I can’t help but notice that the controversy over Resident Evil 5 has resurfaced. Gamepolitics and Pandagon have covered it, although the only real discussion on GP is in the comments section and, well, to be honest I wouldn’t recommend reading it (but suit yourself if you wish to). For those unfamiliar, here is the source of controversy:
What you see above is a white guy (Chris Redfield, a longtime protagonist of the series) shooting up a bunch of zombified black dudes in an African looking village. For some, this invokes white colonialist imagery and warrants a chorus of condemnatory finger-wagging. I have to dissent on two basic levels.
Number one, many seem to be operating on the idea that games are somehow required to yield to their sensibilities in the specific form of “imagery” they depict. In the past, those with the loudest voices condemned what they saw as “degenerate” and “depraved” depictions in the media consisting of sex, violence, profanity and other sins. Nowadays those on the other side of the aisle have developed a mirror sense of some right not to be offended by “insensitive” or “derogatory” imagery. While the specific content of both reactions is different, they both represent an attempt to bully content creators into conforming to their idea of what constitutes “proper” art and entertainment, and thus annoy me equally.
Number two is the idea that anything with plausible racial overtones is rightly labeled “racist”. Racism is a legitimate evil when it refers to notions of racial superiority or unexamined prejudice or bigotry. When it comes to refer to anything with a subtext that some very sensitive people may read as racist, well, you’ve defined the term a bit too broadly. I somehow doubt that the mere depiction of a white guy fending off hordes of black zombies is going to do much to legitimize the genuinely evil stuff. I also don’t remember a very high profile clutching of the pearls when Resident Evil 4 depicted a Caucasian American mowing down hordes of buzzed out Spanish peasants in a countryside village. (There is this column from 2007, over two years after the release of RE4, which looks more like an attempt to retrofit a racist angle given the RE5 controversy than anything. Also, it’s apparent claim that it represents anti-Hispanic racism is transparently stupid, given that the villagers are Indo-European.)
In general, I think people just need to cool it and enjoy the game. Life is too short to find demons around every corner.
June 23, 2008 at 1:56 am
I read through the article on GamePolitics and thought the whole idea was, in it’s entirety, completely stupid. You’re absolutely right; too many people start raising red flags over things that have no need for concern. I’m VERY certain people who’ll pick up RE5 aren’t going, “Oh boy! Black People I can mass murder! YIPPIEE! All of my socially founded racial and prejudiced fantasies are coming true! ”
Fine. If that’s the way hate mongering bloggers want to be, I’ll play along too.
*Ahem.*
I’m going to stand by the claim that if RE5 is racist against blacks and RE4 is racist against Spaniards, then the original Resident Evil is prejudiced against lepers. I mean, c’mon–zombified people who ‘get sick’ off of being injected by the T-Virus? Who happen to get disfigured and have skin sloughing off? Yeah right, Capcom! I and the people over at Your Black Writers Blog are on to you and your hate-fueled tirades against Leper-zombies, ‘Spic-zombies, and Black zombies! With a name like CapCOM, I’m not surprised! You guys should be called Cap-COMMUNISTS, AMIRITE??? (’Cause every American knows that if you are a communist, that automatically makes you a racist bastard.)
I’m on to your little scheme Capcom!
Step 1) Create video games that depict the slaughtering of zombies (lepers given a bad name!) that also happen to be hispanic and black in the interests of creating racial tension so that White people can claim supremacy
Step 2) ???
Step 3) PROFIT!
Shame on you, Capcom! SHAME ON YOU!!!!
June 23, 2008 at 2:12 am
And did you notice how buff Chris Redfield has gotten all of a sudden? Not only is Resident Evil promoting racism, it’s also promoting STEROID ABUSE! AMIRITE???
June 23, 2008 at 2:25 am
I hate to say it, Big Bro–but CapCOMMUNIST has done it again. I found something so much more egregious than Chris Redfield blowing away black zombies on teh internetz that it may even shock you. I warn you, it’s not pretty. This image is not for the faint of heart.
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d77/nio_chan/CHRISREDFIELDHATESMUDKIPZ.jpg
OMFG U GAIZ, CHRIS REDFIELD IS A RACIST BASTARD–AND HE DUZNT LIEK MUDKIPZ EITHER!!!!!11
June 23, 2008 at 2:31 am
ZOMG MUDKIPZ! Did you notice that the first syllable in the name is “mud”, which is a term used by white supremacists to deride “inferior” black and brown people? HOLYSHIT RESIDENT EVIL IZ TEH RACIST OMGWTFBBQ!!!!1
June 23, 2008 at 2:36 am
HOLYSHITNOWAI!!!!!11
I mean liek, I totally see it nao. Liek, check my totally infallible logic:
Take the word MUDKIP.
