We all knew it was coming, but the absolutely retarded "Resident Evil 5 is SO RACIST" debate has reached the mainstream press, who are likely incredibly aroused at the thought of being able to blame racial prejudice on videogames, as well as murder and rape. Huffington Post writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson makes his position clear, in an article that blatantly headlines itself "Resident Evil Racism."
"... It was no surprise that Jun Takeuchi yanked out that script to defend his video game brainchild Resident Evil 5 from the charge that it's racist," claims the reactionary whiner. "But what else could one call it? It features a white male (modern day Bawana) mowing down a pack of poor, primitive disease challenged Africans. The white killer is on a search and destroy mission to stop the spread of a deadly virus. The racist game reinforces the worst of the worst ancient stereotypes against and about Africans."
Meanwhile, over at CNET, Lou Kenneston remains on the fence, but sadly claims he felt "uncomfortable" as he was "shotgunning a path through a crowd of feral Africans." He does not display the ignorance of Hutchinson, but he says that many players will "find it disturbing for the wrong reasons."
I am a player of Resident Evil 5, and have been shotgunning feral Africans all weekend. Am I disturbed? Am I like Hutchinson, now filled with hate for Capcom and its "racist" game? Well, I'll confess one thing. I played RE5, and I was actually quite shocked by what I experienced.
Shocked? Yes, this game is shocking. It's not what you may think, however.
Unlike Hutchinson, I have actually played Resident Evil 5, as I'm sure most of you have. I have maintained for a long time that Resident Evil 5 is not racist, but I must admit I had some preconceptions about the game. First of all, I was expecting to be able to laugh at the out-of-context nature of a white man gunning down African villagers in a mainstream videogame. As longtime readers may have already gathered, I've something of a morbid sense of humor, and pretending the game legitimately was some sort of KKK propaganda amused me greatly.
However, while the game has amused me greatly, it's not because I could take the game out of context and laugh at it ... but because I couldn't.
While playing, I couldn't stop laughing -- the game is so UNracist that it's hilarious thinking about all these crybabies who are stomping their feet over it. I played the game and I couldn't even pretend I was playing an ethnic cleansing sim for a joke. The "poor primitive Africans" are so very clearly zombie-like monsters that I could not reconcile their appearance with actual African villagers. Maybe it's simply because I'm not constantly looking for racism, like these other people clearly are, but as much as I did look, I found a very unracist game that was not laughing at black people. Not that all the Ganados/Majini in the game ARE black people. There are quite a few infected white folk, too.
This doesn't even go into the fact that the real villains of the game are evil white men, who exploit the native Africans. The African monsters, incurable as they are, deserve sympathy for being, in essence, victims of an evil white company that is fulfilling the acceptable stereotype of the warmongering, exploitative Westerner. The game goes at great lengths, unnecessarily so in my view, to point out that the monstrous Majini were once peaceful villagers, who were lied to and tricked into infection because they just wanted to protect their families and accepted an "immunization" from the evil white man.
Resident Evil 5 can only be construed a racist by those who have not actually played the game, and really, those people have no basis for their argument until they actually sit down and take the time to experience the thing. The fact that Hutchinson can sit there and viciously attack not just Capcom, but the entire games industry and its supporters, based on second-hand knowledge and a videogame he clearly knows fucking nothing about, is quite disgusting, and ironically bigoted.
If anything, Capcom's latest in the Resident Evil series proves only one thing -- that we can never have something involving black people that won't cause a race debate. That's pretty fucking sad if you ask me. If we lived in a world that these anti-racist folks claim to want, then we would be working towards having a game like Resident Evil 5 that could be released without the controversy. If only we were mature enough and capable of seeing a game set in Africa without clicking our heels together and hoping to find some juicy racism to be upset about.
Even if we don't find that racism, we'll invent it. That's what has happened with Resident Evil 5, a game so not-racist it's betrayed the ignorance of everybody who deems it thus. Anybody who calls RE5 racist from this point forward is officially a fucking moron who didn't play it and/or can't tell the difference between a monster and a real black man (which makes them totally racist). I'm not going to pull the overplayed "nobody complains about white zombies" card, because we don't even need to go that far. The simple fact is that the villains of RE5 are so obviously infected and inhuman killers, that only someone who's trying really hard to see racism could compare them to real people.
Hell, I already said that I tried to see the racism, and even through trying I couldn't see anything. Even attempting to pretend that the game was racist, the imagery of the infected Majini was just too monstrous to conquer. Later in the game you meet the Majinis who follow the traditions of their human ancestors, donning tribal paint and even throwing spears. Even with that kind of imagery, the thought of racism was far from my mind. I was too busy concentrating on the terrifying fucking monsters that were coming to kill me. Not the black monsters ... just the monsters.
