One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.And with Ta-Nehisi's help get that clip of said black woman's skull being splattered!Later on, there's a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it's not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous "dark continent" and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s. That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara Croft than her thickly-accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it. There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain under wraps for now, whether for these reasons we don't know.
There will be plenty of people who refuse to see anything untoward in this material. "It wasn't racist when the enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4," goes the argument, but then the Spanish don't have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman animals for the past two hundred years. It's perfectly possible to use Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story, but when you're applying the concept of people being turned into savage monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented as savage monsters, it's hard to see how elements of race weren't going to be a factor.
All it will take is for one mainstream media outlet to show the heroic Chris Redfield stamping on the face of a black woman, splattering her skull, and the controversy over Manhunt 2 will seem quaint by comparison.
Seriously though, the whole "it's only a game" defense--which people always raise--is so lame. It's usually raised by the same 35-year old dude who plays video-games, like other people watch TV, and swears that video games are just as legitimate as TV. As a guy who plays WoW, like other people watch TV, and swears that gaming is just as legit as TV, I can relate. But if we're going to allow video games to enter into the world of adults, if we don't want to looked upon as boys in the bodies of men, then we have to be serious. Either this shit is real, or it ain't. You can't ask people to at once respect the creativity of gaming, and then tell them they can't critique it.
One good thing about hip-hop is that the belief that the music is somehow magical (however mistaken that belief is) has empowered legions of fans to argue about its merits. We can be completely insufferable, arrogant, and dead-ass wrong. But if you say that misogyny taints the entire Biggie catalog--as you could maintain--you will get a debate. Some will say, "Meh, it's just music," but many more will actually engage the argument.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
You said "Frack." Heh. Heh.
Never got into Resident Evil but as far as I've seen, hardcore first person shooter gamers aren't the most enlightened lot when it comes to race or misogyny. I don't expect it from a studio trying to cater to them.
Well, that description does sound pretty racist but. . .
I will definitely play this game. Primarily for the reason that RE4 was one of the best games from the last gen of consoles.
I will do this because there aren't that many good games out there. Compared to music, film, and tv, there are a small number of games out there. If I disagree with the views of a particular musical artist, I can find scores of others to turn to that are of equal quality.
If I disagree with the views of a game in a genre I like, I have to wait 4 years until the next decent game of that type comes out.
It is a conflict though. I don't want to support Capcom, if that is their worldview. On the other hand, I want to enjoy great gameplay. On a personal level, I know that I can separate the message from the gameplay - I loved Bioshock and still think Ayn Rand was dumb. I just feel bad giving Capcom my money. Ultimately, I expect hedonism to win out.
To be fair the main protagonists sidekick is a black female from South Africa.
Capcom also heard some peoples issues and went ahead and diversified the African village. It really looks more like a diversified American City, then a African Village, with hues from Irish white to sub-Saharan black.
Last, it's not about shooting black people. You shoot off their heads and a four foot parasitic worm slithers out above their head and starts attacking you. It's pretty obvious they're no longer humans, but people from return of the body snatchers.
Haven't seen the game, so I'm probably putting my foot into my mouth big-time here by daring to comment, but here it goes anyway: So here we have a game premised on blood thirsty zombie-like creatures roving an apocalyptic world based in Africa and people are surprised that it features horrible things involving blacks? What were they supposed to turn them into? Smurfs, or is Africa simply off limits to horror stories not involving real life events?
Again, haven't seen the same so I'm probably going to regret posting this, but I'm feeling salty today.
That should have read: What were they supposed to turn them into, Smurfs? Is Africa simply off limits to horror stories not involving real life events?
I'm a little conflicted over this one. Like they said, RE4 did the exact same thing with rural Spanish villagers and I think the purpose was to conjure up a closed, alien society where your cultural norms and the advantages you're used to in the first world don't apply.
That said, pretty culturally tone deaf for a multibillion dollar company, especially given Africa's colonial history.
I will be playing street fighter 4 instead. Shoryuken, we da best!
Since nobody has actually played the game to completion yet, it's a little early to flat-out accuse Capcom of making a racist video game. I agree that the imagery in the early levels seems pretty damning, but I'll reserve my judgment until I've seen everything in context. Is it an objectively bad thing if "elements of race" are a factor? I'm not saying Japanese game developers are necessarily the most culturally sensitive bunch, but if they're trying to turn that imagery around to make some kind of statement, I think we can at least give them the chance to do so.
If Capcom drops the ball here, I'll gladly join the chorus and tell them where they can stick their game. But at this point, labeling the game racist is less about engaging the debate than stifling it.
These aren't mindless zombies, but "Gando" infected with a mind altering parasite:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creatures_in_Resident_Evil_4#Las_Plagas
I understand the feelings it might create; but how is one supposed to have a story on a zombie like parasitic infection in Africa if you can't show the population infected by horrible event not of their doing?
The setting isn't random either, the original resident Evil was based on a virus taken from Africa and weaponized in the USA. RE5 takes the story back to the original virus to close out the story arch.
Last, RE2 had you shoot a black police officer that became a zombie when you returned to try to help him. Why no outrage there?
The point being, the hero is trying to save those he can, but once their humanity is gone, they aren't human, black or white, anymore.
I think what's weird about it is not the fact that the "bad guys" are black Africans, considering that the scene is set in Africa, so both the good guys and bad guys there will usually be black. The weird part is the white woman who gets captured. I mean, the only victim they could think of is white? Presumably, in any given "setting" for a movie or game, most of the characters, good and bad, would reflect the ethnic make-up of the locale, so introducing an "other" in a particular role would have symbolic significance.
I've heard something about Africans with spears and painted shields chasing you. Unclear if that's the "under wraps" section, but man...
I'm torn, because I really enjoy the series and have been looking forward to this game for quite some time. I've never been one to pass judgement on something I have not experienced myself, but I'm not too excited to support this game. What to do? Wait a month and buy it used? What if all this is overblown, much like just about every other outraged videogame story? This one feels different, though...
That should have read: What were they supposed to turn them into, Smurfs? Is Africa simply off limits to horror stories not involving real life events?
Maybe it should be for a game like this, yeah. Nazis are pretty much off-limits for anything but bad guys, aren't they? By the same token, maybe we should just ease off on white people shooting large numbers of black folk for a couple more centuries.
Chris Redfield, there has been some criticism of Capcom and the RE games before-- I heard some about the Spanish zombies. It wasn't this loud, but frankly it wasn't this provocative, either.
I mean, the only victim they could think of is white?
Rumor has it the white female character is a retuning charter from a past game, and a close friend of the male protagonists. She also serves a larger purpose with the antagonists plan along side the virus in Africa.
She is not just a random damsel in distress.
I'm sorry, but this is not Capcom marketing suits thinking, what would be a good place to make a random story? It's a product of the origins of the series, and involves a final story dealing with characters from the first Resident Evil.
/end nerd rant
Look some of the most popular games of all time have played with stereotypes. Look at street fighter 2.
You have a thug black boxer, a black jamacian DJ, a skinny yoga fighting indian, fat japanese sumo wrestler, a chinese kung fu master, a japanese karate guy, a dumb russian wrestler, a spanish bull fighter, a kickboxer from thiland, a native american who weres denim and a white imperalistic military guy. On top of all this it encourged men to beat up on women. Did anyone take this seriously. No, because it was a game.
Same with this. Capcom is going out there and telling young men to go shoot africans. Its a story. Maybe a poorly written story relying on bad stereotypes, but a story nontheless.
It was mentioned before, but I think it is worth noting that everyone working on this game is from Japan, where a lot of our racial debates don't exist in the same way. In America, by necessity we have to absorb a ton of spoken and unspoken rules about how to deal with each other without offending, but it can be really jarring visiting places that don't have that context. I remember I was shocked when I was in Israel, which is extremely diverse but does not have anything like America's troubled history vis a vis Africa, slavery, and colonialism, to hear people, Arabs and Jews alike, casually refer to their rap CDs as "n***er music" for example. Without the experiences we've had dealing with that kind of language (and with the word appearing every five seconds in various rap albums), they just assumed that was how it was talked about -- they weren't trying to offend. Similarly, Japan probably hasn't gone through years of controversies over films borrowing images from "Birth of a Nation" and game designers are probably a lot less attuned to offending ethnic groups that they have next to no relationship with in their own country.
Thomas Friedman loves to go on about globalization, but culturally it's almost always a one-way street in the US side, with the Americans *mostly* ignoring what's popular abroad but shipping out our own movies and music all over the world. Videogames are one of the only areas where our culture has been driven by a foreign country's products instead of our own and these kinds of issues are bound to pop up from time to time as a result.
I meant to say Capcom is not encourging young white males to kill africans. Its just telling a story.
Keep it up, guys, I'm going to get bingo.
Similarly, Japan probably hasn't gone through years of controversies over films borrowing images from "Birth of a Nation" and game designers are probably a lot less attuned to offending ethnic groups that they have next to no relationship with in their own country.
And yet I'd bet the US is Capcom's second biggest customer. Might even be the biggest. And there are instances of companies editing or modifying their content out of respect for their audience (or fear of protest).
"Nazis are pretty much off-limits for anything but bad guys, aren't they? By the same token, maybe we should just ease off on white people shooting large numbers of black folk for a couple more centuries."
I don't get the analogy, Persia. The Nazis really happened, after all. Shooting masses of black people - white people don't even place in the field.
Persia: And yet I'd bet the US is Capcom's second biggest customer. Might even be the biggest. And there are instances of companies editing or modifying their content out of respect for their audience (or fear of protest).
Capcom also has.
Early builds of the game featured an all black village. People here in the west were aghast and Capcom subsequently put in light skinned and white enemies. Enemies are randomly generated between all versions, and the truly evil antagonists (bosses) that control over their free will are all evil white men.
So the cannon fodder ranges from black to white.
I hate to be pedantic, but the game is set in Haiti, not Africa. This doesn't mitigate the Japanese tone-deafness to the gaijins' (to them) peculiar racial sensitivities, nor does it excuse RE fanboys' complete disinterest in its disturbing images in favor of kick-ass gameplay (for which RE is rightly praised) but it does put in context, somewhat, and in a couple of ways, the whole black zombie thing.
Truth be told, to gamers, the color of the protagonist and the legions of people/zombies/mutants/soldiers/aliens, etc. that are slaughtered en masse by said protagonist registers about on the same level as the color of chess pieces and I doubt will affect them one way or the other. A gamer will just as happily kill lots of white zombies with a black protagonist--and have, in at least one RE title I can think of--so long as the game is fun.
I am the guy that been a strong promoter to Capcom about having a Black Protagonist to fight alongside Chris Redfield. I think it was awesome that they listened to me.
Me as a black male, I don't have a problem with the storyline involving blacks as zombies. My case with Capcom is that in the history of all of their games, they rarely use other ethnicities in strong roles other than White or Asian.
I can't even recall a single game that involves a black female in the Capcom Franchise. (Well other than Street Fighter 3). To me it is a step in the right direction for them.
I have been playing Capcom games since Mega Man, and even today I still use RockmanX20 as my PSN ID. To me, since they listened and they finally allow blacks in some of the more powerful role in their games says a whole lot.
Now with the guy who is raising question about Sheva being light skinned and her sounding like Lara Croft, I think he is terribly wrong. My wife, who honestly fits Sheva's physical description and appearance, talks more "white" than Sheva does. She has an accent that would be more similar to mine own and I am from Chicago.
The game may not be perfect, but in my opinion Kudos to Capcom for going in the right direction and making their own history in allowing a black person to take a strong protagonist role.
@Tyler
Haven't seen the game, so I'm probably putting my foot into my mouth big-time here by daring to comment, but here it goes anyway: So here we have a game premised on blood thirsty zombie-like creatures roving an apocalyptic world based in Africa and people are surprised that it features horrible things involving blacks? What were they supposed to turn them into? Smurfs, or is Africa simply off limits to horror stories not involving real life events?
Again, haven't seen the same so I'm probably going to regret posting this, but I'm feeling salty today.
Did you miss the very first excerpt!?
The issue is not their treatment of Africans who've been infected, but their treatments of africans who've not been infected.
From the article
One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.
