Why I Won’t Be Playing Resident Evil 5, Part Two

So my last post, detailing why I had chosen not to play Resident Evil 5, seems to have touched a few nerves with some readers. I’ve decided to dedicate the second part of my discussion about RE5 to some of the issues raised in last week’s comments section.

Before I start though, there are few things I’d like to say lest passion take you over and you want to rush to the comments section to tell me how wrong my opinions are:

First, shoulderbuttons is a discussion space. Please treat it as such. It’s not a cage match, nor a petition. This means no more personal attacks on me or other commenters, please. If you disagree with me, that’s peachy. I hope we can learn from it. But I don’t need to be attacked to understand your point. I’m simply trying to foster discussion with those who want to have it and think critically about gaming culture and the industry. I don’t need to be told that I will not, or cannot, change things by writing this blog, and that I should be out protesting or something if I truly cared about the topics I choose to write about. Intelligent discussion is where new ideas, and changes, begin. Thank you, everyone reading this, for respecting these guidelines and ideas.

Hopefully, with this out of the way, we can all tastefully disagree with each other without mudslinging, and maybe, just maybe, start to treat the videogame medium with the seriousness it is finally starting to deserve. The industry is no longer in its infancy and we owe it to gaming, and to ourselves as gamers, to give it a critical look now and then. Too often, we blindly defend our entertainment of choice because we are so used to protecting it from uninformed scrutiny (Hot Coffee mod, the Mass Effect ‘sex scandal,’ uh, anything that ever came out of Jack’s mouth). If, however, you are like me and wish someday to see games be recognized as a legitimate form of narrative, or even art, then we as gamers have to start treating it seriously ourselves first.

That includes making criticisms and asking difficult questions about some of our favorite games when they broach sensitive topics like racism, sexism, violence against women, homosexuality, disability, mental illness, religion or anything of that nature. Games, and developers, are not always in the right in the ways they choose to present some of these issues. To smooth things over by saying “it’s just a game” is doing videogames, as a growing medium, an injustice. Games must treat their subject matter with as much respect as any other medium. Even satire, something like the Grand Theft Auto series, must understand what it is before it can make humor from serious situations. I think GTA does, for the most part, understand how to present itself and how it can be a (de)constructive commentary about North American culture, despite themes of murder, drug-abuse, racism, kidnapping, extortion, etc. The trouble I have with RE5 is that I don’t think it is aware of itself.

I don’t mean to say this as a condemnation of Capcom. A lot of people seem to think I am making the claim that Capcom is overtly trying to ‘say something’ about black people. I don’t think that RE5 is inherently racist. I do believe that there are scenarios in the game that depict black people pretty poorly, to say the least. I think that Capcom has inadvertently leaned on some serious racial stereotypes in their game, and my problem is that these kinds of issues weren’t checked at the door. So to be clear: I don’t think Capcom invented racism. Also, I don’t believe that playing RE5 will make you a racist, or that if you enjoyed the game it is because you are a racist. Far from it. However, I think that RE5 is a prime example of the kind of game that needs a critical eye turned on it, and not to be forgiven simply because so many of us love the series, or because it is a videogame, or any other excuse. I believe, to some extent, that the developers must have been aware of the imagery they used, and how it is plays into racism. There are some stark themes in the game: white versus black (Chris versus black zombie hordes and no, half-black half-white companions do not make it better), black as scary, black as primitive, black as poor, black as weak and susceptible, ‘developed’ nations versus ‘undeveloped’ nations just to list a few.

Now, despite the title of this post, I have started to play RE5, but with a pen and notepad in hand. It was clear that I couldn’t criticize the game based solely on what I had seen in trailers and in the demo. I just wrapped the Ogre-boss (the one you fight from the mounted truck-gun, and who whips telephone poles at you), so I’m a few good hours into the game. To be honest, when I started playing, I really felt like I was going to see a lot of what I had already written about and feel embarrassed for having spoken out against it. From playing, I’ve actually come away more surprised with the racial representations in the game than I thought I would be. One of the stand-out worst moments for me is still the sack beating (the whole scene starts at 4:10 in the video) at the beginning of the game. Again, there’s no indication that anyone involved in the scene is infected. The beating happens in the middle of the day, in an otherwise bustling kind of town. There are other villagers walking around and no one is paying any mind to the men with large knives and bats beating something or someone tied up in a sack. Even as Chris and Sheva, you can watch this beating for as long as you like, but you are never allowed to actually intervene. This scene seems to speak that this place--Africa, as opposed to North America or Spain--is dangerous normally, never mind the impending zombie infestation. To go back on something I said in my last post, this scene actually isn’t anything like the burning of the policeman (seen at 2:40 in the video) in RE4. By the sack beating scene in RE5 the player hasn’t even been attacked yet, nor are they attacked by the perpetrating thugs. Why not? If it were an infected in the sack, would they not say something about it to Chris or anyone else in the town? Would no one in the town show some concern? If those men themselves were infected, would they not attack Chris and Sheva? This is how the violence in RE5 is normalized and contemporized. Violence in this new setting is treated as normal in the first thirty seconds of the game.

