More Than Meets The Eye
October 3, 2023 12:05 PM Subscribe
“The excitement I feel looking at the 1960s architecture of Kenzo Tange is rooted in the excitement I felt as a six-year-old boy looking at the animated Autobot City.” Owen Hatherley looks at the Transformers franchise through a New Socialist lens.
I was really hoping for more about Kenzo Tange and metabolism and how it related to Transformers but this was still an engaging essay. I didn't realize that the TV series was on for such a short period of time, in my mind it was all Transformers throughout my childhood but I guess that was just the highlight as far as animated shows were concerned.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:37 PM on October 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:37 PM on October 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is amazing, I will always read Hatherley. Great post.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:48 PM on October 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:48 PM on October 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
"... there’s no ‘hauntology’ here, no unfulfilled future that you can lament or find the remnants of. These are totally neoliberal artefacts, and the world these programmes helped build is the one we live in. Instead of the public modernism of Oliver Postgate or Nigel Kneale, we were raised on a culture created directly by the Reagan administration and produced by the new globalised trade relationships that replaced an industrial economy centred on northwestern Europe and North America. Because of this, Transformers are not an uninteresting way of trying to work out how exactly it is we got here."
What a paragraph!
posted by mhoye at 6:00 PM on October 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
What a paragraph!
posted by mhoye at 6:00 PM on October 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
A lot of my childhood psyche was caught up in these fascinating puzzle-like robot toys. However, I was 10 when the series premiered in the US, so I wasn't as into the cartoon world. I was getting old enough to see the dumb pandering to younger kids. Some of the other 80s toy/cartoon franchises missed me. I never cared for He-Man and his ilk.
But I loved the Transformers toys. Part of the brilliance of the early Transformers toys was that the vehicles were based on real world vehicles. I could play with my Jazz character figure and then transform him into his Porsche car mode. I could see Porsches on the street, or a Datsun 280ZX, or a Freightliner truck. The toys looked like fairly realistic versions of their real world counterparts.
When they did the big movie event and killed off most of the original characters, I was too old to be traumatized like kids only a few years younger than me. The toys that replaced the original cast were more brightly colored and toy-like. I was on my way to junior high, so my interest quickly waned.
But still, these toys hold a fond place in my heart. I have enjoyed revisiting Transformers with my son.
I will leave debates about the merits of toy based advertising to others. I enjoyed this article.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:54 AM on October 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
But I loved the Transformers toys. Part of the brilliance of the early Transformers toys was that the vehicles were based on real world vehicles. I could play with my Jazz character figure and then transform him into his Porsche car mode. I could see Porsches on the street, or a Datsun 280ZX, or a Freightliner truck. The toys looked like fairly realistic versions of their real world counterparts.
When they did the big movie event and killed off most of the original characters, I was too old to be traumatized like kids only a few years younger than me. The toys that replaced the original cast were more brightly colored and toy-like. I was on my way to junior high, so my interest quickly waned.
But still, these toys hold a fond place in my heart. I have enjoyed revisiting Transformers with my son.
I will leave debates about the merits of toy based advertising to others. I enjoyed this article.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:54 AM on October 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've been waiting for this essay for a few years now, and it doesn't disappoint - the detail that one of the most 'valuable' Transformers of all time (the European release of Overlord) ended up with Militant is hilarious.
I do think that there is a little hauntology in the franchise, but it's not in the cartoons. The UK edition of the original G1 comic, which had home-grown stories mixed in with American imports, aspired to be something a little more than…meets the eye (oho!). In practice, that meant it was basically '2000AD for tweens' with a dash of Claremont's X-Men and Moore's Captain Britain thrown in, but there's a lot more ambition in there than you'd expect, and during its Imperial Phase of #78-205 there's fun stories, amazing art by the likes of Geoff Senior, and plenty of body horror to scare the kids (also, I know a few popular comic creators around today that will still tear up if you mention 'Impactor' to them).
(another slightly odd thing about the TF UK comic - large chunks of what it established as TF lore have become integral parts of the franchise, making TF a weird Japanese-American-British amalgam)
And then there's the IDW comics of the late 2000s and into the 2010s. A full-on deconstruction of ideas like "so what would a society where people can change into useful (and not so useful) things look like? What life does a Transformer that transforms into a bridge have, anyway?", Optimus Prime quoting Tony Benn, even more body horror, indie discos (yes, robots dancing to Saint Etienne and Dexys), and ending the Autobot-Decepticon war. God knows what Hasbro thought about gay Transformers drinking energon in a bar for several years, but all credit to them for letting it happen.
posted by carsondial at 6:01 AM on October 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
I do think that there is a little hauntology in the franchise, but it's not in the cartoons. The UK edition of the original G1 comic, which had home-grown stories mixed in with American imports, aspired to be something a little more than…meets the eye (oho!). In practice, that meant it was basically '2000AD for tweens' with a dash of Claremont's X-Men and Moore's Captain Britain thrown in, but there's a lot more ambition in there than you'd expect, and during its Imperial Phase of #78-205 there's fun stories, amazing art by the likes of Geoff Senior, and plenty of body horror to scare the kids (also, I know a few popular comic creators around today that will still tear up if you mention 'Impactor' to them).
(another slightly odd thing about the TF UK comic - large chunks of what it established as TF lore have become integral parts of the franchise, making TF a weird Japanese-American-British amalgam)
And then there's the IDW comics of the late 2000s and into the 2010s. A full-on deconstruction of ideas like "so what would a society where people can change into useful (and not so useful) things look like? What life does a Transformer that transforms into a bridge have, anyway?", Optimus Prime quoting Tony Benn, even more body horror, indie discos (yes, robots dancing to Saint Etienne and Dexys), and ending the Autobot-Decepticon war. God knows what Hasbro thought about gay Transformers drinking energon in a bar for several years, but all credit to them for letting it happen.
posted by carsondial at 6:01 AM on October 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
The early Transformer Marvel comics were terrible, but spurred by the daring of their UK counterparts, the later ones became interesting. I remember one issue dealing with Decepticons mimicking American teens by spray-painting Cybertronian graffiti but with one of the Decepticons realizing that it could make art and attempting to kinda-sorta change its life to be more artistic and less, well, Decepticon-ish.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:50 AM on October 4, 2023
posted by infinitewindow at 11:50 AM on October 4, 2023
IDW's licence to make Transformers comics expired and now Image has it. Issue #1 of their Transformers comic came out this week in case anyone is feeling nostalgic.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:41 PM on October 6, 2023
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:41 PM on October 6, 2023
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posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:58 PM on October 3, 2023 [2 favorites]