As an African, I can't say I'm surprised. It's more of the same "Heart of Darkness" crap. I love shoot em up games, I think Half Life 2 is my favorite (especially in deathmatch mode), but this is one game I'm gonna skip. I already get enough of these stereotypes in Western MSM, I don't need to get the same crap in my video games.
The Nazis really happened, after all. Shooting masses of black people - white people don't even place in the field.
Please tell me you're just trying to troll. Please.
One more vote for the "made by japanese people" argument. HOWEVER:
I think Capcom is already big enough to consider other nation's sensibilities in their stories. How much? Well, they should do the math. If this is between Japan and the US, they will have to decide which one they'll lean towards to, but I assume that something more sensible to a non-extremist american' taste should not be unable to sell well in Japan.
It is racist...and now what?
Who is so on the fence about black folks that this video game tips them from being being independent voters to Neo Nazis?
If whites, asians, latinos, and black americans are okay with this idea of the African - changing the code in a video game doesn't even begin to address a much deeper problem.
Baiskeli:
Maybe the reviewer was mistaken, but those Africans are indeed infected in that scene.
This was part of a sequence where they infect a victim, and the horror of whats happening is reviled to the protagonist who makes it to the victims help just a tad too late.
Standard horror stuff.
And yes, it's Africa, not Haiti. At least the first chapters that have been shown.
You can't ask people to at once respect the creativity of gaming, and then tell them they can't critique it.
I think this is a straw man. I doubt that Capcom or any defender of the game is asserting that RE5 cannot be critiqued. They just disagree with the criticism.
Right. Africa, not Haiti. That's why I hate being pedantic.
Right. Not Haiti, but Africa. (At least that's what Wikipedia says, and who can gainsay that?)
That's why I hate being pedantic.
If whites, asians, latinos, and black americans are okay with this idea of the African - changing the code in a video game doesn't even begin to address a much deeper problem.
I think most of the people calling out the game are seeing it as a symptom, rather than a cause, if that makes sense.
I'm glad you said the 'R' word TNC. A while back N'Gai Croal talked about the trailer, and he practically bent over backwards trying to be thoughtful while coming out against the imagery that seemed to dehumanize a people with a history of dehumanization. Well, he got flamed in the comments.
"What were they supposed to turn them into, Smurfs? Is Africa simply off limits to horror stories not involving real life events?"
@Tyler: I like this question, and I say no. Africa is not exempt from fictional horror stories. However, I think the portrayal has to be handled a bit more carefully.
If you're going to have a white man stomping through an African village capping black folks, then best come prepared with a tight narrative. The whole 'the entire village just turned into zombies and had to be exterminated' just does not suffice. Given our history, more sensitivity is required, not less.
What bugs me about this is not the visuals; I think overall, gamers could care less. It's that Capcom never, ever, gave this an ounce of thought. It never in their wildest imagination even occurred to them that it might be offensive. It says so much about the industry and how far it still lags behind other forms of entertainment.
Since many video games took on the tenor of being far more violent (on average) than standard television somewhere in the late 90's, they lost any chance of being accepted in the "adult" world.
Capcom is a Japanese company led by Japanese people, so there's a bit of a different cultural bubble. Not to accuse them of being racist next. It's that I pinged on a scene with a man being hung by a crowd as disturbing because of my American awareness of lynchings. I don't know how that plays to a Japanese audience.
Resident Evil has always, as a series, had a white villain of high social class and education with a European name. Diaries and such of victims of the outbreaks that you find in the games tend to belong to workers and villagers and other ordinary, everyday, Palin-loves-em blue-collar people.
That "sack-beating" scene sounds analogous to a point in RE4 where you run into a shed and there's a woman pinned to the wall through the head with a farming implement. That scene was supposed to be a very obvious red flag of "these people are not like they were anymore," without actually telling you what's making them that way.
The games have always been about the horror of people who were going about their business getting caught up in someone else's plan and losing their humanity, and that someone else has never been a minority scapegoat.
I genuinely hope Capcom's still doing it right. I agree it's getting disturbing.
I bet if this game was made by black people, this wouldn't have been a blog post. REAL terrible shit is going on in Africa as we speak, but Capcom can't throw some black zombies in their video games?
We can assume that they have racially insensitive motivations i making the villains of RE5 black, but maybe they just threw a dart at a map and it hit Africa.
The location is Africa. What should they do, not have black zombies? I think that he real racism of RE is that they don't have a track record of black lead characters, villains or co-stars. I think they had a black character in some spin-off game that not a lot of people played.
I was surprised the RE team even knew that black people exist!
Yeah, unfortunately I gotta go with the Japanese culture angle, and for very specific reasons.
I've been around the MMA scene for a long time and have seen how Japanese pop culture responds to black fighters with a weird mix of idolization and fear. Bob Sapp became hugely popular over there after his fluke knock outs of Ernesto Hoost. Yet they would want him to do really gross shit like have him eat a banana with the skin on after a victory while he growled towards the camera. Even Rampage was not immune to this, as they ate up his pre entrance howl and wearing of a chain. It's a dark side to Japanese fandom, and it manifests itself in really disturbing ways.
Resident Evil: Outbreak (online game) allowed you to play as not one, but two black leads One a war veteran security cop, and one an city transit worker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_Outbreak#Characters
Not sure if that furthers or distances sterotypes...
So the game was developed by the Japanese. Japanese racism works differently in many ways than American racism, but Japanese racism isn't any more okay than the American variety. The fundamental ideas (darker people are stupider, less desireable, less ethical, not like us, bad, bad, go away...) are the same. I'm a cultural relativist and all, but if a Japanese company shows racist tendencies, I'm gonna judge them for it, *especially* because (to sweep with a broad brush) racism is culturally accepted in Japan, and that's wrong and it has to change. I'm not going to turn a blind eye because they turn a blind eye.
(By the way, a crowd of people hanging a person is a horrifying scene whether or not you have any specific cultural history for it. I mean, would a scene of someone being waterboarded be OK with someone who didn't know anything about what the US has been doing recently? Clearly, part of the intent of the game is to be horrifying for the sake of entertainment.)
I think the post hinges on whether the villagers who are beating something *are* or *are not* infected. If they're infected, well, it's a horror show, part of the fun. If they're not infected... then you're depicting average Africans as inherently vile without being infected. Not okay for a fantasy.
"Please tell me you're just trying to troll. Please."
Truly I'm not. as killers of Africans, Africans and Arabs have predominated, always. As victimns of whites, whites and Native Americicans have always predominated.
I am quite aware of the German genocide of the Herero. I am quite aware of the decimation of the Khoe by the settles at Cape Town. I was simply stating the obvious, that the disasters in Rwanda, the madness in Liberia, the genocide of the Igbo by the Hausa and the rest of the Nigerian government during the Biafra business, not to mention the ongoing horror in Congo have claimed many more victims, many more by an order of magnitude. And the victims of those horrors and atrocities matter just as much even if they were not victims of whites, and the tendency in America to put whites at the center of everything, atrocities included, only serves to make those victims invisible, and sometimes to delay action to stop the horrors. That's all I was saying.
And by the way, your kneejerk assumption that I was trolling was itself pretty trollish.
(Tried to post once, didn't seem to show)
I haven't played the demo yet, but I was bothered by the trailer.
Specifically, I was bothered that RE5 was going for a Black Hawk Down vibe. For those that don't remember, a Marine helicopter was shot down in Somalia and the Marines fought their way out against the forces of a local warlord. This was intentional, here's an interview article paraphrasing Capcom Producer Jun Takeuchi.
For the purposes of this comment, I think the quote speaks for itself. For the long form, here's my post on it.
I do think it is worth crediting some positive moves after the first trailer. I haven't played the demo though, so I haven't updated my view yet.
If you guys want to talk about what is racist, you will have to really look into the company's history.
What black characters do we have in Capcom?
Since black characters are almost nonexistant in Capcom's history, the black character's they used are generally full of stereotypes.
We have a Black Boxer named Balrog or Mike Bison. So the stereotype here is black people can box.
We have a black jamaican named Dee-Jay. The stereotype is in the name itself. Black people can dance and have rhythm.
We have a brazillian, most likely black based upon the stereotype named Sean from SF3. Finally a character that can fight like Ken and Ryu, but fails short with his basketball attacks. So black people can play basketball so well, that they can use it while they fight, while real characters are using Chi and inner substance to win battles.
Elena is the first black female I saw in Capcom, but you know her fighting style is always the one attributed to black people and Brazillians Capoeira. Plus she got rhythm.
I can't think of any other blacks, other than the villians in Final Fight who have low level roles and thugs and first boss muscles. Anyone playing this game will believe that black people are simply looking just to be a thug, and they are even incapable of being promoted in the underground.
You don't ever see any blacks in high level positions in these games without fulfilling strong stereotypes.
On the contrary, with Re5, we may actually have a character who may have avoided a lot of stereotypes. Sheva (the name is weird) seems to me to be an actual character that seems to have substance and she doesn't seem to know how to dance, doesn't use Capoeira, doesn't box, or sings.
Even though Capcom has made a whole lot of mistakes, we have to give them credit for at least trying to do the right thing. If we can get more Capcom goodness with more black characters, then I feel better with my choice of liking much of their games.
@bread & roses
You are assuming that it is racism what is behind this scene, but based on the stuff the japanese write as fiction (magazines, cartoons, movies, etc.), it seems like they just do it just for the heck of it. Japanese fiction is filled with stuff that would be unpublishable in the US, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are doing it to confront the US or any other particular group for that matter.
Maybe the reviewer was mistaken, but those Africans are indeed infected in that scene.
This was part of a sequence where they infect a victim, and the horror of whats happening is reviled to the protagonist who makes it to the victims help just a tad too late.
I am that reviewer (although this was actually a preview) and I can say with absolute certainty that the scene unfolds as I described. I know the part you're thinking of - when the two heroes witness a man being impregnated - and that comes later.
This sequence occurs before you've even got a gun. Chris Redfield has just arrived and met Sheva. They walk down the street, where ordinary Africans are also walking, some are sitting in front of homes and stores. And there, right in your path, is a group of Africans brutally beating a living creature (or person) in a sack. As you approach, they stop and stare at you, tapping their makeshift clubs in their hands menacingly. There are absolutely no indications that they are infected, possessed or anything other than normal Africans.
It's the very epitome of what N'Gai saw in the trailer - a deliberate creative choice to make it unclear where the savagery of Africa ends and the savagery of the infected monsters begins.
Now, horror stories have a long history of using the unfriendly locals as a signpost that all is not well. Every Hammer movie has the obligatory scene where Peter Cushing is warned off by surly yokels in the tavern. But these images have an additional, unpleasant tenor when applied to poverty-stricken scenes of modern day Africa, and it's this disconnect between the fantasy horror of the game and the crude reality of the setting that is going to cause concern.
That the African sidekick is light-skinned and speaks with an English accent simply highlights this problem. The white woman being dragged away may be a part of the story, but that doesn't change the historical weight of the imagery of the white woman tainted by the savage native. The big villains may be white, but that doesn't alter the impact of these initial scenes of bestial Africa.
The point I was trying to make in the original piece wasn't that games shouldn't venture into this sort of territory but that - as many have pointed out here - you need to approach it with a level of nuance and meaning that games in general, and the hokey RE series in particular, have yet to display. If we're going to toy with such loaded images, we need to have a more robust debate than simply saying "It doesn't matter. It's a game" because no modern movie would get away with some of the imagery used in this game.
Hope that clears up my intent.
Doug,
Please see the comments section in the following article. Any gamer who's actually been following this debate knows that "it's just a game" is by no means a strawman.
http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693040/Racism-In-Resident-Evil-5.html
One of the main characters in Killer 7 was black as well.
Sean from third strike is half japanese, and their is much debate on the internet concerning dudley from SF3: Third Strike. Many say he is a black boxer based of jack johnson. Others say hes of indian decent. Many do not want to believe he is white.
@Dan Whitehead
Thank you for your reply and thank you for the review.
When the trailer came out last year I remember my horror in how the un-infected Africans were portrayed.
I also remember N'Gai getting flamed for what was a very thoughtful discussion. I guess what made it doubly frustrating is that anyone saying 'whoa, hold on for a sec' was automatically attacked for 'playing the race card' or told they were imagining things. I'm a huge geek/game fan but I've gotten to the point where I don't discuss this stuff because people seem to take pride in their cluelessness/insensitivity.
