Why I Won’t Be Playing Resident Evil 5, Part One: Reinforcing the Stereotype of a Black Threat (aka “The Other”)

Having wrestled with the decision for a long time, I’ve finally reached some personal conclusions that I’d like to outline in my next few posts. There’s simply too much to discuss in Resident Evil 5 for one single blog post, so I’m going to break it down into a few pieces expressing my views on the game itself and also its coverage in the gaming press. Here goes.

I’ve been a fan of the Resident Evil series since Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998 and, truthfully, I am sad to be passing up the fifth instalment now after being a fan of eleven years. I’m not going to forsake the series altogether, but after researching for this article I just can’t reconcile my desire to play the game with its representation of Africans and the use of violent imagery as it is in RE5.

From a story and love-of-the-series perspective, I really do want to find out what’s happened to Jill, how Wesker’s plot will be resolved (if it ever is) and how the hell the Mansion comes back into play (if that even is the Mansion shown in trailers). However, from what I’ve played of the demo, seen in trailers, and read about in the bevy of articles written prior to its release, it seems to me that Capcom has released a socially irresponsible product in Resident Evil 5 that I simply cannot justify playing for myself. I don’t want to tacitly accept its ill conceived messages, and I hate to think of how many people may play the game without ever giving it the critical look it deserves. It’s not that RE5 is the only game that has skirted the lines of political correctness, but it’s a prime example of a game that players should be giving serious thought to why they are playing, and what they are gaining from the experience, be it positive or negative.

To give some context to my feelings about RE5, I think I need to identify myself a bit. I am a white middle class, able-bodied, male. I’m privileged over many people in so many ways—experiencing a system of unearned benefits every day—and I must always recognize this in order to be the socially responsible person I aspire to be. I have no conception of what it is like to be discriminated against in any significant way. I have never struggled financially, experienced what it is like to be a person of color (POC), or experienced the challenges disabled individuals face.

Now you may be reading this thinking “Okay, well, RE5 never goes out of its way to be explicitly racist or discriminatory to people of African decent or anyone else. Besides, we’ve all killed thousands of zombies of every creed (especially Spanish in RE4) in all the Resident Evil games since the first. Why should I feel any different about killing African zombies than Spanish ones? Why do you, Reid?”

Well, there’s a good laundry list of reasons, but it starts with me not understanding what it’s like to be a POC. When I’m talking about racism, I don’t mean the overt kind that isn’t socially acceptable, like racial slurs, denying job opportunities or outright violence towards people of color: I mean a more subtle kind of racism, one that is no less damaging or inappropriate. The kind that keeps people from taking a seat next to a POC on the bus because they are vaguely uncomfortable, or the kind that makes you cross the street from someone different from you at night so you don’t have to cross paths with them. My problem with RE5 is that it reinforces this kind of thinking. After a few days of playing the game, it can and will become engrained in some players’ minds that a black body is a dangerous one. If this translates into real life, even if the player knows it is silly to think a black person might be a zombie, or more particularly a dangerous threat, if the thought so much as enters a player’s mind after playing the game, then is that not fostering racism? Is that not participating in racist behaviour?

This may be difficult to imagine, but I know that for me, after playing a game like Tony Hawk or Skate for weeks on end I start to see things in the real world that look like I could trick off of or grind. I know that after playing horde in Gears of War for a couple of days it becomes second nature to see objects, real-world ones, as cover for a would-be gunfight. I feel like I learned the basic mechanics of driving a car from Grand Theft Auto III. I realize in the moment that it is silly, but it is a lens through which my world experience is filtered, simply because of the media that I choose to consume and experience most days: videogames. I imagine it is the same for many.

If I chose to purchase and play Resident Evil 5 and found that it functioned to make me, in any way, relate seeing a black person specifically as a threat (even on some very small level) I would be extremely disappointed and ashamed, to say the least. But if I am honest with myself, and I hope anyone that reads this article and also chooses to play RE5 is with themselves as well, could I truly make the claim that this would never happen to me if I played RE5? I don’t know. Maybe being aware of this potential issue I could avoid it, but how many people that will play RE5 without a critical eye will have this same experience and not be able to identify it? How will someone who is ambivalent (no, ‘ambivalent’ is not a synonym of ‘indifferent)’ towards black people digest the information, that black people are threats, after playing Resident Evil 5? How would a member of the black community feel playing White-as-Snow, Super-Buff Chris Redfield, killing skinny, starving, fully-dark African one after another, zombie or no? There is reinforced imagery and behaviour happening in doing this, even if the player is able to remind themselves that these Africans are simply zombies.

“Early on in the game a group of black Africans are seen beating a bag with a body inside. When Chris approaches them they stop, the bag is motionless and they stare menacingly at Chris. There is no suggestion that the men are infected.” - Wesley Yin-Poole, Videogamer.com

How would this imagery, for instance, be perceived by someone who has never played a RE game before? This is the first RE on this generation of consoles, so there is a strong likelihood that it will be attracting many new players who aren’t used to the tropes of the RE universe. This scene seems menacing, to be sure, and it sets a tone, but it’s so straightforward in its brutishness that it is problematic. In the beginning of Resident Evil 4 there is a similar tone-setting scene in which one of the two police officers that escort the player to the infected town is discovered impaled and burning in the middle of the village. The villagers are going about their work as usual, ignoring the burning body. This scene seems so horrific, and so outlandish that it’s clear that it’s meant to provoke scares, showing the player what these infected people are capable of.

But a beating in the street? It’s clear that these men couldn’t put Chris Redfield in a sack and knock him around. And there’s no sign that what they’re doing, publicly beating somebody, is any different from their normal routine when Chris arrives. It’s not a horror mechanic showing an extreme and unbelievable violence to shock the audience. It’s a mundane, contemporary kind of violence that actually happens in real life. Why choose to use this kind of imagery now, Capcom, when the game is set in an impoverished nation that is not predominately white? Why is violence so much more real, so much more normalized, now that Resident Evil is set in Africa?

This use of imagery, whether intended as racist or not, quite simply is racist, even if I don’t personally believe that Capcom desired to create a racist product. The imagery used is a message open to interpretation, and there is a strong likelihood that it will be interpreted in ways outside of the simple zombie vs. human dynamic, and I highly doubt that Capcom was blind to this possibility. Were they right in releasing Resident Evil 5? Was it necessary to set it in Africa, and contemporize the violence used? Did this chapter in the Resident Evil saga actually need its own blockbuster game to be told, or could it have simply been a sidenote in the lore, eliminating the need for the repeated use of imagery of violence against blacks?

More thoughts coming soon. Thanks for reading.