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.