@shadeofgood
Even though Capcom has made a whole lot of mistakes, we have to give them credit for at least trying to do the right thing. If we can get more Capcom goodness with more black characters, then I feel better with my choice of liking much of their games.
Should we also thank people for raising their children? Capcom, whatever their intent, F'ed up big time on this one. The fact that Capcom were really terrible in the past does not give them a free pass card. Unlike school where there might be a 'Most improved student' , there is no 'Most improved Racist or insensitive company award'
@V. Smith
I bet if this game was made by black people, this wouldn't have been a blog post. REAL terrible shit is going on in Africa as we speak, but Capcom can't throw some black zombies in their video games?
Not this tired crap again! You do know that Africa is not a country, its a huge diverse continent. You can't take something that is happening in one area in Africa and use it as a justification for portraying the whole continent that way.
...the disasters in Rwanda, the madness in Liberia, the genocide of the Igbo by the Hausa and the rest of the Nigerian government during the Biafra business, not to mention the ongoing horror in Congo have claimed many more victims, many more by an order of magnitude.
Jim, if you're honestly counting two massacres as the only crimes white society ever committed against Africans, then I'm going to have a very hard time taking you seriously. You're apparently not a troll, but I don't think you're particularly solid on your history. The death toll from King Leopold's adventure in the Congo probably totalled ten million, and that's not pointing out how colonial policies undoubtedly influenced the current situation.
I will never, never understand the "it's just a story [game/fiction/fun times whoo-hoo]" argument.
At the earliest ages, we teach our children basic morals and values with stories. The founders of pretty much every religion teach with parables and
Numerous studies have shown that people who read a great deal of fiction are better at empathy, recognizing emotions in others, and reacting accordingly (and no,"accordingly" does not always mean "benevolently" either -- something "accordingly" means fight-or-flight, or outsmart, or avoid-the-hell-out-of), because that's what fiction teaches you to do.
Role-play is one of the first teaching tools of psychiatrists.
The idea that stories don't matter and therefore everything goes "because it's not real" is just the most preposterous thing I've ever heard.
Doesn't everyone here remember the first (fake, fictional) novel/movie/fairy tale/picture/whatever that scared them shitless? Even if you outgrow it and look back on it and realize that it was silly and you were just young, is there anyone here who can't recall the entire depth of that feeling, and might maybe get a little freaked out by it even today?
Stories are FORMATIVE. They make us who we are, they teach us how to think, behave, and react. They coax us into empathizing with people we don't identify with, with people we may have never even met, people we may never meet. They are among the most powerful things the human race has ever developed.
Yeah, it's "fun," that's fine, whatever, but doesn't what we find fun say something about us? (Not everything, but SOMETHING, by god.)
Mimesis does not trump fantasy. Just because something isn't real doesn't mean it has no effect.
Stories matter.
This is not to get all draconian and censorshippy. But the other extreme -- that it has NO impact and NO responsibility -- is not a better option.
great post and discussion. why i keep coming back. i played the demo (a bit stereotypical for a self described asian guy to like video games, i know), and all of this stuff is in there. i'm not disputing tnc's point in this post.
but what's interesting as well is the south asian characters, which no one mentions. it shows some awareness of the diversity of many parts of africa to include them, and they don't feel out of place in the show nor do they seem simply like an add on to make the scenes more diverse. remember the south asians that idi amin kicked out, for instance. so i wonder if there's something really complicated going on here that our black-and-white viewpoint can't exactly see, even if all the other anti-black stuff is in here too?
so i wonder if there's something really complicated going on here that our black-and-white viewpoint can't exactly see, even if all the other anti-black stuff is in here too?
I think that's certainly possible. And of course, the other problem with a game is that the narrative may subvert or counteract the racism, but the trailer may still be racist, or the subversion come quite late in the game (which-- because it's a game-- not everyone may get to).
See, the thing is this. It's going to be hard to fully judge Capcom on this particular game until we fully play it inside and out.
I don't have a problem with a story aknowledging a problem in the beginning, as long as it is resolved in the end.
If the ending of this game is bad, then I feel that we can make a judgement on Capcom as being racist.
It's hard for me to say that they are in this fact, because they are adding to the diversity and giving blacks a stronger role in the protagonist section.
@ Baiskeli
Understandable with your answer, but you have to give Capcom a chance to change. I understand that a lot of Japanese developers gear their games to white audience because a lot of the white population has traditionally controlled the economic markets. Things are changing however, I can agree with that because the evidence is in our new President.
I am extremely bothered now since I got older and realized that racism is real, but the thing is you have to give an opportunity for a person to repent, especially if one has sincere Godly sorrow in the matter.
We have a Black Boxer named Balrog or Mike Bison. So the stereotype here is black people can box.
Not to nitpick your argument, but Mike Bison? It's pretty obvious who they modeled that after. That doesn't so much fit into the "black people can box" stereotype, moreso shorthand for "greatest boxer of all time" (not to start another argument).
@Baiskeli
"You do know that Africa is not a country.... You can't take something that is happening in one area in Africa and use it as a justification for portraying the whole continent that way."
I didn't see V. Smith say that Africa wasn't a continent--it's in bad faith to imply otherwise. To your second point, the irony is it's you who is using scenes set in one specific, fictional locale (modeled, it would seem, on one of numerous examples of war-torn, war-lorded failed states) as a portrayal of a "whole continent." I don't think the game-makers or game-players have said "this stands for Africa." You're worried about the people who play the game, presumably, having negative stereotypes reinforced. But idiots who do believe that a portrayal of brutality in a place modeled on, say, Liberia (where Charles Taylor was chopping off the limbs of his enemies) describes all of Africa have bigger problems than what they're learning from Capcom.
The RE writers were looking for a setting for a survival horror video game. Up until now, they've chosen places like "Racoon City," an absurdly named made-up US city, and most recently a place that felt suspiciously like rural Spain. In the latter game, light-skinned villagers who are not zombies tie up and burn to death a Spanish policeman.
None of this is to dispute the clumsiness with which the game-makers have provoked racial issues they clearly don't understand--the fact that people are outraged is the only proof needed to see that they've made some aesthetic blunders. But an underlying question is, is it the responsibility of a survival horror videogame to "portray a whole continent"? If a setting is, in a sense, plausible, is it their responsibility to contextualize it? Did they malign North America or Europe when they showed the malevolent side of human nature--which in the RE world, as well as the real one, knows no skin color--when they picked areas within those continents to set their bloodbaths? Are all white people maligned by the sinister leadership of the umbrella corporation?
Maybe the first question should be, is it fair to judge something when we don't even know the full context of it?
The game is set in Africa, hence African zombies. When the game was set in America, no one got upset at the white zombies.
Can we get over the silly race thing already - Obama is now the Decider - everyone has moved on - grow up already.
@eric
LOL, that's the thing. The representation that black people got in video games back in the 80s only came from stars such as Mike Tyson while white created character spread upon a much broader spectrum.
Did you know in Mega Man, you will not find a single black reploid. I always identified with Mega Man when I was younger because of the way he has to problem solve to beat the boss.
Now if I wanted to indentify with a character that looks more like me, that simply didn't exist in video games until the "Character Creation" method was introduced.
While white people may think that this argument is silly, a person can't really say such things unless they try on the shoes of the other person.
@kena,
The issue here is that in FE5, it seems they've gone to extra lengths to potray even the uninfected people (africans) as savages. This something they have not done in any of the RE games. And also, history weighs heavy, having a white character with a sort of black side-kick romping around and shooting scary africans? And also wanting to evoke the feel of 'Black Hawk Down'?
It is not the responsibility of Capcom to portray a whole continent, but I would hope they wouldn't buy into and perpetuate stereotypes. The reason some people are all up in arms is that there is a clear pattern here of downplaying the humanity of africans. This goes beyond simple ignorance and into the realm of buying into or even celebrating the stereotypes.
You ask
Maybe the first question should be, is it fair to judge something when we don't even know the full context of it?
In my book, ignorance is never an excuse. There are a few videogames out there that do an amazing job of integrating minority characters and also not totally F'ing it up like Capcom has done. Mass Effect comes to mind.
@Kevin
The game is set in Africa, hence African zombies. When the game was set in America, no one got upset at the white zombies.
Can we get over the silly race thing already - Obama is now the Decider - everyone has moved on - grow up already.
I do hope you are being sarcastic/ironic. If not, I don't know what to say, especially after Dan Whitehead's re-iteration of what is in the opening scene.
@Galleymac
Stories are FORMATIVE. They make us who we are, they teach us how to think, behave, and react. They coax us into empathizing with people we don't identify with, with people we may have never even met, people we may never meet. They are among the most powerful things the human race has ever developed.
Thank you, that is profound. That is why it's never a good defence that its 'just a story'. Stories are the raw material that people use to frame their view of the world and their expectations. Video games are yet another story, and while one can argue that we should fear zombies, should we also fear the non-infected africans who are acting so savagely. Well, that is the lesson that RE5 imparts.
And I'm African, before I came to the U.S I had a fear of African-Americans, because all movies that I watched growing up had them as the bad guys. Of course my fears were unfounded, but that tells us something about the power of stories.
@Hrmm
Yeah, that's the game I'm talking about. I can't cheapen its existence as a game in the RE series, but c'mon, it's not the main title. It's like "Joanie Loves Chachie"
@Baiskeli
Yeah, I'm pretty aware that Africa is a continent, but within that continent there are current horrors that mirror this RE game. To say that Capcom is horrible to bring these images to life in their game seems like people are acting like it's totally uncalled for to make a game like this based in Africa.
/nerd rant
Actually knowing about that woman being an existing character, getting dragged off and her being turned, etc is a pretty big spoiler. Let's get some spoiler tags going here!
/end nerd rant
Japanese aren't racist - they're just completely insensitive.
They live on a racially homogenous island, and so don't tend to be sensitive to cultural or racial differences. They should, but their blindness to it is understandable, if not preferable.
They, like many Americans, like "authenticity," and by that I just mean stereotypes. Like going to Japan and hoping to see Samurais and geishas, hoping to see rajas and yogis and snakecharmers in India, and loving America because of "ElvisBlueJeansNumber1Rock&Roll!"
But someone at Capcom America should have picked this up early, and informed their naive Japanese counterparts about black/white, colonialist, Mandingo undertones.
Full disclosure: I eagerly await this game and have it on pre-order.
-Muzz
Reactionary blog pundit.. whoda thunk? You're the 2000's equivalent of moms and pops from the 50s and 60s who demonized rock music
Uh--since we're discussing the history here, Capcom has had a couple of black characters in the RE series. I can think of three, besides the black guy who predictably died in the opening of the original game. (At least he went second?)
Outbreak had two playable black civilian characters. One was, since we're discussing depictions of race, superstitious and flipped a coin a lot, but I think was also smarter than the rest of the everyday cast and had a gameplay advantage in puzzles. The other one was a war veteran and security guard. They both could survive the game with good endings. (I never managed to get past level 1, which is why I can't give more information on how they're depicted.)
Ingrid Hunnigan showed up throughout RE4 on the radio. She was more obviously dark-skinned in the GameCube than the PS2, although I don't know why that changed--a lot of graphical tweaks were made.
Sharky, They're making a mountain out of an ant hill.
No one had a problem when the zombies were white, no one had a problem when Kennith was killed, No one had a problem when 2 African Americans were made two of the best characters in Outbreak, and no one had a problem when parasites took over Spaniards.
Make the victims of a biological outbreak Black because the story has long traced it's origin to a African Virus, and now it's racists. Capcom hears these complaints and put non African cannon fodder in, and it's still racist.
Even if the protagonist saved a few Africans, or better yet was saved by a few villagers, it would still be racist.
You should know better.
Yea, I don't see how anyone would want to portray the peaceful Africans as evil villains in anything, ever. I mean Rwanda, Darfur..
Christ on the cross, weeping. For the last time, lads. No one here is saying that you can't have black zombies. No one here is saying that you can't have black villains.
Seriously.
Kazaclysm, don't stop them, I really am almost at bingo.
It's amazing how hard some people will work to be ignorant.
"Japanese aren't racist - they're just completely insensitive."