A second sore point that has stood out for me in the first half of the game is the color of the enemy hierarchy. Every game with enemies has weak, moderate, and strong enemies that are usually distinguished visually somehow. In RE5, the stronger an enemy, the darker his skin. Many have pointed out the peppering of white zombies in the hordes at the beginning of the game, but it didn’t take long (maybe until the mine level) that the white zombies disappeared almost entirely. On top of that, the game had by then started introducing more difficult enemies, like the burly guys who bull-rush you, or the chainsaw men similar to those in RE4. Both of these enemies are darker skinned than the regular zombie horde. The burly guys are so dark that, at one point, my co-op partner said “I’m not trying to be racist or anything, but these guys are so dark I can’t even see them.”

Now this is where the message might be confused and some might think I’m accusing Capcom of saying that the darker someone is, the scarier they are. No. I am not saying that. I am, however, calling out that exact pre-existing stereotype and saying that Capcom has applied it here in their enemy hierarchy (outside of stylized bosses). This is the issue I have with RE5 as a whole: it’s latched onto pre-existing stereotypes about public violence in Africa, darkness being scary, whiteness as good and cleansing and has incorporated these ideas into their game, misinformed as they are.

Like Yahtzee said, “Capcom aren’t bad people, they’re just idiots.”

So, no, I don’t think RE5 is a bad game that no one should play. I simply think that it’s a game deserving some raised eyebrows and some thought to how it represents race. I could easily go on about RE5, but I’d really like to move on from this discussion here at shoulderbuttons for the time being. I hope everyone can bring some constructive points to the comments section. Thank you.

Here’s some behind the scenes for you. There’s a handful of quotes I dug up to use in the article, but decided against in favour of letting my own voice drive the post, and also part of a discussion I had with a friend that really helped open up how I thought about the game. Have a look and see what you think:

“The comparison to RE4 is a great one that I fully intend to build upon in one of my next posts. Yes, shooting a bunch of Spaniards is just as bad, but, like you and many other people pointed out, the game will have zombies local to wherever the game is set. Spain will have Spanish zombies. Africa will have African zombies. But the Spanish zombies in RE4 didn't imp Spanish stereotypes. There were no zombie matadors. Why are there Africans that "revert" (to stereotypes, mind you) to their more "primal" selves and don headdresses and the like in RE5? Nothing in RE4 made commentary on Spanish people. It could have been set in Amish America without having changed a thing other than the voice acting. I guess I want to know why African zombies imp African stereotypes when Spanish ones didn't. And why there is so much recognizable imagery of African strife (the huge, dark guy with the megaphone a la Black Hawk Down, but who is also reminiscent of a diamond lord or a guerilla warlord) but none to be found in RE4? There's social problems in Spain. Why did they choose to highlight the social problems and associated imagery only in RE5, in Africa, and never in Spain or even America in REs 1,2 and 3? Seems fishy to me. Not intentional, I don't think, but definitely not very cognizant of existing social stigmas.” – Me, in a conversation about RE5

“But discussions about colonialism are only dealt with obliquely in the game — Chris never reflects on his position as a white male in Africa nor does he discuss race with his African partner, Sheva. The game presents only one option to survive against African zombies: kill every single one.” – Jamin Brophy-Warren, “’Resident Evil 5’ Reignites Debate About Race in Videogames,” The Wall Street Journal

“The point isn't that you can't have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn't see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don't understand what you're talking about and think that you're sort of seeing race where nothing exists?” – N’Gai Croal, “This Imagery Has A History,” MTV Multiplayer

“My problem is that it presents a fantasy I don't desire. It looks like it's an advertisement to virtually shoot poor people...Shooting zombies is something I can get behind...But when I see a town of what looks like impoverished African villagers — the very image of global poverty, the very spectacle that since my youth has been coded in me to evoke sympathy and charity — I don't want to pull the trigger.” – Stephen Totilo, “That Notorious “Resident Evil 5″ Trailer And The People I Met In Africa,” MTV Multiplayer

And of course, Zero Punctuation's review of RE5, which makes a brief but hilariously critical comment on racism in the game.