garbled nonsense? (Jack Johnson always reminds me of this situation) Well, this feeling hit me like a five hundred pound Ravens’ linebacker about an hour into the movie. At this point I had failed to recognize any form of a plot, witnessed three thousand deaths, and had imagined sleeping with Megan Fox about fifteen times. Every other scene contained ten explosions, impossibly attractive women, and jokes based around the concept of housewives smoking pot. All of this began to get to me and I almost instantly stopped noticing the film as a form of entertainment; I was now watching the CGI-ed version of society’s ever-present id. Every twist and turn was chock full of terrible humour, meaningless explosions, and enough dead bodies to make Normandy look like a fun Sunday trip to the beach. Now, the part I didn’t understand is why the audience chewed this up and allowed it to settle in their stomachs; it’s all foreign language to this young man. The more I tend to think about it, the easier it all becomes to grasp: society is obsessed with unadulterated sex and violence, while depth and meaning slowly becomes an old hat trick that is left for that “Oscar garbage” people keep bringing up in defense of Transformers.
Now I can make these seemingly insane pretentious statements based solely on the fact that this new Bay production is blowing up big time in every theater in every town, in every city, in every state, in every country, on every planet, in every solar system; in other words: every single fucking person ever paid to see this movie. This is ideally why Michael “Can’t Make A Good Movie” Bay hit the nail on the head when he wrote (who allowed this man to do this?) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. People are going out to see it because the film is an extremely concentrated version of society’s values and obsessions. We have been taught to accept mass violence and death as some sort of normality that occurs every day, despite the fact that it’s really just the media we consume like that heroin Slash enjoyed so much in the eighties. People try and explain that what makes Transformers so “fun” is that it is just a summer action flick; well so was Star Wars, but at least that had some depth to it. The fact that violence is able to penetrate our senses in a more enjoyable manner than a higher significant meaning is probably why Fox News, First-Person video games, and Slipknot are all as popular as ever. This makes me consider the idea that people don’t enjoy to think as much as they used to. This sounds strange, but there really is some other hard hitting evidence besides Michael Bay’s eye-rape being the biggest deal ever, and these reasons are as followed: (A) People constantly state that they “hate reading” (B) Major newspapers around the country are crumbling (C) The Hills has been confirmed to run through at least seven complete seasons. All of this is saddening to me, but still there are worse factors to the mess that is Transformers: the complete undermining of specific groups of people. I’ll start with the more obvious, popular, and attractive one which is simply Megan Fox’s existence in the film. From the first time we see her to the slow motion jogs through Egypt, everything Fox is directed to do just blatantly glorifies the objectification of women (which I assume has Margaret Sanger rolling in her grave). The introduction is nothing more than a cock-teasing shot of short-shorts bent over a motorcycle with some cleavage that just screams, “I don’t want to be respected! I just want sex!” I can honestly state that Megan Fox serves no purpose in the movie except to look good and keep young men interested when there are no explosions (which isn’t very often). If you need proof of this go on Facebook, look up Megan Fox, and see just how many women are “fans” of her’s; I’m going to just go ahead estimate about four (Perhaps fans of Sinead O'Connor). And it doesn’t stop there, no actress in the film makes any meaningful statements besides some of the greatest sexual innuendos ever, and once again, they just all look so good that the college party scene feels like a billboard reading: “All college girls need to look this hot, or they just don’t exist.” Ok, part two, and it is so much worse: The Twins… What is supposed to be viewed as comic relief is just the constant reminder that we are all still a bunch of a racists. White people will think it’s funny because of how stupid these robots are, but what they are laughing at is the fact that they subtly view Black people in this way which now makes African-Americans think that all White people look at the race in the fashion. Get the point? Yeah, it’s not good, it’s a vicious circle. This movie plays out the racism to such an extent that it almost becomes distilled and as a viewer, we stop looking at it as racist; it just kind of continually happens. And that is what can be said for the whole movie: all of this nonsense is apparent at first but then gets lost in its own murky representation of American culture.
Now you as a reader you probably think I am insane for writing such an essay on why I truly hated this film, and maybe I just way overanalyzed it which someone had to do, and now you probably despise me as a person. Perhaps this is all true and I am just a pretentious prick with too much time on his hands, and needs to lighten up a bit; but let’s assume I am right. Maybe you need to start overanalyzing these things in order to really understand what is happening to your brain and I promise that I won’t judge you. Maybe we all need to take a step back from the media as a form of entertainment and look at it in a way to understand how it represents us because guess what? It does. Every time you listen to a record, watch a television program, read about something, or pay to see a movie it says something about you and those around you; you enjoy this for a reason. So here is the fork in the road my friend, the difference between the red pill and the blue pill, light side and dark side. You can forever ruin your enjoyment of the “fun” media facets, or you and I can turn off, zone out and lineup at the box office for 2012. Maybe Michael Bay and Hollywood know more about us than we do, and all any of us really are just robots in disguise. Autobots! Roll out!
