Resident Evil 5 just dropped on Friday. It's not without problems, but it's still pretty great. (The addition of coop really goes a long way to making it feel fresh!) All people want to talk about is the racism issue though... and that's good because it's pretty effing important.The New York Times has weighed in on it. Their call? Not Racist.
Bullocks. :(
It's been about a full year since RE5 was first announced. I remember watching the first trailer. Being your average white privileged American male I didn't pick up on anything racist. Africa seemed like a shocking new setting to put zombies in; a far cry from the spooky mansions, castles, laboratories, and Raccoon City streets of Resident Evil's past. I was stoked for it!
And then the internet had some objections.
My initial reaction, like a lot of gamers, was a knee-jerk defense. It was very similar to Seth Schiesel's: zombie viruses don't give a shit what color you are. Anyone can be a zombie and these zombies just happen to be black because the game is in Africa. I was offended that people were really digging for a racist agenda in the game.
But after reading the arguments and talking to people that are much smarter than myself I began to realize that this is a pretty shallow mentality. Just because it doesn't personally affront me with a racist message doesn't mean that it's not racist.
It seems like the big issue is that RE5 preys on century-long fears of Africa as the "Dark Continent." Africans have been depicted as savages forever... the fact that Capcom has justified this imagery for their game by injecting them with zombie viruses (oh I'm sorry... Las Plagas parasites) does not make this imagery ok. And after playing the game they really leverage this imagery to great effect, particularly in the first act. That's not ok.
Seth even points out in his article that a game like this could not have been made in the States because of the social ramifictions. How could that possibly mean that it's ok for it to be made somewhere else? Poorly played, Seth.
I also wonder if there are places in the States where a game like this is actually craved. Are there racist players out there that really want a game where they get to play a white guy shooting black zombies in the face? That also seems to make the game Not Ok.
Overall this article reads more like something I would expect to find in the enthusiast game press... kind of sensationalist and full of defensive posturing. No one's trying to come after games for being racist. No one's trying to take our games away. These conversations are important... and not just because racism is important. I hope that these conversations are important because games are important. They influence people just like other respected media. If we want to be held up next to these other types of media then we should create more thoughtful products and we should certainly be ready to receive the same criticisms.
-Brad!
3 comments:
Brad: Great post. I missed the earlier posts and just read them.
Well done!
You have a passion for this industry that really comes through. Keep it up. You are a much better writer than you give yourself credit for.
Now, just one question for RE5:
Because I have never played RE1,2,3 or 4 (LOL), I was just wondering -- when you choose your character at the beginning of RE5, can you be a black guy instead of a white guy?
Oh, now that I have written that question it sounds racist. I do not mean it that way. It's just that if white guys killing black zombies is racist then does it follow that black guys killing black zombies is racist, too.
And, in the other RE games, could you be a black guy killing white zombies? Is that racist?
One wonders when this will ever stop.
Can humans ever get to the point where they are all color blind and the color of your skin does not matter one damn bit?
I can only hope.
March 17, 2009 6:58 AM
Thanks for your comments Dad!
You aren't given the option to select your character at the beginning of the game. All of the protagonists in Resident Evil have been historically white.
I didn't mention it in my post but they added a buddy character to accompany the main character throughout the entire game (this is to enable two player co-op play at all times, similar to Gears of War). She is black, which appears to be a good thing, but then you realize that she's cast in the stereotypical Hollywood mold of an 'acceptable' black actress like Halle Berry. I think that this actually creates more problems than it solves... the 'heroic' black woman is very light-skinned, speaks with a slightly British accent, and is very sexy, while the 'evil' African zombie villagers are dark skinned mindless savages. The imagery and the divide between good vs. evil is still pretty much right along racial lines.
This would have been a great opportunity for the designers to confront any possible racist issues head-on by having a darker-skinned African woman (or man) as the secondary character.
To answer your question directly: is it still racist if a black protagonist is shooting black African zombies? I don't think it would be as severe... my main criticism (which is shared with a lot of others I think) is the savage imagery that the African zombies recall. You'd still have that even if the protagonist was black, it would just look a little less like a Klan recruiter's wet dream. :(
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