What?! Japanese culture has no concept of racism? No sense of ethic/cultural superiority?
The Chinese, Koreans, and a slew of other Asian ethnic groups would strongly disagree with that claim.
Racism isn't limited to hateful people screaming out slurs, it has more subtle expressions as well.
Japanese culture certainly is racist. Historically, it certainly wasn't by magic or fate that Japan became a racially homogeneous island.
And the Japanese business people working at Capcom are not naive. Not even remotely.
My question is this... Isn't it a bit racist to suggest that no game, story, book or whatever, can in any way depict Black people in a negative way? We are talking about a game that is set in Africa and people are bitching about Blacks being used as antagonists, so seriously WTF. I think this is a case of people projecting their own beliefs onto others. Just because an image is racist to a few over-sensitive people doesn't mean that everyone else sees it the same. Also, the Japanese do not have the same history with Africans as many other parts of the world, so projecting our own stereotypes onto what they produce is laughable at best.
As for the scenes described in the game, the sack and the white woman specifically, please shut up until you have the proper context. For all we know that white woman could be one of the people who brought the parasites to Kijuju (the name of the shanty town or country, not sure on that yet) and if she did, perhaps that is why she was dragged away and changed to one of them. The thing in the sack could easily be an infected that the villagers captured and are now killing. The bottom line is, the game hasn't been released so we do not have the full context of these scenes, yet. Also, in the end, it is just a story. Like any movie, novel or spoken story ever told, it involves people and monsters. Perhaps if everyone stopped seeing people for their skin color, rather than as a person, we wouldn't have this whining and crying anytime something offends our delicate, 5 year old girl, feelings. Grow up!
I think part of the trouble in the imagery, as its presented, may be that Africa is such uncharted territory (yeesh, no pun intended) with regards to pop culture appearances. At least so much as societal Africa. Safari Africa is pretty common, but has few human ties as a township setting.
For Capcom's part in respecting the gravity of the imagery, and the significance of taking the series into Africa, some set up would do well for the country. Show a place in Africa that doesn't have these crazed infected peoples.
Alot of weight to put on a game company, sure. But the move would have been incredibly classy. I'm interested in seeing RE5 in harsh day light, but I think the implications that are possible from the imagery is working counter to their intent. Or at least, is a missed opportunity to make a classy nod toward the peoples of Africa and their unique cultures and struggles.
@ Persia
Bingo yet? (I'm waiting for "it's class-based!")
Wow, now that I'm childish, oversentive, and stupid, I think I'll just scamper on out and try to hail a cab after dark.
@ Baiskeli
And I'm African, before I came to the U.S I had a fear of African-Americans, because all movies that I watched growing up had them as the bad guys. Of course my fears were unfounded, but that tells us something about the power of stories.
This is profound. The extent to which the media shapes our expectations is kind of horrifying, and people who don't see it are kind of like fish in the ocean wondering what "wet" means.
As for "The Japanese don't know," then please explain to me why every third manga I read has a black person stealing something? They're an island, but their not exactly isolated ignorant people. (Japan and China have more business dealings in Sub Saharan African then we Yanks do.)
And of course we can cite Rwanda, which had nothing at all, of course, to do with Dutch colonization and their completely artifical creation of two "separate" ethnic groups, by picking out the ones with more "civilized" features (straighter noses et cetera)
And Africa of course has a monopoly on savagery, because the "disappeared" thing in Argentina (tacitly approved by Western powers) never happend, and the white Serbs, Bosnians, and Kosovars generally went skipping hand in hand la di da, and Tibet is a free and pleasant land.)
And of course the reason that you think these things (those who do) is because while the media (including fiction and news, stories and GAMES) never tells you anything about the people living normal, non-slaughtery black-people lives in Africa, but for white people of every stripe, you have a host of other narratives to choose from. Individual white people are not asked to stand in as representatives for an entire race to anything like the same extent, because such a huge number and huge variety of stories are told about them, over and over, ubiquitously, that one particular characteristic doesn't -- cannot possibly -- become their whole and only identity.
There are a millions easily accesible stories about Spaniards (and nearly every other type of Caucasian) that do not involve them rising up and slaughtering people, infected or not.
One or two black heroes in one or two video games cannot possibly accomplish the same thing for the black race. So yeah, the reaction "when it's white people" and "when it's black people" is going to be different because their positions in the public imagination is resoundingly different. And I think you all know that, really.
(Black villains can easily and awesomely be created without using stereotypes. This is why Joss Whedon's Operative -- an intelligent guy driven to crazy extremes by flawed ethics -- was so much more effective, and scareier, than his "Jubal Early" -- a amoral savage asshole threatening to rape white women. It's not that hard.)
Now, here's my $0.02. I think that racial equality is two ways. You can't expect your race to be the 'good guys' all the time. It comes with the territory. Racial equality means that you get cast in the same roles, aka, heroes and villians, and we see that in this game. Being cast only as protagonists isn't racial equality; it's over-sensativity.
And, about the 'beating the sack' scene at the beginning of the game? Look back at events ANYWHERE where people were in danger, or thought they were. Salem witch trials, or the crusades, or mobs/riots. People do not-nice things for survival when they're pushed to extremes. Personally, I think that having 99% of my town taken over by evil parasites that look like my friends would probably drive me over the edge to do something about it, even if it was tying one up in a sack and killing it. It's not a question of race, it's a question of situation, and that's even if these guys AREN'T infected. It's possible they are, but they just didn't attack yet because they weren't commanded to.
Personally, I think it'd be just as racist is the citizens of the area just laid down and let the bad guys do whatever they wanted to them.
@Chris
My question is this... Isn't it a bit racist to suggest that no game, story, book or whatever, can in any way depict Black people in a negative way?
This is a general response to you and others making the same dumb argument over and over. Read the FUCKING ARTICLE!!! You're making a classic straw man argument. No one is saying this.
jeez (shakes head)
It is only racist if you see it as racist. If you look at it just as people, then it is correct for the story line and area. If it would be a black woman, it has less of a feeling, not because of racism, but because that type of stuff happens every day over there to black native women. It stinks, it really does, but making it a non-native. To make it fully seem to be a non-native, it would have to be Asian, Indian or European. Out of all of those, European decent is the one most likely to be there. So all in all, for the story and effect, that was the best logical way to do it. It has nothing to do with racism, and everything about creating a logical story.
As for the animal or human in the sack, it is most likely animal because of the area, same would go if they were in Mexico. Just how some cultures kill animals sometimes.
All in all, get off of your high racist horse. You are looking for racism, or else you would be like me and see that these are things driving by statistic and to cause more drama in the story. Is it tragic that natives of the area get beating and raped every day? Hell yeah, but it happens every day because of the corrupt government in the area. You want something done about it? Go to that stupid country yourself and try to make things better, but remember, if you stay too long your odds of getting killed increase.
I think some people here already have their mind set on looking for what they claim they're finding in this game.
Almost how one might read a story and look for Allegory, Connotations, and Allusion in something; yet the author had no such meaning/intent and the general audience doesn't look for it either. Let's face it, some books are just books with no higher meaning. Like that this game will be sticking to what it's script and plot want to tell people, not some metaphor for African racism.
If that's right or wrong, who knows.
Intent is a big factor in racism, and I doubt it's Capcoms intent to provide racist depictions in their game.
The game isn't depicting violent sub-human Africans. It is depicting violent, infected corpses that were once human. I doubt people playing will be seeing it through those glasses
..We can always have an argument how it's racist to depict all zombies as violent, flesh eating monsters. Bub most likely is offended.
The representation that black people got in video games back in the 80s only came from stars such as Mike Tyson while white created character spread upon a much broader spectrum.
I don't know, if we're talking 80s video games they all seemed to be viewed through some weirdo Japanese cultural lens. Italian plumbers fighting turtles? And by far, the worst offender of trafficking in stereotypes has got to be the Punch-Out series. Indian guy gets a turban, French guy is a pussy, etc etc.
Did you know in Mega Man, you will not find a single black reploid.
I always assumed the various Mega Men were Japanese. Well, those with faces anyway, not so much the ones with a giant fan for a head.
Hear, hear. It's about time someone took these japanese white supremacists to task for perpetuating negative stereotypes of black zombies.
"Jim, if you're honestly counting two massacres as the only crimes white society ever committed against Africans, then I'm going to have a very hard time taking you seriously. "
I wasn't talking about *crimes*, I was talking about *shooting* and I specified that and that was the topic.
As for European crimes in Africa, there are centuries of those. "Not enough bamboo in the South Mountains to record their crimes". And as we discuss those, we might even get around to discussing the African slave raids all the way up into northern Europe. History is always a lot more complicated than we are taught.
This is merely a zombie game set in Africa (birthplace of the whole zombie legend from what I hear) starring a recurring protagonist who is white. And since the game is set in Africa it's only natural that most of the citizens are black.
It's unfortunate it may invoke sensitive images but it's supposed to be a horror game and most horror portrays zombies as unfeeling savages.
Does anyone else think it's impossible to pass serious judgment on the game without actually oh I don't know playing it?
Some of us do, but others would project deep meaning and intent where there is none to fire up a shit storm.
After all, if Capcom was going for racism and stereotypes, wouldn't the African partner bite the gruesome bullet in the first act?
(that's a joke people, before I get hounded for it)
And to hark on ta-nehisi's comment, I do think "It's just a game" can be a very valid argument, when right.
Just like literature, some is just porn and to be taken at face value, while some is meant for deep meaning.
Some games are simplistic and what you see is what you're supposed to interpret and get. Resident Evil has never tried to inspire questions; just provide a quick narrative that barely complements it's fun gameplay.
Then there's games like Metal Gear Solid, that do have deeper meaning and ask fundamental political and social questions, and where a lot of though is put into the direction of the game.
Like Max Brooks "World War Z", I won't be looking for much social commentary in "Resident Evil". I don;t expect to, as in this case, it's just a game. A game with little else to offer besides wasting some time and wasting some zombies.
To the first poster, RE are not FPS. Good job for making yourself look like an idiot right from the start. Second, there is way to much PC thug people on this site. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RACIEST! Because when a black person makes a "raciest" remark towards white people, do they get in trouble, lose their jobs? NO they don't, so its a double standard PC thug bs.
If this was about a black guy killing normal non-zombie white people in lets say Germany while wearing a black panther outfit nobody would even say anything... except ITS ABOUT TIME! Oh and whatever PC thug wrote this article you need to do us all a favor and quit.
Do you people also not read the actual news that matters? Like the fact people in African constantly slaughter each other, make holocaust type camps etc on a grand scale and thats ok but make a game where a white guy kills black zombies then OMG RUN FOR THE HILLS!..
Like Max Brooks "World War Z", I won't be looking for much social commentary in "Resident Evil".
See, I think there's a lot of potential for games to "mean something". Until fairly recently, first person shooters were all about exterminating everything in sight. Some of the newer games like Fallout 3, Oblivion and to a lesser extent Bioshock are starting to get into some of the moral ambiguities and actually have consequences for killing 'em all. Incidentally, Fallout 3 is pretty diverse racially and as far as I remember, doesn't do too much pigeonholing.
This bit of "news" has been brought up several times in the past. And most of what COULD be said has already been said, so I'll sum it up as best I can.
We're living in an era where racism is still alive and kicking, but not in the sense that it used to mean 50 to 60 years ago. It used to be that it was the norm for blacks and whites to be segregated, that one group was treated poorly than the others. Then leaders came by, and taught us that skin content matters less than character content, the basis of which a person should TRULY be judged.
Fast forward to today. You have issues being raised in which skin color is the primary point, even if its relevance to that issue is null. I didn't hear anybody complaining about how Resident Evil 4 made people living in Spanish rural areas look bad be having them serve as the main antagonist. You put a white man in the middle of China where everybody is trying to kill him for some reason or another, and he's going to bust heads- and you know what?
Black people wouldn't complain. Likely, Chinese people wouldn't even complain either.
But the moment you put a white man in Africa where 90% of the continent's population is black (mind you, a continent plagued with famine, violence and crime), you're going to get an earful of "THAT'S RACIST".
People like the man who wrote this editorial are the prime reason we can't enjoy anything. If everyone's going to be THIS whiney over an issue, I say up the content MORE, so they REALLY have something to offended by.
