Racism Evil 5?
So Resident Evil 5 information has been floating around lately, and for those not in the know, RE5 takes place in Africa, and as you might imagine, features the slaying of African zombies. People have since been talking on the internet about the game's setting and premise. Some point out how racist it is to have a white guy gunning down mindless black people, while others are quick to remind us to replace "people" with "zombies" and insist that since the other RE games were pretty much all about killing white zombies, it's ok to shoot the black ones, too.
There's an analysis of the bits of information available to us now here, in which the author suggests that the game may well be the result of racial anxiety, and compares the T-Virus (the fictional infection which causes zombihood) to the real problem of AIDS. I hasten to mention that it's far too early to accurately predict what Capcom is planning on doing with its zombies in Africa game, but it's interesting to me to see how people are reacting to a percieved flaunting of a taboo, and what on Earth that taboo even means.
A few years ago I attended a talk about the nuclear holocaust, after which the floor was opened for questions and some students wanted to talk about the Jewish holocaust, which somehow lead us to talking about slavery in America. It was as if a dispute had subtly broken out over whose people had suffered more, and I think the complaints about RE5's zombies being black is just a part of that same conversation. There's so much said about how terrible it is that certain races are being killed that nobody bothers to mention that those being killed are all people (or in this case, zombies).
By making a huge stink, and in doing so suggesting that the issues raised by killing black zombies are more important than those of their white counterparts is, for the lack of a better word: racist. That's not to say that there's no reason to question Capcom's motives or to discuss the implications, but I object to the focusing in on only one aspect of a stuation to the exclusion of the big picture and its myriad other aspects. My hope is that questions about RE5 will lead to questions about all the other games, and maybe someone will come up with something profound.
13 comments:
Didn't Acclaim already make this game?
DAMNIT. Now Kyle.. you're pissing me off.
Don't go knocking Shadowman... Just becuase Acclaim is a pisspoor game company who couldn't develop their IP to save their lives, doesn't mean the IP wasn't good.
ShadowMan was stolen from the comic line they bought and then obliterated.... and the premise was damned fine. A bitter undead late night talk radio host... who uses voodoo to fight voodoo and evil and dark... man.. I gotta find the link to that early script. it was wonderful.
As to Adam's initial post... I dunno. The racial suffering conversation seems spot on... People want to talk about what matters to them, and segue into that from tangential topics...
As for Res. 5? I ... don't know at all. Becuase.. I'd almost suspect they're setting up a whole new direction for the game.. building off the Res. 4 more action oriented outdoor thing... I suspect the game will define the conversations of content afterwards.. and a lot of that may well fall by the wayside if it's not the game people expect from the name..
I like how killing white people is emotionally neutral but when games involve killing black people or jewish people or asian people then it becomes insulting.
It's as if white people are sort of the general, normal, regular type of people and all other types of people are somehow in a different category...as if the "white race" is over here and "everyone else" is over there.
What's the word for that?
Maybe we should run experiments to see what gets people's ire up in terms of race and common video game enemies.
Aliens - they can be whatever color you like, just so long as they don't ACT like a particular race.
Nazis - Nazis are either white guys, or even better, white ladies, (and sometimes cyborgs). Odd, but I don't recall anyone yelling about nazi women (or cyborgs) and their sexiness, though certainly someone must have at some point. One of those WW2 shooters did a game in Japan, which I guess pits you against non-Nazi non-cyborg Axis forces, though that's not exactly the same thing. This bears further study.
Robots - I think this is the same as aliens with regards to color being unimportant and mannerisms being very important. Someone needs to make a robot that has been enhanced with cybernetic implants, making him a cybot, which is like a cyborg, but instead of being 90% man, 10% machine, he's 90% machine, 10% another machine. And if you could get him to be a Nazi, hoo boy, look out!
Zombies - Non-whites make people edgy. I doubt I would have guessed that would be the case, either.
Slimes - Color really doesn't matter, and they all kind of act alike. Silver slimes are jerks, though. And king slimes presumably steal food from the starving mouths of their subjects. In fact, let's all agree to just hate slimes.
GODDAMN METAL SLIMES!
Silver slimes were, i think, the best slimes in Dragon Warrior 1 back on the color gameboy game. I liked that game...except the final boss is in a volcano in the center of the map and once you enter you can't ever get back out. So I never killed the final boss. I just kept farming those hard to find uber-slimes.
Arguably Zombie Black people are not even black people because they are zombies. They're animated black corpses.
They still all look the same, though.
you know.. there could be a VERY well done bit of commentary in this game... in a meta-critical way..
EVERY zombie looks the same, no matter what movie they're in...
Play on that, tap into that, and use the eventual raised cry of "Racism! (points vehemently)" to spin into a larger comment...
I dunno.. I can see it working, I can't see the mechanics of how to do that. Kinda like a Jetson's Car. I can SEE it flying and folding into a suitcase. I don't know how.
It has something to do with atoms being very small yet nigh-indestructible.
I think that if you lined up a bunch of atoms to form a flat sheet (kind of like paper) and then made the connections between the atoms just as nigh-indestuctible as the atoms themselves one could easily build a car out of that which could fold into a briefcase.
easily.
Oh, sure.. but a FLYING briefcase car? That only flys in car mode? I say sir, you posit too much
Remember that the Jetsons live in the same universe once inhabited by the Flintstones, which means that their science has been explored by the ancestors of people who invented the horn/rock telephone, stone television, and found countless uses for trained animal life in the home. Given the mastery the prehistoric people had over their surroundings, it seems quite plausible that the people who lived unknown millennia later would have a flying car that could fold up into a briefcase.
And this is of course ignoring the impact The Great Gazoo may have had on their world's development.
wow that post gets 15 out of 10 for the in depth analysis of Hanna Barbarra land.
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