Or so says a poster on Kotaku. A few days ago, I quickly threw together a post on race in Resident Evil 5 and, unexpectedly, it became the most viewed story Scrawled in Wax has ever seen. In it, I rather pompously suggested that no mainstream site would take up the question of race in RE5, largely because they seem to ignore such issues so frequently. But today, in response to a post on Black Looks, Kotaku put up a post on the issue and has unsurprisingly made an implicit defence of the game. What is much more interesting, however, is that the post generated nearly eight-hundred comments, most of which are of the expected variety: ‘people are needlessly playing the race card’ or were only claiming racism because depictions of Africans were involved. For the sake of comparison, even the tired but popular ‘console war’ threads generate a maximum of three or four hundred responses and most posts are about a tenth of that.

There were certainly valid points that came out in the comments, most importantly that we have yet to actually play the game; it is, after all, quite possible that Capcom will engage questions of race in the story in an interesting way. But more intriguing to me was the sense of outrage in the comments, particularly the notion that if the racial roles were reversed in the game there would be no controversy. At root, what people were most incensed about was: a)that different standards applied to the game because it depicted blacks; and that b) by claiming racism, people were actually perpetuating it.

While my gut reaction to that is to be argumentative and dismissive, I actually think it is wrong to entirely blame the posters. From kindergarten on, we are thoroughly indoctrinated in ideas of equality and are told that to treat someone differently because of their race, gender, sexuality etc. is wrong. Thus, when people read about this game causing a fuss because of a black-white dynamic, they object because it is an affront to the core of North American democratic discourse, a contravention of the holy idea of equality and fair treatment.

The question must be asked then: why does the trailer for RE5 seem so off-putting? Well, for one, there is a long history of Africans being represented as savages and barbaric e.g. Black Hawk Down. When one sees those images reproduced in a game, one gets the sense that the assumptions that underpinned the original images are also reproduced. Additionally, there is a clear history of research suggesting that a constant stream of images in public discourse is enough to affect people’s opinions on both a conscious and unconscious level. RE5 simply becomes yet another set of images in which blacks are dismissed as ‘inferior’ or ‘subhuman’.

As for the ‘role-reversal’ question: why would race not be a factor if the protagonist were white and the zombies black? Simple answer: it still would be, albeit in different ways. The point is that the ‘reversing races’ argument assumes that it is possible to see characters in a racially neutral way. In an abstract sense, I suppose it is – but given that we live in a world saturated in images that are dominated by racial dynamics, I would argue that it is misleading to posit this supposed neutrality of images. As the recent gaffe by Intel suggests, even ‘inadvertent’ use of race can elicit very strong reactions. Capcom cannot simply wish away these issues in the hope that no-one will notice.

And what of the idea that ‘they’re just zombies’? Well, why do images resonate with us at all? Why are rigid alien societies always vaguely Nazi-esque? Why are Tolkein’s elves the ‘fairest’? The point is that if the images presented in film and gaming have no relationship to real life at all, they would mean nothing to us. For people to hide behind the ‘zombies’ argument is to create an artificial line between ‘real’ and fictive images, as if the brain is not similarly affected by both. That’s not to say that we don’t make any difference. But the circulation of images in postmodern society is crucial to an understanding of reality – to dismiss the part that ‘artificial’ images play is to entirely dismiss all the power of art.

What is unfortunate, however, is that the the poster at Black Looks has no experience with games and is of the faulty mentality that games are ‘reality simulators’ – that the re-enactment of something in a game is an unequivocal endorsement of those actions in real life. While interactivity certainly adds other layers to how we interact with images, it is not as straightforward as the original writer makes them out to be. It’s an awful shame too – debates like this are so often shouted down in gaming and, as games move closer and closer to visual verisimilitude, will only become more common.