Ok...first thing: Its "Frak" not "Frack". Its a four-letter word. Do some research, and get it right.
Second, you can only be offended if you want to be.
Sorry for the double post...didn't know it'd repost if I hit refresh...
ERIC: "See, I think there's a lot of potential for games to "mean something". Until fairly recently, first person shooters were all about exterminating everything in sight. Some of the newer games like Fallout 3, Oblivion and to a lesser extent Bioshock are starting to get into some of the moral ambiguities and actually have consequences for killing 'em all. Incidentally, Fallout 3 is pretty diverse racially and as far as I remember, doesn't do too much pigeonholing.
Don't disagree with you there, but there's intent to be a little something more then just a mindless video game that's fun to pass time.
Capcom games, and RE don't really strive to be. their idea is put a little plot in, throw a ton of things to shoot, and rake in some cash. Very little artistic or literary intent there.
I agree with you to a certain extent, that Capcom mostly makes shoot-'em-ups and fighting games without much story, but when they start venturing into realistic adventure stories they can't be so thickheaded about how they portray people. I guess they've come a long way since Bionic Commando though. I mean their final boss was literally Hitler. But RE4 had a reasonably complex story line, required interaction with the various characters etc. A little more should be expected of a game like that.
If you pay attention to the RE series, they're obviously trying to make it more complex and meaningful.
In RE 1, they never knew it'd be so popular to make a sequel, so they didn't bother giving the game a deep and meaningful plot. It didn't need one. Just like if you're making a 1-off action movie, you don't need much of anything to go on besides "good guy, bad guy trying to do bad things, go"
However, now we're on the... what.. 8th Resident Evil? (1-5, 2 outbreaks, Gaiden and Code Veronica.) They've started to tie the plot strands together to make this a series and not just a line of similar games. The plot is getting deeper... Who knows? Maybe they'll address some deeper issues in this one.
If you can scrutinize hard enough, you can find racism in just about anything. I don't mind when people rip apart the video games and the creators, but when many people accuse RE5, and therefore Capcom, to be racist, this is a bad attempt in trying to read the minds of game's creators.
I never noticed a race issue until people pointed it out to me. Furthermore, there is a difference between something that is blatanly racist and something that can be used to satisfy racist ends. For instance, a Klansmen would enjoy shooting black people on a whole different level than the average gamer. But that wouldn't make the game racist towards black people. The average gamer wouldn't see color- they would see the undead.
Incorrect statement: "Capcom was racist in making the RE5 game"
Correct statement: "RE5 is a game that can be considered racist to some people"
I have some Spanish roots and didn't see any racism at all with the last Resident Evil, where the heroes go to Spain and take down a lot of Spanish zombies, among other enemies. It would be a little crazy to think that Leon was secretly enjoying some kind of racist fantasy when asked to extinguish the source of these evil creatures.
Video games are entertainment, and they have no obligation to be any more meaningful than just that.
@spoonman
But the moment you put a white man in Africa where 90% of the continent's population is black (mind you, a continent plagued with famine, violence and crime), you're going to get an earful of "THAT'S RACIST".
I thought the people on this board would have a deeper level of thought. But the problems I dealth with other boards, that most of the people that talk are usually kids. They don't know better and they assume something like this is blown out of proportion.
I have to admit when I was probably about spoonman's age, I thought racism was a thing in the past and that it was something that doesn't exist today.
It was when I got older, had to get out my mother's house and start to take care of myself is when I began to realize how people were, especially people of color.
I never asked for any of these stereotypes, but people will always assume that I listened to black music, that I was the best dancer, that I had rhythm, and knew all of the black actors. Which of course I did not.
When it came to the more intellectual conversations, people always assumed I knew very little, and I would always surprise them on my knowledge of technology. This is all based on my external appearance.
When economics became important, and I woke up, I realized that society is still extremely divided and well unproportioned. I work in Corporate America, and you don't see many minorities here. The ones that you do see, including myself, are always at the bottom of the totem pole, and no matter how hard you work, the other guy seems to always get further.
You get extra points if you can talk and sound like you are white. But it's like you have already been predeterminted what your career limits will be in a specific company.
I have saw how organizations will structure their leaderships with whites only. And when they feel comfortable, they will then bring in a minority, with a white supervisor to lead them in everything they do, some cool, some harsh.
Racism is real. In this game, I still cannot judge it yet til I play it. I am still however happy Capcom finally brought a black protagonist to be in a leadership role, without stereotypes.
Your free to critique a video game! Lets keep in mind here, the meaning of the word (from the New Oxford American Dictionary):
verb ( -tiques |krɪˈtiks|, -tiqued |krɪˈtikt|, -tiquing |krɪˈtikɪŋ|) [ trans. ]
evaluate (a theory or practice) in a detailed and analytical way : the authors critique the methods and practices used in the research.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent. (as a noun): from French, based on Greek kritikē tekhnē ‘critical art.’
I look forward to your critique of the final version.
I never asked for any of these stereotypes, but people will always assume that I listened to black music, that I was the best dancer, that I had rhythm, and knew all of the black actors. Which of course I did not.
When it came to the more intellectual conversations, people always assumed I knew very little, and I would always surprise them on my knowledge of technology. This is all based on my external appearance.
But is that racism? Or is that stereotyping? Is there a difference?
Personally I think so. One can have no ill will toward someone, treat them as equal, yet still have stereotypical views right or wrong. It's human nature to adhere generalizations to that we don't know much about. That's not racist, that's ignorance.
Can it lead to racism? Sure, but lots of things can.
Oh god, this is the most idiotic thing I ever heard.
Black people in a video game and you kill them = RACIST RACIST RACIST
Other people in a video game and being killed = Not racist.
Let it go already, it's just a fracking game.
If anyone takes offense to this, they should never play video games, watch TV, or read the news.
If we live in a world where someone says "let's set a zombie story in Africa" and someone else says, "no, that's racist", I want to live on the moon.
I just would like to throw a few things out there.
First
@Tubatic
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=puns
Not that my nit picking is out of the way.
Second
@Baiskeli
Yours is likely one of the more important opinions here, as you at least claim to be African, and setting this as a African national and possibly now African-American.
Now i ask a few questions.
1. In Africa are a number of countries?
---This suggests that the setting for this game ---could be a number of places in Africa.
2. Do the political and social atmospheres of these countries vary?
---This means it could be, a Fox News favorite
---violent hotspot, or it could be like South
---Africa and relatively developed. These in
---themselves are stereotypes. Recently a family
---member of mine returned from aid work in
---Ghana, and said while primitive to American
---standards it was a great place and very
---beautiful.
3. Are Caucasians, Asians, and Hispanic people in a minority in most of these countries?
---This suggest that the majority will in fact be
---black Africans. While granted its said that
---"Black zombies are not the issue" the fact
---remains that to match setting, the characters
---who preform these awful actions must
---inherently be black.
4. Are these actions, such as the repeated female character drawn away, or sack beating happening because "This is how it is here" or because they are story elements?
---If they are elements of the story, then there
---is no racism, but a scary plot with setting
---appropriate bad guys.
5. Are the Japanese racist?
---Undeniably, racism towards Koreans and the
---Chinese is well documented. But, they do not
---have a traditional racial bias against African
---Americans or Africans in general. Id venture
---to guess that most of the Japanese interaction
---with people of African decent comes in the form
---of US servicemen stationed there. And as far
---as i can tell, the most common stereotype is
---in regards to the size of a particular part of
---their anatomy. Often in a humorously big ---context.
Granted this is all in my opinion and my interpretation as a White male who grew up in Utah as a non-Mormon and in NH as an outsider.
I don't feel the game is meant to be racist, nor do i think it is. I do think that this game is set in a politically unstable area, like Darfur or Somalia and this gives it a new feel. In "RE: Code Veronica" it talks about the source of the virus, and IIRC the T-virus was found in a variety of Ant, a rather hostile and vicious kind, which brings the swarm mentality to light. And in RE:4, las plagas were always in that general area, and their fossils are found as well, it seems that the las plagas have a long history in that Spanish town. At the end of RE:4 Ada Wong, a female Asian lead escapes with a viable sample of las plagas.
If this is to be combined with RE: Degeneration's view of the spread of bio-weapons and terrorism. One named leader is a "General Grande". The connection that could be made, is some sort of T-Virus enhanced version of Las Plagas has been acquired by someone like this General fellow and is being used in the area. This could be who the sun glassed African is
This makes me chuckle. After movies such as Undercover Brother and shows such as the Boondocks, I can say that there is still racism around. This game? Not so much.
First let me make something clear, there was a stink about racism in RE4, just not as big as this one. Although with people who find the smallest things in a game racist (I'm referring to a call in on Castle Crashers. Google it, its funny.) I just can't take any comments on the severity of racism against blacks in video games serious.
Second, in a horror game, you expect the characteristics of the villains to be brutal and savage like (would you hold it against Steven King?). When the setting is in Africa (they set it up this way due to the fact that the oldest human bodies on record were discovered there) the villains would most likely be black (which is the color of the majority of the citizenship). I'd hate to see what would happen if the black villains were nothing more than the goons for some white guy. Though I would laugh at the resulting mess.
Third, there is still points of violence in Africa. African citizens are mostly black. Thus, its not a far stretch to see this as a form of savagery. Don't hold it against me, its just the truth.
I'm not using the, it's just a game excuse, I'm using the, you've got to be kidding this is the dumbest arguement I've ever heard excuse. Sure if we ignore the fact that:
1. It's a horror game. Damn them for putting violent scenes in a violent series of a violent genre.
2. It's held in Africa. I mean, sure they used the smallest race of their citizenship, it would've been better if they used all the white people that hang around there.
3. Parts of it are greatly exagerrated, while some aren't. But then again, this is America, no need to research anything, we have the right to look stupid.
4. African Americans (and to my knowledge ONLY African-Americans) have called in about other games that contain less racism then an episode of South Park. I'm still waiting for someone to complain about Sonic and the Black Knight, cause the main villain is black.
5. This is the dumbest arguement ever.
@GET OVER IT
It is only racist if you see it as racist. If you look at it just as people, then it is correct for the story line and area. If it would be a black woman, it has less of a feeling, not because of racism, but because that type of stuff happens every day over there to black native women. It stinks, it really does, but making it a non-native. To make it fully seem to be a non-native, it would have to be Asian, Indian or European. Out of all of those, European decent is the one most likely to be there. So all in all, for the story and effect, that was the best logical way to do it. It has nothing to do with racism, and everything about creating a logical story.
As for the animal or human in the sack, it is most likely animal because of the area, same would go if they were in Mexico. Just how some cultures kill animals sometimes.
All in all, get off of your high racist horse. You are looking for racism, or else you would be like me and see that these are things driving by statistic and to cause more drama in the story. Is it tragic that natives of the area get beating and raped every day? Hell yeah, but it happens every day because of the corrupt government in the area. You want something done about it? Go to that stupid country yourself and try to make things better, but remember, if you stay too long your odds of getting killed increase.
And this is exhibit A in 'clowns who get their portrayal of Africa from the MSM and/or are just too lazy to read'. Whole bunch of idiotic generalizations, random/racist assumptions mixed with a whole boatload of ignorance.
You're right, that was a dumb argument.
@V Smith
Yeah, I'm pretty aware that Africa is a continent, but within that continent there are current horrors that mirror this RE game. To say that Capcom is horrible to bring these images to life in their game seems like people are acting like it's totally uncalled for to make a game like this based in Africa.
Okay, maybe I was being a bit facetious. But my issue was that bad stuff happens everywhere, even in the U.S and Western countries. However media is saturated with diverse images of those places that places the bad stuff in a larger context.
For Africa, the only images or narratives that make it into Western MSM is the bad stuff, none of the other stuff that is going on. So what ends up happening is that people don't place things into context and they think that is what all of Africa is like. I feel that Capcom are doing the same exact thing, in prior games, there was a demarcation in behavior/demeanour between the infected and the non-infected. In RE5, it seems they went out of their way to make the behavior of the non-infected Africans the same as that of those infected. This kind of stereotypes is why people then make the following ignorant comments.