Take the name CHRIS REDFIELD.
If you take out the letters M,U,D,K, and P, and the H,I,R,E,D,F,I,E,L, and D, and add the letters A,S and T, you get:
RACIST.
OMFG it’s the smoking gun!
Also, if you disagree with me on Resident Evil being racist in every way, shape and form, that makes YOU a racist, a communist, a pedophile, a rapist, a Republican, and an emo.
June 23, 2008 at 8:59 am
I think you’re completely missing the point here. You do note that this argument has “resurfaced,” as is started in April with N’Gai Croal of Level Up in an interview with Tracey John of MTV’s Multiplayer blog.
Not only do you fail to address the arguments in the months-old interview, they’ve already dealt with yours before you make them.
I’m going to quote heavily from the interview, but I suggest you read the whole thing. It might help you understand this issue a little better.
You say
What you see above is a white guy (Chris Redfield, a longtime protagonist of the series) shooting up a bunch of zombified black dudes in an African looking village.
Well, that isn’t all other people see. And Croal has talked about the fact that you don’t see more.
The point isn’t that you can’t have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn’t see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don’t understand what you’re talking about and think that you’re sort of seeing race where nothing exists?
On another point, you said
I also don’t remember a very high profile clutching of the pearls when Resident Evil 4 depicted a Caucasian American mowing down hordes of buzzed out Spanish peasants in a countryside village.
He said several months ago:
There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.” They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in ‘Resident Evil 4,’ and now ‘black zombies and that’s why people are getting upset.” The imagery is not the same. It doesn’t carry the same history, it doesn’t carry the same weight. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that.
Though, in fact, he does explain it more clearly than that.
It would be like saying you were going to do some sort of zombie movie that appeared to be set in Europe in the 1940’s with skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people. If you put up that imagery people would be saying, “Are you crazy?” Well, that’s what this stuff looks like. This imagery has a history. It has a history and you can’t pretend otherwise. That imagery still has a history that has to be engaged, that has to be understood.
As to your specific arguments.
…games are somehow required to yield to their sensibilities in the specific form of “imagery” they depict.
No one is saying that. No one is trying to “bully content creators into conforming to their idea of what constitutes ‘proper’ art and entertainment,” not in the articles you linked or the article I linked. From what I’ve seen people are reacting to a video and writing about their reactions. Then people are reacting to their reactions, and so the authors write about their reaction to the reaction to their first reaction. But nowhere in that chain is someone (unless it’s a stupid commenter) saying “OMFG Capcom has to change/cancel this game!!!one!” It’s all just bloggers engaging in a reasonable dialog about race.
Number two is the idea that anything with plausible racial overtones is rightly labeled “racist”.
My take on this statement comes from the Croal interview, which you didn’t link, so I should not expect you to respond to something you might not have read. But given that you know some of the history of this debate, I do expect you to have read it.
Croal’s point, which I’ve already quoted, is not that this video has racist overtones. It is using blatant racist stereotypes. The angry black mob, devoid of humanity, who all need to be killed. Indulge me in another printing of something I’ve already quoted: They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. This sort of thing isn’t just a racial overtone, this imagery is a bedrock part of a racial stereotype.
To paraphrase 1up’s Garnett Lee on 1up Yours (I think this is the episode, which you should listen to as well), if even one person in that village had been shown to have humanity, one child playing with a ball, one person laughing or slapping Chris on the back, then the racism argument would break down. But there isn’t one villager who is portrayed as human, even before they turn to zombies. Therein lies the racist imagery.
I want to conclude by saying, the criticism of racism isn’t even about the game; after all, most haven’t seen much of the game. It’s about this trailer, which may not be representative of the game at all. Hell, it might not have even been made by Capcom; they might have farmed it to some tiny company not at all connected with their dev team, and this might be nothing like the image Capcom wants to portray. So, no, no one is calling for the game to be changed. We’re just saying this trailer is fucked up.
So please watch it again, in the higher-res Gametrailers version. You don’t even need to watch anymore after they turn to zombies; by that point, the racism has already been shown to you. Can you see it?
June 23, 2008 at 9:24 pm
“The point isn’t that you can’t have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn’t see it.”
Yes, there is a contrast in the races of the protagonist and his enemies. So, of course, I can tell that some people are going to clutch their pearls and spout a bunch of PC platitudes about how such a contrast is just verbotten.
