Zombies Go Home!
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For those who missed it, there was a horrible article about the RE5 controversy written by Earl Ofari Hutchinson in the Huffington Post recently. It’s rife with the kind of simplistic, knee-jerk, politically correct reasoning that really makes more sensible liberals look bad. The article’s entire argument seems to be that Japanese companies have marketed racist things in the past and said that they weren’t racist, and now Capcom is saying that RE5 isn’t racist, therefore RE5 must be racist (reading it, I was reminded of the juror who insists that the defendant is guilty because he shows no remorse). Ironically, I would say that the article offered a rather racist portrayal of Japanese businesses.
For a more sensible, reasoned response, I recommend Ben Fritz’s article on the same topic for Variety. He brings up a point that I think is central to the confusion that arises in these kinds of controversies, which is that the question of whether Resident Evil is “racist” is actually comprised of at least 2 questions:
1. Is Resident Evil 5 an intentionally racist statement about the inferiority of black people?
Almost definitely not. The player is given no reason to believe that the behavior of the black zombies in the game is any reflection on real black people. They are clearly being controlled by another organism (which is often seen after they die, assuming that it works the same way as in RE4) that has taken over their bodies. They might even be clinically dead already. Furthermore, far from being “disease challenged” as Hutchinson laughably contends, these africans are violent and cannot be reasoned with, but for reasons that have nothing to do with who they were as people. Its disingenuous to describe them in a way that suggests that they are sitting in tents dying of malaria or something. Add to that the fact that there are at least 6 previous games in the series filled with a veritable rainbow of zombie ethnicities, including caucasion. For all the accusations of RE5 being ignorant of African history, it is equally true that the accusers are often ignorant of Resident Evil history. To top it all off, the outbreak has been caused by a corporation run by evil white people.
I could even make an argument for how RE5 symbolically tells a story that is very sympathetic to the situation of black people in the world today, but I would be almost definitely reading too much into it. It’s clear to me that Capcom just wanted to make a zombie game set in Africa. RE5 is not a bold statement against racism, but its not racist either.
2. Does This Game Show Scenes That Might Offend Black People
This is a whole different question. Just because something doesn’t intend to offend doesn’t mean that it won’t make people feel justifiably uncomfortable. Think of it this way: if you have a wound that’s very sore and someone starts poking at it, it doesn’t really matter if that person caused the wound in the first place, or if the person is making it worse, or if the person even means to be hurtful. Regardless of these things, you’re going to tell that person to cut it the hell out.
Colonialist racism is a wound that is still sore for many people of African descent and we have a responsibility as sensitive, civilised human beings to at least try to avoid poking at it. That said, some of the promotional imagery for RE5 reminds certain people of certain horrible things that really happened in the past that they would probably rather not think about most of the time. The fact that there is a rich and complicated story behind these images is of little consolation to black people being reminded of violence and prejudice at the hands of white people out of nowhere in something as trivial as a videogame trailer.
I think a lot of the confusion and animosity surrounding this issue comes from the fact that criticisms from people like N’Gai Croal are centred around the second question of whether certain images from RE5 are offensive, whereas the games fans percieve them as having more to do with the first question of whether the game or the people who make it are intentionally promoting racism. Opportunistic pieces like the one in the Huffington Post that jump on the bandwagon, telling people that there is no other way to interpret the images in Resident Evil, only serve to fan the flames.