Exhibits
----------------
by @Godzooky
Yea, I don't see how anyone would want to portray the peaceful Africans as evil villains in anything, ever. I mean Rwanda, Darfur..
or
A Non PC thug
Do you people also not read the actual news that matters? Like the fact people in African constantly slaughter each other, make holocaust type camps etc on a grand scale and thats ok but make a game where a white guy kills black zombies then OMG RUN FOR THE HILLS!..
--------------
So my issue is that Capcom have bought into the stereotypes, jacked them up a notch and thrown them out there. Galleymac puts it best (I've taken the relevant part of his quote below). And people (case in point above) just buy and eat up this stereotype.
@Tubatic
I think part of the trouble in the imagery, as its presented, may be that Africa is such uncharted territory (yeesh, no pun intended) with regards to pop culture appearances. At least so much as societal Africa. Safari Africa is pretty common, but has few human ties as a township setting.
For Capcom's part in respecting the gravity of the imagery, and the significance of taking the series into Africa, some set up would do well for the country. Show a place in Africa that doesn't have these crazed infected peoples.
Yes, yes and yes. This is the issue. I can't tell you how many times I avoid movies that even have anything corollaly to do with Africa because I can almost guarantee that the Africa I will see will be the one from someones fevered imagination and not the one I grew up in.
@Galleymac
And Africa of course has a monopoly on savagery, because the "disappeared" thing in Argentina (tacitly approved by Western powers) never happend, and the white Serbs, Bosnians, and Kosovars generally went skipping hand in hand la di da, and Tibet is a free and pleasant land.)
And of course the reason that you think these things (those who do) is because while the media (including fiction and news, stories and GAMES) never tells you anything about the people living normal, non-slaughtery black-people lives in Africa, but for white people of every stripe, you have a host of other narratives to choose from. Individual white people are not asked to stand in as representatives for an entire race to anything like the same extent, because such a huge number and huge variety of stories are told about them, over and over, ubiquitously, that one particular characteristic doesn't -- cannot possibly -- become their whole and only identity.
There are a millions easily accesible stories about Spaniards (and nearly every other type of Caucasian) that do not involve them rising up and slaughtering people, infected or not.
One or two black heroes in one or two video games cannot possibly accomplish the same thing for the black race. So yeah, the reaction "when it's white people" and "when it's black people" is going to be different because their positions in the public imagination is resoundingly different. And I think you all know that, really.
I couldn't agree more.
@Fenris
Responses to some of your answers below
I just would like to throw a few things out there.
1. In Africa are a number of countries?
Yes, If I remember correctly there are 54. The game is actually set in Haiti (which of course is not in Africa) but I'm thinking of Africa and African diaspora.
2. Do the political and social atmospheres of these countries vary?
---This means it could be, a Fox News favorite
---violent hotspot, or it could be like South
---Africa and relatively developed. These in
---themselves are stereotypes. Recently a family
---member of mine returned from aid work in
---Ghana, and said while primitive to American
---standards it was a great place and very
---beautiful.
Yes, like every other place. There are some unstable countries, there are some poor ones, there are some relatively rich ones etc etc.
3. Are Caucasians, Asians, and Hispanic people in a minority in most of these countries?
---This suggest that the majority will in fact be
---black Africans. While granted its said that
---"Black zombies are not the issue" the fact
---remains that to match setting, the characters
---who preform these awful actions must
---inherently be black.
Yes and no, think of North Africa. Also, realize that a lot of Eastern African countries have a high population of indians/asians. I'm black African but the neighborhood I grew up in was a middle class neighborhood where a lot of my neighbors were Indian.
4. Are these actions, such as the repeated female character drawn away, or sack beating happening because "This is how it is here" or because they are story elements?
---If they are elements of the story, then there
---is no racism, but a scary plot with setting
---appropriate bad guys.
I'd says its might be a story element, but given prevailing stereotypes and how Capcom chose to erase the demarcation between infected and non-infected will be viewed as 'something that happens all the time over there' as some have posted.
5. Are the Japanese racist?
---Undeniably, racism towards Koreans and the
---Chinese is well documented. But, they do not
---have a traditional racial bias against African
---Americans or Africans in general. Id venture
---to guess that most of the Japanese interaction
---with people of African decent comes in the form
---of US servicemen stationed there. And as far
---as i can tell, the most common stereotype is
---in regards to the size of a particular part of
---their anatomy. Often in a humorously big ---context.
I'd say they either are or unable/unwilling to examine their biases. I have friends in China and lets just say their experiences have not been great, but that can be said of a lot of places. But of course you cannot group a whole nation into a category.
Granted this is all in my opinion and my interpretation as a White male who grew up in Utah as a non-Mormon and in NH as an outsider.
I don't feel the game is meant to be racist, nor do i think it is. I do think that this game is set in a politically unstable area, like Darfur or Somalia and this gives it a new feel.
I'd say this is where we part ways on opinion. The life I've led and my reality makes me see that the game is racist. I see how people react to me, whether they assume I'm African or African American, I've been discriminated against etc, and the common thread that runs through a lot of interactions is that you are what you consume uncritically (sorry, bad analogy). People consume images of Africans and African-Americans that make them see us in a certain light. The fact that after seeing the trailer for RE5 last year and having a black game developer essentially vilified and attacked for what I considered a very balanced critique (N'Gai) of the game just re-inforces the fact that people are unwilling to critique what they see and too willing to buy into it, and any valid criticism minimized and pushed aside.
@huh
When it came to the more intellectual conversations, people always assumed I knew very little, and I would always surprise them on my knowledge of technology. This is all based on my external appearance.
But is that racism? Or is that stereotyping? Is there a difference?
Personally I think so. One can have no ill will toward someone, treat them as equal, yet still have stereotypical views right or wrong. It's human nature to adhere generalizations to that we don't know much about. That's not racist, that's ignorance.
Can it lead to racism? Sure, but lots of things can.
In my post, that is what I am trying to relate. There is a very strong relationship with stereotyping and racism. Some stereotyping can be good, others are horrible.
For some races, certain stereotypes work in their favor.
For a white person, they are oftened stereotyped of being privaleged and having money, and of course are the bane of society. I am sure having such a positive stereotype, it helps a person to feel good about themselves, able to relate easily with others like them.
From my sincere observation, I believe that people like to place other people in categories, both black and white. When a white person meets another white person, that person observes the other person and comes to the conclusion, this guy is a bit nerdy, but he reminds me of my old friend Johny. So automatically they form a bond on that basis. Now when this same white person meets a black person, this person doesn't know many black people, haven't grown up with any black people, nor went to school with much black people. The only knowledge they can associate this black guy with is what they saw on TV, the small experiences that person had with black people, good or bad, or what they heard from their other white friends.
For a black person, these negative stereotypes can hinder their growth in society and even in their career path, especially when the company this black person works for is 99% white.
So to me, I do see a relationship between negative stereotypes and racism.
From a Biblical perspective however, the Bible doesn't talk much about racism, but it definitely talks about favortism, and perhaps this is what the whole problem in the world today is. We may need to re-identify exactly what these issues are.
@Baiskeli
http://blog.capcom.com/archives/1116
@4:50 he states it takes place in Africa, this is the maker of the game.
I'm not sure where the thought that it occurs in Haiti comes from.
I also agree that racism is still rampant in society, and out of context, this could certainly be a "Kill Africans as a white guy" game, but as i tried to show, everything thus far is in context with the canon.
Context is extremely important, in another discussion the context of the swastika was mentioned because it is important to know if it is the religious symbol, or the Nazi hate tool.
The last question i have, is, in this game.
Do we fire the guns to kill because they are black? or because they are zombies?
If the answer is the former rather than the latter, then this is indeed a racist game.
---
Would a zombie by any other skin pigment not still be made of ones and zeros?
---
misspelled my own name...
let's see.. after resident evil 1 you shoot CAUCASIAN zombies in a mansion
in RE2, there's ONE instance of afro-american turning into a zombie right infront of your eyes and (as most gamers would do) shoot it in the head.
in RE3, even MOAR caucasian zombies.
in code veronica, mix of american and european zombies, mostly if not all caucasian...
in RE4, we get SPANIARD "zombies"
and now when RE5 is in africa and we got a caucasian shooting "black" zombies you go an b****!?
the series has killed more caucasian than afro-americans/africans or any other race...
dude, SHUT THE HELL UP!!!
Oops, I found this thread too late.
The question of racism is not completely subsumed under the problem of the stereotype, and that's what is at stake here. Most cultures are frankly far more comfortable deploying stereotypes, whether of "types" within their own culture or representations of others/outsiders, than we are in the West in general and the educated echelons of the US in particular. Stereotypes are a shorthand that allow us to access a great deal of cultural information (and misinformation) with a single act of reference.
In Latin America, stereotypes fly fast and furious, and it seems that people embrace them, at least in a tongue-and-cheek way. In the US, they are generally reviled as, among other things, racist and the residue of racism.
One thing I've noticed in my reading of Japanese lit and culture (and in my time there) is that the Japanese people generally perceive themselves as a minority, as one of the people who faced (and, indeed, faced down) colonization and European hegemony. What is described as "racism" by Western observers is a lot more complicated and has to do with cultural chauvinism partially informed by the fact that Japan sees itself as one of the very few non-Western societies which adequately adapted to Western hegemony and survived; much of its attitude toward other Asian powers is informed by this sense that they failed to actually achieve modernity "correctly." The role of culture - in a very pervasive, cradle-to-grave sense - as both the mechanism by which Japaneseness has been preserved and the prize for that preservation - produces a strong cultural identity which easily slips to chauvinism and ethnocentrism.
In any case, like others have pointed out, Japan does not have a history of involvement in the oppression of Africans. The depiction would be more troubling from their perspective (though not symmetrical with the American one) if it involved Japanese protagonists and Korean or Chinese zombies - or even Brazilian or Peruvian ones.
Last observation: the idea that the sensitivities of the Western market should rein in the cultural production of Japan is a depressingly hegemonic stance. US culture industries are seldom held accountable in the same way, even when Hollywood exports its cultural output as aggressively as Japan does, and, frankly, with more arrogance.
Man, talk about a sticky situation
Calling a game racist for having a setting in Africa that contains Africans is in itself, racist.
Besides, the game hasn't even been released and I am certain that you will be interacting with the African population like normal before all hell breaks loose.
It's journalists/blog monkeys like yourself that like to build up on contraversial issues by kicking up a massive stink over something you haven't even experienced yet.
In the end, if you aren't a racist pig, you wont find the game to be racist.
who cares wether what form the enemy is in?
what about the mexicans?
we've fought them countless times in videogames
from Graw 2,-who knows where
what if it was a black guy instead of a white dude in re5?
what would you sensitive racists pepople think then ?
do you want everyone to be blue and purple ? so then you'll stop complaning?
and get used to it
the united states has long been known to manipulate a ehtnic groups culture/race into an ugly, unhuman one
like the native americans.
remeber the native americans?
im just sick and tired of people saying" oh its so racists"
if u find it offending, then back off,and avert your eyes somwhere else
african americans might play this game.. so what?
would they view it racist?
its just a game!!!
and plus that chick a.i is black as well..?
if she is then i don't see why u bother comapling about racism
If you think it would not have been racist with white zombies then guess what, your a racist. Seriously racism is not just thinking that one group is worse than you it is also saying that one group can be insulted or shown as the villains and the other can't. Oh and guess what by saying that black zombies can't be masochistically violent or zombies then you are saying that only white characters can be those things.
Frankly, I haven't had the chance to read EVERY single comment, but I've seen many that had good points.
However I'll avoid commenting on the game itself since, like all of us, I haven't really played it yet, and some others have defended it very well in pragmatic terms.
What I DO want to comment about though, is the author's view of what constitutes "racism".
A quote : ""It wasn't racist when the enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4," goes the argument, but then the Spanish don't have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman animals for the past two hundred years. It's perfectly possible to use Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story, but when you're applying the concept of people being turned into savage monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented as savage monsters, it's hard to see how elements of race weren't going to be a factor."
I'm sorry, but the author there has fallen into their own trap, basically saying that YES, it was ok for the Spanish, because they haven't been represented a certain way for years. Effectively applying 2 measures to 2 weights. This amounts to saying "it's wrong for white people to be racist towards black people, but it's ok for black people to be racist towards whites, because they've been the victim of racism for so long" .
