Despite the fact that Resident Evil 5 is very clearly not racist, the "zomg Resident Evil 5 is racist and nobody black worked on this game" crowd still try to find racism where racism does not exist. In an attempt to settle the debate once and for all, Videogamer reached out to an anthropologist, who is probably more qualified to talk about racism than any of us, for comment.
Glenn Bowman's official opinion? It's "silly" to call the game racist.
Bowman, who works as a senior lecturer at the University of Kent, picked up on the idea of RE5's African setting as a threatening, foreign environment, but did not take it as racial. "My sense is if you're going to set a zombie film in Africa you're going to have African zombies," he explains. "I think what they're trying to do is make a setting of terror, of anxiety. ... We could go back to the mention of that one scene you claim that people were using as a sign of racism, where supposedly a blond white woman is being dragged into a second floor house to be raped - it looked like to be raped. Well there's a couple of problems there. One is she wasn't being dragged in to be raped, she was being dragged in to be infected. And secondly the person who dragged her in is not black."
Even more interestingly, Bowman points out that an anti-colonialism element to the game's subplot: "There's the diary left behind by the kid who's eventually infected (found on a table in the Native Village section), which points out very clearly that in the past the colonials came in and exploited the local people, ripped them off of stuff, damaged them. He says that maybe they came back to give us this immunization because they felt guilty. There's something quite interesting going on with that. The fact that they actually came back to screw them up once again and infect them with this virus or disease, seems to me to be far more damning of the colonial powers towards Africa than it says anything about whether or not blacks are some sort of savages."
Ultimately, the verdict is that accusations of racism in RE5 are wrong. Go see the full interview, as it's quite an interesting read, and revel in righteousness.
Contest:
6:20 PM on 03.06.2009
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Bowman.
Also, what's this about a anti-colonialism element in the game? Color me stupid, but didn't the Africans have empires which conquered and colonized each other?
Oh, and fuck those colonial powers. A bunch of pricks, i tell you.
Tightened that up for ya.
"NO THAT'S NOT NAZI GAME !"... roflol
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I see things all of the time regarding things being racist in England. Also, if you criticize Jews in any way in Germany you're pretty much labeled a Nazi. People are actually arrested and spend YEARS in prison for simply saying that the Holocaust didn't happen. I wouldn't call that being any better than labeling things as racist.
The main reason why, however, you hear about all of this racism talk in America and not other countries is because other countries do not care to be PC. Look at the populations of countries that aren't America and tell me that their population reflects a diverse nation. They don't. In fact, in some Asians countries the native population is given PREFERENTIAL treatment for things like employment, which means they cater to those who are of the native race first.
There is also the issue of the Constitution and how people do not care about it unless they can use to to make the opposing party look bad. Political correctness is about limiting what people can discuss without any care for the fact that people have a First Amendment right.
Lastly, and maybe more importantly, the issues of everything being racist is used to divide people. If everyone realized that LEADERS are the ones who manipulate public opinion and decide who will be the next target, then maybe they would stop assuming everyone is racist and look to change things. People on the left are just used as pawns in this game because they are both guilt-ridden, and desperately want to prove how they are "the good whites." Only a truly racist mind sees race in everything.
Imagine if a child told you that their parent rubs their back for them when it is sore, and you're immediate thought is that the parent is having sex with that child. Only a fucked up mind would think that, yet this is the same thing that goes on with cries of racism.
PS - I heard that everything changed with Obama, so you can all relax now. Everything is cool.
See how easy it is?
Plus, like Avenue Q says everyone is a little bit racist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc5ztwJvfUA
Resident Evil 4 takes place in Spain if I'm not mistaken.