Perhaps some would argue that I am being naive, that I am just too insensitive to black struggles to be disturbed and affected by the racial element to this game. Perhaps that might be true to some extent, too. But you know, I'd rather be naive than unable to enjoy harmless things like movies and videogames because I'm afraid that there might be some racism in them. I'd rather be insensitive than so sensitive that everything upsets and hurts me. I believe I've only got one life on this rotten little planet, and it's too short for me to not try and enjoy it. When I play Resident Evil 5, I'm too busy having fun to bitch and moan about a subtext that isn't even there. If my ability to have fun is a product of my naivety, than I am naive and fucking proud.
As for people like Earl Ofari Hutchinson? Stop being a fucking moron, play the game, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find something more important than racism ... you'll actually find some fucking fun for once in your life.
Contest:
4:00 PM on 03.15.2009
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Good Read.
Since when has a rated M game, which can't be bought by persons under 17, been considered kid stuff? The rest of the press world needs to wake up to the fact that video games cater to an older demographic as well; it's not just for the kids anymore.
while I side with you on this whole idea, i feel like attacking the "fucking moron(s)" diminishes anything that you are saying. relax and be critical and concise thats the only way "fucking moron(s)" are going to even value what you have to say and like I said your points are great.
"They have all been called on the carpet in recent years for churning out such racially offensive video games as Spanish for Everyone, Super Punch Out, Kung Fu Chaos, Freaky Flyers and Hommie Hollerz."
Because, obviously, Spanish for Everyone and Super Punch Out! were programmed by the Nazis to make us HATE EVERYONE.
It's official, teaching people how to speak spanish through videogame form is now a form of racism.
I'll stop now.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, or that the series has ever tried for anything more, but isn't that kind of sad in and of itself?
We want people to make games and not statements, but we also want games to evolve as cultural products, which will inevitably involve more sensitive usage of setting, writing and gameplay.
I will lift my restraining order on my Xbox 360 and play this now!
GRACIAS YIM STIRLING!!!!
Oh and Jim, I know I'm nitpicking here but technically the Ganados are exclusive to RE4. In RE5 they are called Majini.
The fastest match times posted in Super Punchout!! are against Piston-Hurricane.
Certainly Jim, we all love to see you get British angry on some dudes. But somewhere along the line, I'd love to see you, or someone else, tackle the debate from a level approach and, from a point of empathy for the otherside of the argument.
You make good points as someone's that's played the game. But these gamer-centric tirades, though appreciated and well received, are the stuff that mainstream detractors cream their business suits for.
1) Simple word-usage error. In Resident Evil 5, the common zombie-like enemy is not a Ganado. They're called Majini.
2) "Later in the game you meet the Ganados who are so far gone, they've started mimicking their ancestors, donning tribal paint and even throwing spears." Actually they didn't "regress" into "mimicking" their ancestors. That was, apparently, an actual tribal community who came into contact with the new Type 3 Plagas.
Note: It doesn't matter if the retailers slack and sell it to a minor... that's a totally different story altogether that speaks of retailers being stupid.
Punch Out, and most fighting games, go for cultural stereotypes to represent nationality. No one gets in a bunch about it, because its often not to any serious detriment to anyone. Much like RE5.
@Neverdizzle
Spainards don't have imagery and media representation as a part of their history of racism (Amos and Andy, black sterotypes and slurrs in Bugs Bunny cartoons, extensive old comicstrip media charged with racial offensive images), so there's less of a sensitivity.
There's whole college curriculae and books about media representations of black people.
Equitable, nah, I guess not. Present and tangible? For better or worse, yep.
Jim, it's ridiculous of you to say that Resident Evil 5 is completely innocuous. Now, look, when it comes to accusations of racism, of sinister motivation, I agree that Capcom most likely had no intentions to present such a message. But it's been said before: that's because racism is a largely foreign concept in Japan. There has been no slavery there, no civil rights movement; which is why they approach the subject with a childlike na�vete, why there are blackface characters in anime still today which would never ever go unnoticed in American culture.
And if you were Japanese, Jim, I could ignore your post on the same basis, but as a Briton I would expect better. This is not simply a case of a muscular, white He-Man mowing down tribes of Africans (although, if it were just that, it would still be worthy of discussion). Anyone who gets past the first chapter (I won't insult you by asking of you the tired old "Have YOU played it?" defense of the gamer) knows that you're dealing with enemies in giant Tiki masks, wielding spears, dressed in grass, and jumping around like chimpanzees. This is LOADED IMAGERY in its purest form and it's unfathomable to declare it as anything but.
