Hello All,
Last July, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), videogame developer and publisher Capcom showed off the trailer to the newest edition of their Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 5. It caused a stir among many observers that felt that the trailer contained imagery that can be construed as racist. Essentially the trailer opens up with the white protagonist entering what appears to be an African village. Some people are walking in plain sight, and others are in the shadows. Many of the villagers are infected with a virus that turns them into blood-thirsty zombies, and they begin attacking the hero. The hero then kills a bunch of them. You can view the trailer here.
When taken out of context, you essentially have a white hero killing a bunch of (now that they’ve been infected) sub-human black villains. This looks really bad, as N’Gai Croal has argued. You can read some of his comments from his interview on race with MTV here. Here is the link to Croal’s comments about the Resident Evil 5 trailer that has generated all of this controversy.
If I may provide a little context here, I will. Many people have criticized Croal, saying that this game is not racist at all, and it just happens to take place in Africa. The first game took place in a mansion, with white zombies. The second game took place in a city, and had zombies of mixed ethnicity. The third game, Resident Evil 3, also had mixed zombies. I don’t remember whether Resident Evil Code Veronica had mixed zombies or not. The fifth major Resident Evil game, Resident Evil 4, took place in a Spanish village and had mostly (if not all white zombies). With this context in mind, it is easy to see why people feel that Croal may be blowing this out of proportion.
Other people, including 1up.com editor Shawn Elliot, agree with Croal’s assessment that “This imagery has a history.” Elliot wrote a blog dealing with historical context, and why this Africa setting could be so problematic. Kotaku.com, another notable gaming website, has sided with Croal, and feels that more mature discussions of race need to be considered in videogames.
I thought all of this was interesting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which because I like N’Gai Croal very much, but also because of our reading this week. While it is not directly related to our story, I thought the timing was good for me to mention it. If there are any more links people would like, let me know, and I’ll try to provide them.