There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.”
Flavin, of course they are “othered”. The whole point of a survival horror is to alienate and isolate you so that you feel forlorn and alone. And regardless of your handwringing about the trailer, the black people are inevitably going to “othered” to a very large extent in RE5. However, they aren’t “othered” to any extent that the enemies in RE4 or any previous RE game aren’t also, the only difference is that they’re black and occupying an African looking village.
“Though, in fact, he does explain it more clearly than that.
It would be like saying you were going to do some sort of zombie movie that appeared to be set in Europe in the 1940’s with skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people. If you put up that imagery people would be saying, “Are you crazy?” Well, that’s what this stuff looks like.”
I’ve seen a lot of these types of arguments, trying to compare them to something much more specific and much more blatant than the RE5 trailer. Things like “OMG THIS IS LIKE MAKING A GAME OUT OF THE RAPE OF NANKING OR THE HOLOCAUST!” They’re not comparable for one reason: they don’t refer to specific events in history. It’s a fallacy of equivocation to say that something that uses imagery with “a history” is the same as using thematics that can only be interpreted as deliberately recreating a historical event.
“No one is saying that. No one is trying to “bully content creators into conforming to their idea of what constitutes ‘proper’ art and entertainment,” not in the articles you linked or the article I linked. From what I’ve seen people are reacting to a video and writing about their reactions. Then people are reacting to their reactions, and so the authors write about their reaction to the reaction to their first reaction.”
Flavin, please. The whole point of raising an outrage is because you want to change something about what you’re outraged about. Otherwise, there is really no point. If your claim is that people are just whining for the sake of drawing attention to their pet issues…well, we surprisingly agree on something.
“Croal’s point, which I’ve already quoted, is not that this video has racist overtones. It is using blatant racist stereotypes. The angry black mob, devoid of humanity, who all need to be killed. Indulge me in another printing of something I’ve already quoted”
Instead of doing so, I’d appreciate an articulation on your part of how this trailer does something out of the ordinary for RE or even survival horror games in general. Just eliminate one word from the description: “The angry mob, devoid of humanity, who all need to be killed.” Aside from the black part, there is no real contrast between this and RE’s standard MO.
“To paraphrase 1up’s Garnett Lee on 1up Yours (I think this is the episode, which you should listen to as well), if even one person in that village had been shown to have humanity, one child playing with a ball, one person laughing or slapping Chris on the back, then the racism argument would break down. But there isn’t one villager who is portrayed as human, even before they turn to zombies. Therein lies the racist imagery.”
Please, this whole episode wouldn’t have been avoided if one of the occupants had just slapped Chris on the back. I must have missed that part in RE4 where you got into a nice conversation with one of the villagers before they go totally apeshit on you. Really, after a couple of cowardly cops with stereotypical accents ditch you, you get mobbed by a bunch of inhuman Spaniards. Nothing different from what happens in RE5, except the setting introduces you to a lot of black zombies in some African looking village. This whole argument amounts to saying “you have to go out of your way to avoid offending me by doing something out of the ordinary.” It’s a bunch of whining.
June 23, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Also, dear Flavin, I feel the need to ask you if you’ve ever bothered playing any of the Resident Evil games. I am a gigantic fangirl of the series. It’s one of the best survival horrors turned action genre games I’ve ever played because it has an involving, if somewhat overly elaborate storyline. If you have not, I suggest you read up on it.
If you HAVE been keeping up with the story, then allow me to explain. By the time Resident Evil 5 takes place in the storyline, The Umbrella Corporation has been permanently destroyed in it’s American base. (I feel the need to point out that the Umbrella Corporation hierarchy is primarily composed of rich, white men who are all evil, money grubbing, psychotic sociopaths with too much free time. That doesn’t sound racist against whites to you, does it? Or does that not matter?) Anyway, back to the story–since the Umbrella Corporation can no longer continue doing business in America due to the fact that an entire city got destroyed because they were experimenting with dangerous viruses and the infection got loose, they had to move out of the country to continue doing their evil, underhanded experimentations. What better place to do this than in a still developing, needy country like Africa?
Here’s the problem I find with your arguement: You claim that there is no humanity shown within the african villagers in the RE5 trailer. I HIGHLY disagree with you. As everyone well knows, as a developing nation, Africa still has a lot of places that endure lots of hardship and stress. There isn’t enough water, enough food, enough medicine to take care of the people–the list goes on. Being the evil tyrannizing company that Umbrella Corp. is, they would specifically search out a place that is downtrodden to continue to run their R&D experiments in exchange for the necessities of life. They’ve got the money, after all. As a starving, sick, poor human being, if a company comes along and strings you along with promises of all you desire if they simply have a place to conduct their work, I’m sure a lot of desperate people would immediately jump on the chance.