Now here is where I seem to disagree with the gaming community at large: I consider RE5 an extremely scary and, well, disturbing game, and it is quite because of these images that you apparently find so comical. I am greatly distressed by fighting such caricatures; and not only that, I am, as a gamer, being challenged by a story which fits quite nicely as a parable for current political meddling in Africa. Yeah, I said it.
So do I consider Resident Evil 5 an artistically successful work? Yes. However, on that same token, unless the game itself handles the images that it uses with some degree of caution and understanding or empathy, then it's a socially irresponsible work as well. In my opinion, it is, and to see the notation of such laughed off as hysteria or sensationalism is disgustingly ignorant, and this whole tripe about the media simply looking to create controversy through shallow accusations is a very, very immature one for us gamers to have now that we've moved past Jack Thompson.
Oh good, look how much I've written.
I love.
Write blogs. Lots of them.
Welcome to Destructoid.
Nice spelling. It's spelled Majini.
It was fun being a gamer but this is my SOUL on the line here...
Maybe something has changed from the moment people starting complaining about racist trailers and the release, but the game, in it's current form, I don't think can be called racist...
Still do not approve of tank controls however
Now everyone is bitching an moaning about how white guys can't shoot black guys, but black guys can shoot each other and its alright.
you know, the only black person i wanted to shoot was sheva and i feel cheated. If anything this game is sexist
To be quiet honest, i feel for both sides of the argument. I just finished the game maybe about an hour ago and am prepping to go right back in. Did I find it racist or should i say naive? No not really. Could i see how it easily could be mistaken to be as such? Yeah its not that hard. I personally fall under the common category of "HAY GUIS ITS JUST A GAME KKBAI." But still i can see how someone could get a titty all in a twist over this fine piece of entertainment.
personally when i see someone (a zombie if you will) with blood coming from the corners of their mouth/eyes/anus with the intent of causing me bodily harm.. no matter their color or gender, i am going to kill them in anyway i can.
People point the finger at the easiest thing to blame for the world topling over itself such as video games, film and pornography. When in reality they should be looking into a fucking mirror.
I find it funny when a mass amount of lives have been taken, it is posted on every news paper on the front page. I don't know about you, but it doesn't really bother me if people die, because thats what people do for fuck sake.
Much respect.
Wuh? Zuh?
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where you're coming from. I just don't get it. But that's not because you can't articulate your point, you most certainly have a gift with words. I am just one of those gamers that treats them as such. Yeah, you're fighting extremely stereotypical African caricatures, but it's just a game. Shit like this has been around since the beginning of video games. The freaking Atari has a horrendously stereotypical game (Custer's Last Stand).
The entire time I played the game this weekend, race never crossed my mind once which I find ironic since I've been reading article after article about the racism card being played. But I was just too busy having fun.
That's just brilliant...
When you study African literature, the thing that's striking about it is just how under the radar most of African "classics" are, because the sad fact is, whenever you hear about Africa these days it's about one of two things: a) Aids or b)warfare and strife. Despite the problems, there is still a ton of culture there that could be studied and enjoyed, but it's ignored.
It's telling that I was able to take a class called "African Literature", as though all the literature of the continent could be covered as though it were one topic, yet the idea of "European Literature" is ridiculous. My 'European Literature" classes started at "Poetry of the later Renaissance" and got more esoteric from there.
Anyway, the point is Africa is completely ignored by the popular media-- partially because the current troubles distract from appreciating the culture, and partially because people are afraid that they can't possibly include Africans in anything for fear of invoking "imagery of oppression." Do you know why the imagery of slavery and oppression is still so potent? Because there's been nothing to replace it. To create new, more positive imagery to associate with the people and the continent, people would have to be willing to use Africa as a venue for art and entertainment: RE5 has done this. They needed a location, and they picked Africa, because Africa EXISTS and this fact was not lost on them.
I don't believe that RE5 is racist for reasons mostly covered by Jim, however obviously there's no divine arbiter of subtext or anything, so I'm not even going to argue the point over whether or not RE5 can be INTERPRETED as rascist. Of course it can. However, warts and all, Capcom dared to treat Africa as an actual venue for popular entertainment-- and I'm quite honestly afraid that no one is going to be masochistic enough to ever do that again.
And if Capcom replaced all the black zombies with white zombies, wouldn't that be just as racist? You're basically keeping the black zombies out because they are black. And I believe thats called DISCRIMINATION... against black zombies.
Going on from what Johnny justice said; was there any controversy when it came to killing Spanish in RE4?