I'm sorry, but whatever accusation of racism was in the original article has completely backfired. In fact, I think it's interesting that Africa is getting some exposure, whereas it NEVER does in games (now, is THAT racist?).
As for the white girl being taken away... what makes you think she's not an important character in the story ? Has any of you read the script or played the game in it's entirety yet ? I didn't think so.
So, case closed. Much ado about nothing. Next time you want to accuse anyone of racism, at least start by putting everyone on equal footing. Anything less is racism already.
So, apparently, Africa is off limits no matter who you are?
I'm sorry, but I think that the argument that RE5 is racist, only makes sense if you thought all other games in the series were also racist. After all it turns out that none of the infected enemies in any of the games, (whether they can use tools and drive vehicles, or merely shuffle slowly across the floor) appear to be Japanese. And guess what, gang, the people that made this game, and all the others in the series, are Japanese.
Thus, the 200 years of baggage that the quote in the article cites, (Seriously, how lame is it that the author didn't even have his own argument, but merely quoted one that had already been argued about for a couple of weeks, but I digress.) does not apply. I'm not saying the Japanese are incapable of being racist or of stereotyping. (I am sure they do it as much as any other race does.) I am just saying this argument might of had a little more credibility, (at least the part about treating black people as monsters), if Capcom was stationed out of Birmingham, Alabama, rather than Japan.
I don't recall any Japanese people having any black slaves or denying black people their basic rights, since this is obviously what the quote is referring to.
So either your argument is, you can only make a video game whose main antagonist is the same nationality and race as yourself and all your staff, or this whole issue is completely overblown.
Umm, You know whats racist? Playing the Race card, if people would just shut the hell up about it and look at it as "People shooting Zombies/Infected" then we wouldn't have this convo. Quit finding race when generally most people out there playing don't see any. South park said it best in their episode about racism (The flag that showed a few crewdly drawn white stick man hanging a black stick man) The kids looked at the flag and couldn't figure out what was so bad about it, the black adults said it was racist, the white adults defended it. In the end the all the adults realized the kids didn't see white people hanging a black person they saw people gathered in a circle and made no distinction between colour or race. Every time someone plays the race card you remind yourselves of the past, until we get past that your creating racism where there is none.
If you feel the need to play the race card go for it but don't drag down a game that hasn't hurt anyone. Oww they shot a black persone or a white person or spainish people who cares its a game its fantasy stop being lame and do something real with you life
I hear a lot of people on this board accusing someone of being racist if someone play the "race card"
How the heck is that racist?
So let's say I am a huge business owner, and I decide to hire let's say 100 blacks, and about 10 whites.
I don't really care about credentials, so I put all of the blacks on my leadership team, and give them the better paying positions, plus opportunity to even rise higher in the company.
With the 10 white workers, not caring about their credentials or abilities, I make them do the lowest jobs in my firm. I have one of them keeping my kitchen clean, the other doing the bathroom, and the others doing small work to assist my black workers, while they are strictly supervised.
Some even show enthusiam of being promoted, and even organize their position so well, that no one could do it as well as them, but how I respond is rather than promoting that person, I hire another black worker, with no experience, to supervise that worker, and that white worker has to train the black supervisor.
After all of this, the white worker plays the race card? Is this white worker racist?
According to you guys, I am not racist in any way, but the white worker for accusing me is.
I am still going to buy and play RE5 just because its my favorite series. I can careless if there are supposed racist acts. Who really cares anyway... Have we ourselves become hate mongers if we are all offended by video games. People... I will say it. "Its just a game... get over it."
Let's just have a bunch of white people to kill like in every other game. This makes sense especially because it's in Africa! Stupid racist RE5 and those racist Japanese!!!!1111
When I was speaking to Capcom about this, I agreed with them, that it wasn't racist because they set the stage in Africa, it's because of their lack of black protagonist in the game.
I feel that is solved with Sheva. Plus we can't judge the rest of the game until we play it inside and out.
I still remember when this first came up, and the woman said that they were teaching the white childrens to get them!
I still say that anyone that thinks this is racist is not only blowing this out of proportions, but also being just plain stupid.
It's Africa. OMG how dare they have you kill black people.
Really now.
Well, first off the article states that the people beating up on a sack were NOT infected. However, if you played the previous game, RE4, you know that all the villagers were infected, even the ones acting normal. You see them doing all their farming stuff before you enter the village. So you have no real way of knowing that they're not infected.
Also, the fact that anyone is offended by this pisses me off. I don't think anyone is off limits when it comes to video games, or anything else for that matter. Race itself is a stupid concept that has no biological basis. If the game is set in Africa, there should be African zombies. That's all. No one complained about American or Spanish zombies (And I am Spanish). It. Doesn't. Matter. Anyone who cares about this is a baby and needs to lay off the pacifier.
I have a question, is RE5 any more or less racist than FarCry 2? If so, what makes it more or less racist? Both games are set in Africa (?) and both involve white male protagonists shooting a lot of black people. I haven't played either game (other than demo) so I don't have a fully informed opinion yet...
Come on Coates, why are you so stupid. I mean, if this game was really racist then whey didn't you write about the last one that had people killing Spanish people?? I mean what's the deal with the majority of you ignorant black people anyways? always complaining about racist this, racist that. People can't even make a joke about you black people without it escalating into a racist war. It's just a fucking game, a fucking game! that's all it is. I would understand if somehow in the game there were racist remarks towards black people suck as like the main character shouting "kill them niggers" then yeah that shit is racist. But in the mean while go fuck your self Coates because your the one that is racist.
Do you even know what a racist is?
Croates, You’re a moron. Why do you liberal elites insist on finding racism anywhere you can? So you can blog about it? So you can keep your job? So you can continue to make a living off of non-issues and fake-racism outrage? You leftists are pathetic and a stain on society. The scab of racism will never go away BECAUSE YOU ASSHOLES WONT STOP PICKING AT IT! This game is no more racist then the movie Black Hawk Down. That’s were the developers got the idea for an African setting from. Africa has been tied into the storyline of the Resident Evil series since the beginning. And in the end there’s no doubt the out come will be that these Africans were victims of the “white mans” evil schemes as we are so often portrayed today by you liberals euro trash. I suggest you play the game for context before calling Capcom racist. If Chris Redfield were a black man shooting whites no one would care. Stop trying to play the victim of white racism because of a game made by yellow Japanese people. Idiot freakin morons! Get over it losers!
I hate racism just as much as the Lord hates racism and He will make them all pay unless they repent.
I know we all here the saying that God is love and all of that, but God is also the God of Judgement too.
All racist better go to Jesus before it's too late.
shadeofgood > Man are you for real? Do you really believe in all that?
Not sure if you are just joking or if you are truly that fanatic... You gave me a good laugh in any case! :-D
Yeah that is real. Racism is nothing but hate. You possibly cannot have the Love of God in you nor the Spirit of God when you are racist.
I Love the Lord, I played videogames all my life. I grew up thinking that Racism was something of the past. I was in for a rude awakening.
What Capcom is doing here, is not necessarily racist, it isn't an attack and when I went on their boards, I was simply mentioning that it's good to get a change of what we been getting in videogames when it came to ethnicity and race.
But @mac, yeah I do believe that life isn't that long while we are here on the Earth, and your decisions do have eternal rewards or consequences.
This is bordering on ridiculous now. Does nobody see the point of having whatever is being kicked in a sack? So you can't see what it is? Has nobody taken a basic writing class? It raises tension. It keeps you off guard by not being able to read the motivations of the assailants while letting you know something is severely wrong here. It's a similar device to thinking everything is alright in RE4 until you find the women staked to the wall in the barn.
And that's the crux right there and the ridiculous assumptive blindness of some people calling the scene racist. Know why? Because it never occurred to them that the scene WAS DEPICTING UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR FOR THE RESIDENTS OF THE TOWN. You're so blind you assume the point was show that that's how they live rather than it depicting an unsettling event that is nothing like the norm; a descent into violence due to the craziness that is taking place.
There's the real racism.
Of course, REAL Africans never exhibit inhuman savagery. Except for Darfur (300,000 and counting), Rwanda (800,000 deaths, fifth place in the 20th century).
This whole subject is incredibly inane. Just shut up and look for REAL problems to address.
"What bugs me about this is ... that Capcom never, ever, gave this an ounce of thought. It never in their wildest imagination even occurred to them that it might be offensive. It says so much about the industry and how far it still lags behind other forms of entertainment."
Yes, it's terrible when people are so innocent, that they do not consider someone's race when they make a video game.
They should have made a video game that handled a particular race differently than another race because, after all, it's racist to consider all races the same...
Let's address some of the stupid "defenses" the little white boys and girls in the Land of Make-Believe have offered. Such deep and thought-provoking responses as "If the zombies were white nobody would be saying anything."
This is the kind of reply I expect from a ten year old. Especially one who watches TV all day, and hasn't done a lick of research and knows nothing about history or the world around him.
First of all you defenders of all things racsit, nobody said anything about what race the zombies were. Go back and read the Eurogamer article and TNC's column. Do you see anyone saying, "The very fact the zombies are African is racist?"
No, you don't. So please don't clog up valuable blog space with strawmen. If you can't think then don't speak!
I've noticed that NONE of you braindead morons who are defending your precious video game have even bothered to address the points raised. I know that simply repeating those points won't get through that titanium block on your shoulders, but here's some more of my wasted effort anyway.
The issue at hand is how Capcom deliberately chose to portray the Africans as savage and threatening BEFORE THE VIRUS HAD EVEN BROKEN OUT!
Let's repeat that since I know you didn't read it.
BEFORE THE VIRUS HAD BROKEN OUT! This is what the objections are mostly about! How the Africans are portrayed as already violent and threatening BEFORE THE VIRUS HAS EVEN BROKEN OUT! Capcom's "game" makes it clear that in Africa there's no difference between an infected zombie and a regular African. They're both savages.
Never before in the history of this franchise have the residents of an infected town been portrayed this way. Got it now?
Secondly: The men who are beating away at the sack like savages ARE NOT INFECTED! Got that kiddies? Dan has it right, you've got it wrong!
What's more, whenever we see the African people, they are all in shadow, even though they're in the blazing sunlight.
We see the people presented as a group of menacing shadow dwellers, lurking in the darkness, glaring at passerby. THIS IS BEFORE THE VIRUS EVEN BREAKS OUT!
Are you idiots finally starting to get it now?
Next there's the guy with the megaphone. He's the first black in any sort of leadership position we see. He's not infected. Yet he is acting like the stereotypical African dictator. He's black so he has to be a demagogue. BTW, you white aplogists, aren't you going to raise your favorite strawman "President Obama?" Because Obama is no demagogue, so doesn't that PROVE RE5 has a racial bias?
Whoops, didn't see that one coming, did we?
Then there's Sheva. But she makes the racist bias of the developers even more pronouced. Because the Africans are CLEARLY african but Sheva, who's supposed to be African too is light-skinned --almost lighter than Chris!!!-- and she talks like a Briton? Why couldn't she be dark-skinned, and talk like an African?
Jun Takechi said he wanted to make her "ethnically ambiguous." Well the bastards sure didn't have any problem making the African villagers ethnically clear. So from their own mouths they state their racial bias: black skin is BAD, light skin is GOOD.
So stuff that bullcrap about "The Japanese live in an ethnically homogeous country and don't know any better" up your @$$es. They knew what traits to water-down or exclude in order to make her less "black."
Contrary to Capcom's pathetic denials they ARE indeed making a political/racial statement and it is not by accident. The statement is: Black people are savages under ANY circumstances.
They took every stereotype they could find, rolled them all up and called it a game. and we have zomibes who use the old "Well, isn't it TRUE?" defense. That's rhetoric, not reality kids.
Africa is NOT all war and famine. If it was the Africans would have gone extinct LONG ago. As it is there's 600 million of them on the continent and more around the world. Every country on earth does business in Africa, including the Japanese. Have you ever asked yourselves how do they manage to do such good business in the middle of war, disease and famine? Did you even know every multinational corp on earth does business over there before I told you? Probably not.
Do you see now why your talking points about how "That's the way things are over there," has no meaning? I know this is hard for the sheltered common sense impaired defenders of RE5, but I do ask you to actually THINK!