In parts of the two trailers floating around on the internet, you see a LOT of the desperation these villagers face. From the looks on their faces, to the glimpses of the life we see that they suffer under during Chris’ monologue…If you’ve read any of the novels, you’d understand better, I think. Since I don’t know the specifics of RE5 (since there’s only so much CapCom is willing to release about the game, of course) but I do know there is a new strain of virus that is running amok in the African village that turns the villagers into mind slaves. Since Chris Redfield is the main protagonist and one of the few characters who played a vital role in the previous take down of Umbrella Corp., of course Umbrella’s remaining members and funds would be devoted to, oh say, TAKING HIM DOWN. There is no way to cure one of the virus, as there has not been in any of the other Resident Evil games. No one should have to suffer with a parasite that rips you from your humanity–and unfortunately, there is only one solution: to kill the host.
The point I am trying to establish here is that Umbrella Corp. has made an entire army of biological weapons in the form of angry former-human beings who are used to being abused in all walks of life. As the player of the video game, and an avid follower of the series, I am not immune from my humanity. When I see what rich, power-hungry corporations like Umbrella pray upon the weak and the shunted human beings, I get angry. When I see a village full of people who are suffering turn to violence, like many villages–regardless of race–who are under the thumb of oppression do, I feel the heartache. When I see Chris Redfield, who had suffered through the horrors of watching his comrades die at the hands of the evil biological experiments that Umbrella sent upon them in the Mansion Incident in RE1, I feel his regret. When I see Chris take it upon himself to wipe out the remaints of Umbrella so that no more innocent people have to suffer, I feel his determination.
If you think that people who play any of the RE games are going to look at this and say, “Black people are trying to kill me in a game that is completely devoid of reality! That makes all black people bad in real life!”, then that, my dear, makes you a bit of an idiot. If ANYTHING, Capcom is trying to create animosity against rich, PRIMARILY WHITE, power hungry corporations. Not innocent villagers. Not black people. Not hispanics. Not townspeople who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
So before you go and judge a franchise, I suggest you at least have the courtesy to play through it, or read the novels at least. That way, you understand the story. The humanity behind it. The story appeals to the basic of human interests: good versus evil, love, loss, and living on. To avenge the deaths of your comrades and friends; to protect those who can no longer protect themselves.
June 24, 2008 at 2:30 am
RE1 was absolutely the worst game I ever loved. But jeez I’m glad there were no blacks or jews or other minorities to shoot - my twisty panties would have strangled my testicles.
Of course, I agree that zombies should all be white. I mean, who’s scared of minorities? Only the master race can provide the right raw materials for a really scary enemy.
June 24, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Lulz, Magpie. Actually, I believe Kenneth of the S.T.A.R.S Bravo team was black–he was the first one dead found by Jill or Chris (depending on the scenario, of course) being eaten by that zombie in the hallway at the beginning of the game. I don’t remember if he came back to life as a zombie or not in the original–I think he did, but I remember in the remake that the V-ACT brings him back (at least, I think.) So, technically, you do shoot a black guy. :(
….And now that I reflect upon it, In RE2, when Leon finds that black cop who is dying in the main office, he turns into a zombie and you have to kill him too.
….And in RE3, you find Carlos Olivera’s zombified south american friend who turned into a zombie and you have to kill.
Wow. There are a history of minorities that are killed in the RE series. But, y’know what? Lots more white people die instead.
So I guess you win the internets!
June 25, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Flavin wrote: “There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies.”
I guess to some extent racism is in the eye of the beholder. When I watched the beginning part of the trailer, I saw people going about their normal day-to-day activities in an economically depressed part of the world. The hero is walking among them, not only unmolested, but completely unnoticed for the most part. A similar movie could be made about pretty much any city of the world, even New York or Chicago.
If anything, the trailer, and RE4 and RE5, exploit people’s inherent xenophobia. It’s scary (and I speak from experience) to be submerged in an unknown culture where people speak a different language and have very different perspectives and customs. In other words, to quote H.P. Lovecraft, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” RE is heightening the game’s terror by putting the protagonist in unfamiliar environment. This doesn’t necessarily involve racism, as I think RE4 demonstrated.
June 26, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Isn’t it kind of racist to expect Africans in a war zone(?) to happily welcome a foreign mercenary type, slap him on the back etc?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQmoC-vMm8