Transformers: Revenge of the fallen

The movie was the American box-office blockbuster Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It has busted more than blocks, I can tell you, whipping in about US$200 million in a week in North American theatres.

The movie is a sequel to another film based on a successful cartoon which was itself based on a series of toys. I therefore need not dwell for too long on the plot which, suffice it to say, involved a race of aliens that look like cars but then transform into robots. These aliens have an axe to grind with another group of aliens on Earth and thus they engage in a series of CGI battles doing inestimable damage to several tourist hot-spots worldwide, like the Pyramids of Egypt.

I kinda wanted to transform myself outta there when I was watching it. But everybody in Globe seemed to be enjoying it.

A big alien kills Optimus Prime, the “hero” so to speak of the series. Then, after many other fights, Optimus Prime is resurrected and himself goes on to kill the film’s arch villain.

It’s all very violent, which, I guess, was the point. But as I sat there in Globe with the crowd cheering, I could not help but remember PC Chris Bharath who was killed moments after seeing a film at that very cinema. Fresh in my mind was also the strangling of 10-year-old Tecia Henry, and the murder of 39-year-old Camille Daniel who drove into a police station in a bid for safety but failed. As well as the constant flow of “revenge” killings that are wiping out gang members in the country.

The audience actually enjoyed seeing the robots kill other robots presumably because the violence was a form of wish-fulfillment. Without a doubt the movie glorified the idea of tit-for-tat “justice”, the kind that results in gang members killing other gang members. In a country where you might get killed for stepping on somebody’s sneakers, though, this was far from entertaining.

The chronic crime situation which we face is a direct result of the failure of our leaders and authorities to address the conditions that have resulted in a sub-culture of alienation. That sub-culture not only holds influence over those who actually are alienated in society, but it has become almost a part of popular male culture amongst youth.

Youths are taught to be “bad”, to be tough, and settle disputes by fisticuffs. They are censured for doing otherwise. So they buy the latest shoes, say things like, “yeah dreads” or “yeah dog” perpetually when addressing one another. And they have no sense of just how myopic something like gang life really is.

Embracing glorified ideas of revenging the world for all the crap that’s happening, they fail to realise that tit-for-tat battles of the sort glorified on the big-screen are best left to the Hollywood filmmakers. Because in the real world when you get killed, you don’t come back to life like Optimus Prime.

abagoo@newsday.co.tt