Resident Evil 5: Who Wants to Talk Race?
Posted by Nav on July 12, 2007
My guess? No-one. I’ll bet you a hundred timbits (mmm… timbits) that not one prominent gaming website will discuss the fact that there’s something off-putting about a white authority figure slaughtering hordes of mindless African ‘zombies’. Indeed, if you were to comment as such on Kotaku or Joystiq, you would shouted down with the usual liberal humanist retorts: “You wouldn’t say that if it was a black police officer and white zombies” or “It’s just a stupid game - it doesn’t mean anything”.
Of course, those sort of responses assume that we have free control over how we deal with and react to images in relation to our own experience and broader ideological and aesthetic contexts. If, for example, there were not a history of Africans being represented as jabbering savages - in everything from black and white films to Black Hawk Down - or contemporary North America was some sort of paradise of racial harmony, then sure, this would just be a game with an interesting premise. But let me quote Luke Plunkett’s response on Kotaku:
Not much to it, sadly, but then aside from pretty girls in white cowgirl suits how much more do you need? I mean, it’s got African zombies. In Africa. It’s a unique setting, I’ll give them that.
That says it all, doesn’t it? That the threat of ‘Africa’ is just implied and is enough to make things intriguing. I’m uneasy embedding the video, but the few of you who might read this are unlikely to keep on top of video game news.
[Update]: Pleasant surprise: the comments on Kotaku actually have a few interesting posts - and, just as I predicted, the usual liberal responses.
[Update 2]: Kotaku have actually engaged the issue - though their tone certainly seems dismissive.
July 28, 2007 at 6:17 am
I’ve been involved in a…frustrating one-way on a forum of Australia’s biggest ISP. See here:
http://www.gamearena.com.au/news/read.php/4381001
July 29, 2007 at 1:18 pm
That’s a shame… but not entirely unexpected.
August 3, 2007 at 10:51 pm
An excellent response posted on a forum:
Think of it this way.
Say the Wii comes out with a game called “Little Witch Hunter.” And in that game, you have a town where all of the pre-teen girls have turned into evil witches. But the transformation is not visible at all. To the naked eye, they just look like little anime girls.
To defeat the “witches” you must use the Wiimote to strip them naked, then insert a magic wand into their vaginas. Which, the game explains, on little witch girls is their “evil hole.” Each time you do this, the little “witch” moans with pleasure and says, “Thank you, mister!!! That was great!”
Now, I think it’s safe to say everyone in this thread would be made uncomfortable by that game.
But why? We’re not molesting girls! We’re defeating little witches! Context is everything!
And yet… that backstory doesn’t eliminate the creepiness of what we’re doing. Why? Because there is, in the real world, such a thing as child molestation. And there is such a thing as people who are aroused by fantasies that involve naked, violated children. You must take those social factors into account. The game was not made in a vaccuum. It was made in the real world.
This little clip of video game was not made in a vaccuum. It was made in a world where Africans, real Africans, are maimed and slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Sometimes by other Africans, too often by well-armed white men like the one portrayed in the trailer.
To let me play a computer simulation of a clean, muscular white man mowing down crowds of African savages CANNOT be dismissed with, “But they’re really ZOMBIES. It’s nothing!” any more than my aforementioned child molestation game can be written off as “but they’re WITCHES!”
In both cases you’re touching on something that is deeply offensive - and rightfully so - to large groups of often non-retarded people.
June 25, 2008 at 2:55 pm
resident evil 5 racis? Bullsh1t what about blade hmmmm…. black guy killing white people but when a white guy kills black “ZOMBIES” people flipout!!!!!! CHILL THE F4CK OUT!!!!!!