And no, the Japanese should NOT get a pass just because they're non-white. Are you crazy? Talk to the third-generation Koreans in Japan who are STILL called "immigrants." Japan's homogeneity is because of aggressive and deliberate government policies. It's typical white parochialism to defend the Japanese from charges of racism by talking about them like they're empty-headed children (which many of the trolls in this thread really are!) who don't know the difference between right and wrong.
Or to act like "well, they just don't know how their imagery will be perceived in other cultures."
When white filmmakers were making cartoons during WWII showing the Japanese as buck-toothed and "Chinky-eyed" NOBODY said, "Well, maybe those white guys just don't know how their imagery will be perceived in other countries."
We ALL know what racism is, and yes that includes the Japanese, whose corporations by the way have one of the most sophisticated PR machines in the world to deny charges of racism. That Capcom fell over itself to IMMEDIATELY change the racial makeup of the people in the game proves they realized they been caught and were scrambling to get some other images out there.
If they don't know what racist is then why did they automatically know what content to start editing in the game?
To brush off their pathologically racist attitude towards blacks with some pap about "the Japanese are 'homogenous'" is a TOTAL cop-out by people who desperately don't want to have to take on the moral responsibility of calling a spade a spade.
Instead of mature rational analysis what do the white self-obsessed Me-Monkey come up with? "Well, there's famine and war all over Africa. You don't think they should base it on reality?"
That's called "Wanting to have it both ways," my retarded friends. You can't defend the game by saying "Jesus, it's not real," then turn right around and defend it on the grounds that "It's realistic!"
There needs to a law about internet usage: you cannot comment on blogs or websites if your age is lower than 21 or your I.Q. is lower than 100. Given the moronic comments on this blog and MANY others around the internet, there's a TON of white kids who live their "lives" (if they can be called that!) solely through World of Warcraft and Resident Evil. And to threaten that is to literally threaten their pathetic little existences. I would LOVE to know how many Hours a day you fools accrue in video game time.
Obviously a lot more than you do in time spent thinking. There's a world out there beyond your X-Box. What say you pull your heads out of your ignorant little @$$es and join it!
The Spanish have been cast in just as much a bad light as Black people. EVERY race has been portrayed a a savage.
Whites were considered so when they first arrived on the continent we now call America, and the Natives were considered the same by the Whites. Many people in American consider the Spaniards or Mexicans of today to STILL be horrible, due to the ritual act of bullfighting. If you don't believe me, watch the news when something about animal rights activists come on.
We can't pick and choose what we call racist.
And with what's happening in Rwanda and other parts of Africa, there are stories of people being pissed by the very sight of a military uniform. And if your village has been infected with a parasite that's floating around and you want to blame someone, you blame the guy who shows up randomly. Blame comes to hate, hate turns into physical outcry.
I could say that this game is racist against white people, now, because how many do you see? Hm? Many white people in this one? NO! And the few that are there allegedly disappear pretty fast. So while he's trying to save the Africans, his own people are dieing. How's that for racism?
I, personally, am a Native American, and I feel that our history is one of the roughest. Africans were enslaved, and those that revolted were killed. Natives were allowed to live on reservations, then when there wasn't enough room left for immigrants, were slaughtered. I feel it's racist that there aren't any games with Native Americans in a part. Besides Turok, that is.
So yeah, if you want to call this game racist, then call yourself racist.
Oh, and CommonSense, how do you KNOW those people are NOT infected? Does it tell you in the beginning that they're not? It tells you that Chris Redfield has been sent to inspect something "Peculiar." And event that is just not right. If things were right, and the villagers were fine, would he be there in the first place? If you have a narrator telling you that the people are clean, then I could understand your point. But Redfield's there. He investigates bio-terrorism. Common Sense tells me that the people have already been started on the path of affliction, and the beginning effects of the Las Plagas, from RE4, was madness. Their eyes don't have to be glowing. I know the Spaniards' eyes didn't, and they acted just the same.
To “CommonSense”:
First, I’d like to point out the hypocrisy of portraying yourself as the rational, moral, intelligent and decent one while making sweeping generalisations about everyone who disagrees with you. These stereotypes are unfair, inaccurate and quite ridiculous. I also don’t approve of the rather ageist remark you made near the end of your post (“There needs to a law about internet usage: you cannot comment on blogs or websites if your age is lower than 21 or your I.Q. is lower than 100”).
Firstly, assuming that the people in the scene described definitely aren’t zombies, where exactly are you pulling the assumption that this scene occurs “BEFORE THE VIRUS HAD EVEN BROKEN OUT”? That isn’t said anywhere in the article. It is said that the people don’t appear to be zombies but chances are that the virus had broken out. Why would they even be there if the virus hadn’t broken out yet?
Now, why are (probably) uninfected Africans portrayed as violent savages in this scene? I’d first like to bring up an important quote by the main character, Chris Redfield, from a trailer for the game:
“I knew it from the moment I arrived. There’s no reason here. No humanity. Everywhere I look I find vacant scares. All I see is death.”
This could be interpreted as being incredibly racist but notice what he said at the beginning of the quote:
“I knew IT from the moment I arrived”
What is “it” exactly? There’s only really one thing it could be in this context. He must be talking about the outbreak of the virus. What else could it be?
But wait! Didn’t you say that the sack beating scene happened “before the virus had even broken out?” I guess that you really were pulling that out of your arse then.
Anyway, now that we almost certainly know that Chris arrived after the outbreak of the virus, let’s look at the rest of the quote, obviously telling us why he knew it from the moment he arrived:
“There’s no reason here. No humanity. Everywhere I look I find vacant scares. All I see is death.”
So, because of this, Chris knew that the virus had broken out.
This suggests that, when a virus infects an area, that area is severely affected in a number of ways. If most of the population of your community have turned into savage zombies then that would understandably affect the behaviour of the survivors. This explains the sack beating scene.
“What's more, whenever we see the African people, they are all in shadow, even though they're in the blazing sunlight.
We see the people presented as a group of menacing shadow dwellers, lurking in the darkness, glaring at passerby. THIS IS BEFORE THE VIRUS EVEN BREAKS OUT!”
Now that we’ve established that all the events in the game almost definitely occur BEFORE the virus breaks out, this isn’t too difficult to explain.
If most of your community has turned into savage zombies that can turn you into one of them in an instant, it wouldn’t make much sense to lurk about in broad daylight and I doubt that you’d be very happy either. Also, if everyone you came across could possibly be a zombie, you’d probably be pretty suspicious of anyone who passes too.
“Next there's the guy with the megaphone. He's the first black in any sort of leadership position we see. He's not infected.”
HOW DO YOU KNOW!?
He wears sunglasses so we can’t see his eyes and we know from earlier games that infected people can be capable of leading and organising. He could very well be just one of the more advanced zombies.
Shiva’s still African. Why would the developers include an African character as a sidekick if they had something against Africans? It doesn’t make much sense.
“Jun Takechi said he wanted to make her "ethnically ambiguous." Well the bastards sure didn't have any problem making the African villagers ethnically clear. So from their own mouths they state their racial bias: black skin is BAD, light skin is GOOD.”
Errmm, no. That’s simply your twisted interpretation. They never said anything like that.
“That Capcom fell over itself to IMMEDIATELY change the racial makeup of the people in the game proves they realized they been caught and were scrambling to get some other images out there.”
No-one likes being called racist. If you’re being accused of racism by multiple people (even if the accusations are unfair), you’d want to do something to stop those accusations. I doubt that Capcom want to release a game that’s considered to be racist.
Finally, there’s one very important point.
All the main villains in the Resident Evil games have always been rich, powerful and white and, judging from the trailers so far, this game is no exception. Why would a racist game have power hungry stereotypical white villains as its main bad guys?
I might as well throw my 2 cents in. I can understand how the portrayal of the villagers before infections can be viewed as insensitive, but -only- if you don't understand the context of the game. They are simply setting the mood for a -survival horror- game. They can't exactly make the mood giddy and bubbly, y'know? As for the woman being dragged off, it's already been stated that she's a character from a previous game and that scene plays a part in the storyline of the game..Not just some random zombie dragging off a random damsel. Even so, that's what a zombie does. Especially when controlled by the main bad guy..
This could not possibly be more of a knee-jerk reaction. The informed fans of the Resident Evil series would have a different view of this situation; Earlier in the series (in RE Code Veronica or RE Zero, I think) it was revealed that the origin of the virus at the center of the story was Africa. Was that an arbitrary decision on the part of the writers? Hardly. It was clearly a choice they made as an allusion to Africa being the "Cradle of Life". And so now here we are several games later, and the chickens have finally come home to roost. Home being Africa. Which happens to be populated by Africans. It's perfectly legitimate from a storytelling perspective. If Capcom is guilty of anything, it's being naive/misguided/foolish enough to think this would not be met with the ignorant reaction it's been getting. But I seriously doubt they're guilty of actual racism. Intentional or latent.
They WHERE infected at the begining they just don't attack you right away. And or this is basically bullshit as a military unit of all black men who appear very normal save your ass at the end of chapter 1-3.
They are just like the las plagas. They only start attacking in the open once they are the majority.
As for the white women who gets attacked it is actually from an arabic looking Manji.
Considering also that they ARE infected as you run accross alot of dead animals and shit that are in places that make no sense. they begin too attack you once they Notice you are watching them execute someone.
and not all the manji in the game have bloodshot Glowing Eyes from what I have seen only the stronger ones. So if you see one with glowing eyes you may not want too aim for the head as they are like the ones in 4 that you dont want too get a headshot on.
My God! You have to admit this is a debate for the ages. How many of you actually experienced racism? Honestly? Ever have a loaded gun put in your face only because your black? Ever been told for no reason that your a dirty ugly N*****? Ever been pulled out of a car because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and you had to be taught a lesson? Ever been used as target practice with an actual loaded gun? (And for those smart asses, yes, I have had two of these instances happen to me the other to a friend.)
For the past few weeks I have read boards, blogs and seen videos on the RE5 subject. I am shocked. Give the Japanese a break, to them we are all and I do mean all us are "outsiders".
People, there are bigger issues out there then to find out if a corporation that makes millions is secretly / openly racist. The "its a game" comment made so many times is well lets face it, its the truth! RE5 is a game. It depicts a very real possibility and reality that people are and should be afraid off. Chemical warfare.
If you look back on history how many times did a video game cause major racial issues to happen? They were not playing video games when the years of slavery, holocaust or apartheid happened. As for recent history, there are a lot of people that feel that it is a good idea to go out and kill people. And they blame it on TV, video game, the music they listen to, and more. They don't want to own up to their own problems and refuse to take responsibility for their actions. If TV, video game, and music did all those things why are there so many people still living?
There are a lot of people who are racists, sexists, bigots and/or more. People chose to be blind to it. As long as it is not on the TV it is an unspoken thing that people refuse to believe exists. For others, they see it everywhere, the reason I didn't get that job was because they were racist, sexist or something. These are issues that we need to address. These are real issues. Not a video game. This video game was used because of people's insecurity in addressing the real issues. Honestly, the game depicts the normal race in the area they are recreating. You honestly can't say that there are only a bunch of white, light bright people and a few black people near the equator in Africa. It just will not work.
Look it is a game, regardless how "You" see it. It is a game depicted on the general premise of RE.
Questions you should ask yourself before going any further...
When did zombies equate to "black people"?
When did it change from a zombie/apocalyptic game to "a white man killing a bunch of black people"?
Aren't they still zombies trying to eat and kill people?
How can you have a video game based close or on the equator and not have dark skinned people? How are you going to believe a game like that?
If there wasn't an issue with a player killing a whole bunch of white people why is it different now?
Regardless who plays the game the human, living, non-computer generated player is in control. You could, if your so inclined, buy the game and every time you turn it on just don't do anything. Let the "white guy" get eaten by the zombies "black people" and then there is no harm no fowl, right?
How do you know the Japanese are racists? Were the people in the earlier versions Jews, Native Americans, Italians, or some other minority group?
Did the characters in the previous REs yell racist slurs at their zombie counterparts?
Resident Evil 5 is just like Big Bird and Teletubies.
It is not real!!!!!!
Or.... did you think that Fred Flintstone really lived in the stone age?
Find and address the real issues... stop looking for fault!!!!