so resident evil 5 has a new trailer, it’s made a storm, etc: this trailer displays a lot of zombie/infected people, all of whom look poor and are definitely black. i’ll be writing two parts to this: one is dropping into the debate and wedging my fat mouth in the middle of an already-complicated conversation; the other is picking up Ethan Zuckerman’s point about how the dialog is all wonky on this one, and what that means.
One funny note is that the controversy all revolves around ‘background narrative’; the gameplay is a mystery (and if it plays like RE4, doesn’t obviously factor into the arguments at all, other than possible setting it up very easily to simply be blasting through hordes of villagers, with the major bosses being either animals, older (white) characters from previous episodes, or a mutant with rotting grey skin) at this point. So we’re starting this fight outside of the gamer’s native territory, so to speak. For a large number of people, the story slides easily into the background, regardless of the color, language, or words or any sort of this background. Of course, to some insightful folks, that might make it all the more insidious/creepy/outright scary. After all, there’s this old argument in psychology/cultural studies that it’s the things we don’t pay attention to that affect us to the most, and that connects to an old argument in racial discussion that race is most ‘invisible’ to people who benefit the most from it.
another funny note is that while i was writing this, the serpent and the rainbow came on. HA.
From the trailer, we don’t get a lot, and it looks like an easy setup for White Hero Puts Down Savage, Dehumanized Poor Black People Somewhere. And, without knowing much about Capcom, or having the easily acquired stereotype about how Japanese folks are racially insensitive and like blackface and all, it does seem fairly easy to have some alarms start ringing about how often black people around the world are viewed as out-of-control, superstitious + violent, or as easily disposable targets.
On the other side, some gamers are putting up that weakest-of-defenses, IT’S JUST A GAME/THEY’RE JUST ZOMBIES. Gah, what a terribly bleak perspective to participate in anything with!
Luckily, some people on both sides are looking at this thinking deeper. In the Gamer’s Quarter forums, some thoughtful gamers have noted that it’s possible (although unlikely) that Capcom will use this as a platform precisely to make people uncomfortable with their assumptions about race. Games do have some amazing potential to trigger feelings of guilt and complicity (viz. the emotional attachment of interaction), and could be used as a fantastic platform. If the player-as-Chris-Redfield were to find out that the zombie they successfully blew up in one mission were in fact innocent civilians named as targets by a rival family or tribe or political party, that might actually, you know, be a really decent use of video game action to point to the complexity of politics around the word and the pitfalls awaiting neocolonial do-gooders.
As Isfet sez in the TGQ thread: “Edward Said would probably not enjoy RE4 or 5.” While from the gamer’s perspective, Capcom (and
Biohazard/RE in particular) have shown at least *some* level of sophistication in their subcutaneous themes and messages. Dead Rising,
a different zombie story from Capcom, derived its zombie-plot from US attempts at developing drugs to grow fatter, calmer cattle in Latin
America. And to a lot of people, the fact that the series has killed a lot of white people in the past means that it’s just focusing it’s
gritty, violent, “one-hero-stops-the-apocalypse” lens on a different chunk of the world.I doubt that Capcom has a nuanced, politically
savvy argument behind it, but I don’t think that it’s impossible that it might have at least a message about American corporatism,etc. Probably simplistic, but its a step away from willful ignorance.
And that is *still* separate from the (valid, but meek and distant in the eyes of many) criticism of the fact that stories about black people around the world invariably are stories about how they broken, or poor, or violent, or have violence done to them: a point dealt with by Zuckerman (though not unique to him by any means!) as “Africa is a continent, not a crisis“; will there be a heroic, trustable splinter group? a helpful, english-speaking guide who is cruelly torn to pieces by his own folk, or worse, by a rogue whitey? what role do those black people who’ve been turned into zombies play: backdrop, victims, people? neutrality is impossible, because at worst, their status as neutral targets means
I believe in the earlier RE games, there were moments of seeing people lives in transition from zombiehood to not: cars in the middle of the street, cups of coffee on tables, etc. (I could be wrong and remembering Silent Hill, instead). But I wonder what kinds of touches like that will be present in RE5.
To be sure, if game-makers want to be taken seriously*, we’ll be better served if we catch up with some of the cultural dialogues around us; in
fact, we have an excellent opportunity to leapfrog ahead of some of the crappier bits. Our landmark “Birth of A Nation” piece doesn’t actually
have to be a piece of reactionary racist cultural bullshit (albeit of stunning technical excellence and emotive power), for instance.
*viz. any arguments about games as art, games as agents for social change, games as worthy of serious study, or games as a global media
phenomenon, even.
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