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Resident Racism, continued
By Nick Schager
on 03/27/2009
Rachel Weisz tends to an African child in "The Constant Gardener," Focus Features, 2005
To shrug off the game's undead as no different than other prior fictional zombies is to disregard the deep, nasty legacy of such subhuman characterizations. Were there a game or film about a blond Germanic fellow blowing away Israelis who, due to an "infection," appeared gaunt, bald and dressed in rags, everyone would recognize the inappropriateness of such imagery. Yet in "RE5"'s case, the inclusion of a black sidekick and a sprinkling of ethnically ill-defined figures are meant as sufficient curative counterbalances to the ugliness on display, which eventually involves zombies whose increasingly complex behavior -- using machine guns, ducking in and out of cover, driving motorcycles -- signals rational, human intelligence that further problematizes the act of slaughtering what are supposed to be possessed monsters.
As its creators have insisted, “RE5” is anti-colonialist, because the culprits behind the story’s African pestilence are nefarious Western powers intent on using the continent as a petri dish. This is where the game dovetails with Fernando Meirelles’ “The Constant Gardener,” another saga in which the solution to white corporate malevolence in Africa is white gallantry in Africa. Africans, all the while, remain merely helpless victims, at the mercy of their pale destroyers and saviors. It’s a distinctly condescending view, though one more pronounced in Meirelles’ film, which makes its hero a de facto Christ figure sent to save the huddled masses from his own evil countrymen.
In “RE5,” on the other hand, Chris Redfield never addresses his situation’s racial or class dynamics, or the colonialist behavior of wannabe-god villain Albert Wesker, since the story is too busy shoving him deeper into a conspiracy that involves self-conscious revelations about events from prior games. Ignoring these relevant, unmistakable issues, however, simply heightens the sense that the game doesn’t understand what it’s doing.
If all of this is in plain sight, why have so few dared to call a spade a spade? The answer probably has something to do with gameplay familiarity. For anyone who’s checked out the superlative “RE4,” the experience of playing this next-gen sequel is -- despite its focus on action over horror -- strikingly similar, from the series’ tried-and-true mechanics to the up-and-down pacing of its mayhem to the predictable behavior of its enemies. It’s like taking a spin in the souped-up new model of your old car, and the result is that, once the first couple of levels have been conquered, the color of your enemies’ skin and the verisimilitude of your dusty, run-down location cease to be pressing concerns, so consumed are you with going through well-worn video game motions.
After I’d navigated villages, marshlands, caves, laboratories and underground biochemical facilities, so much bloodshed had been spilled that I became numb to the fact that those on the receiving end of my rocket launcher and incendiary grenade attacks were hungry, psychotic African fiends -- a blindness to context, caused by a combination of interactive and storytelling tropes, that I think may ultimately be the most damning aspect of “Resident Evil 5.”
The Sandbox, a column about the intersection a film and gaming, runs biweekly.
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Andi
I don't see this game and being racist. It's a game and only a game. People spend to much time finding ways to make things racist. So the game happens to take place in Africa. Do people not relize that white people live in Africa also. Did anybody say anything when I black game character goes around killing white people? No I think not. You know racism isn't just about whites not liking blacks or whites not like latinoa or any other race. Racism goes both ways or anyway. I think this is all nonsense! By the way and i am white and my wife is black , white and chinese
Jake
Really!? I really hope no one paid you for this dime-store analysis of a VIDEOGAME.
This is hilarious. Nowadays, people will look for anything and everything to be offended by and raise a stink about. You only see racism because you want to.
I also had to laugh when this clueless Mr. Schager said Serpent and the Rainbow was "offensive." It's a great movie -- and again, you're only seeing racism because you want to.
All of which makes Mr. Schager more racist than anyone else.
what
You are neglecting the fact that this game was made by Japanese, not caucasian Americans, as you seem to imply.
Matt
I live in a racially charged environment but this is going a bit too far. I've played the game end to end and I didn't find it 'racist'.
If the main character's back story is American, then it stands to reason the main character will be American. I think the writer of this article would be far more comfortable if the main character was black, so then we would have a black central character blowing away other black people. Then that wouldn't be racist right?
But then some other writer would write an article about how video game producers shouldn't be encouraging black people to kill other black people, as this may incite or glorify gang violence that is already prevalent in Africa (and the US) today.
Maybe we should have a white central character kill other white characters. Then I'm sure someone would be complaining that video game producers are being too sensitive or that they are ignoring all other races on the earth, so that would be deemed racist too, as it would be a completely 'white' video game.
So how about a black person killing all white people? Based on the above article, that would be as equally racist, as we have one race killing another.
'Black' and 'White' are only examples too. Any combination of any race killing or hurting each other in any form of media, in this case video games, can be construed as racist.
It makes for a great, never-ending argument though. But at the end of the day, its a video game where it simulates people killing people, and video games like this have been around for decades. Its just that this writer has chosen to stop and identify the races of this one.
Woods
Stick to movies IFC. Cause its painfully obvious that you all don't know WTF you are talking about when it comes to games.
deathwithabeard
Huh. That's an interesting perspective on movies like "The Constant Gardner" (not a great film, in my opinion), where you describe it as racist because the protaganist is shaken out of his complancency and decides to no longer turn his back on the corruption which is evident right in front of his eyes. Not your exact words, since you actually describe him as a "de facto Christ figure". The protaganist (a diplomat, no less) is a westerner, right, and the film isn't made entirely by westerners, but it is for westerners: about awareness and responsibility for the actions by our side of the world. I fail to see how that's racist. I'm for calling a spade a spade, and this article smacks of righteous indignation at times.
All that said, I do agree with your assessment that RE5 "doesn't understand what it's doing" half the time.
cetius
As an adult who has been playing video games for all of his life, and seen the steady increase in realism in terms of graphics, I feel qualified to comment on this article.
First, and most obviously, is the inherent assumption that the player is analyzing the ramifications of the storyline. I know very few gamers who care about the story in any way other than how it relates to in-game objectives. As stated in the article, the "big bad" wants to use the local population as "a petri dish". This misuse of people is what makes him the bad guy, regardless of the location or racial composition of the population. The fact that the individual in question and the hero are depicted as Caucasian while most others are not is the only reason this game is being targeted as racist. As has been previously pointed out, the development company is Japanese, and foreigners being the cause and solution to the problem at hand is not new to the series.
Second, having watched friends play every incarnation of this series, and many other similar games, I can assure you that none of them have ever seen the assailants as anything other than computer-controlled zombies and not taken their encounters in the game into real life. I've never heard one of them utter a racial epitaph at the screen when being killed by a character of another ethnicity than their own.
Third, IT'S A GAME! OK, I understand that inappropriate escapism has the potential to bleed into one's behavior, but for as short as the game is, and with the fact that the zombies are indeed zombies and therefore not behaving normally should be enough to make this a non-issue.
Personally, I believe race-awareness to the degree this article takes it is part of what is keeping racism alive today. I feel the same thing about national and religious bigotry as well. People are people, and until we stop looking at the differences and start acting on the similarities, there will always be something for someone to complain about and hate will persist. Stop looking at the details and go kill some zombies--I hear it's cathartic.
