American socio-politics in fictional context: transformers and the representation of the United States

The fictional narratives that have been developed for the support of the Transformers brand, with their underlying emphasis on the sale of action figures, have been dismissed as a somewhat juvenile and uninteresting text. Little to no serious academic analysis of any of the various iterations of the franchise has been undertaken. With this thesis, I endeavour to begin that analysis and thus broaden and problematize the currently limited understanding of Transformers fictions. Due to the franchise’s vast nature, I focus on the original animation (1984-1987) and the recent live-action movies (2007-2011) with their attempts to offer a representation of the contemporaneous sociopolitical environment in America at the time of their production. In order to undertake this study, I combine my background in political analysis with film and media studies to seek out and explore the political themes and commentaries present in the key areas of political philosophy, technological change, the depiction of politicians, gender and sexuality, and America’s international role. Through this analysis of the franchise I shall construct an argument that Transformers is a complex narrative, replete with socio-political allegory that offers a representation of the United States and a view of itself in the arenas of domestic and global politics