Defending the Good Name of Capcom…

          

During the lecture today, after watching the trailer of Resident Evil 5, someone in class were not only showing the emotion of anger, but even fury at some stage, about the misrepresentation of the native Africans which Capcom have done so badly in their game. At some level, my passion is with the minority. At that moment, I too want to condemn Capcom based on how they re-mediate the image of native African in an extremely negative, aggressive and violent way. It seemed like the production team behind Resident Evil 5 was totally irresponsibility. How could they show the gaming community the wrong image of the resident who they themselves didn’t even know about? However, after I calmed down, I found myself in a position of understanding and forgiving. It is really not their fault.

Back in old days, this was not the first time I heard about this protest against the Ethnicity issue in RE5. Of course, someone didn’t like it because they immediately link its content to racialism, but just like coin having two sides, the argument dose too. When someone had problem, other thought it was nothing, at least nothing big enough to raise such controversy, simply because it was just a game. Beside, in this particular game, even Capcom showed the native African acting violently, but only for a reason, as they got aggressive because of the virus they carry. They were simply sick. No participant compared the in-game violent behavior among the native African to the image of African in the real world. It is our consciousness which tells us that these two images are not the same. The gamers should able to prevent the wrong impression becoming their actual wrong perceived understanding. I think they are right, but it still didnt explain why I insist that Capcom is innocent; it only explained why we should not take the game too seriously, emotionally and personally. And the following is why.

The reason I think that Capcom is innocent as always, is because they didn’t show an image they intentionally and originally created to deceive the world, but only showed an image the world already knew, the stereotype of the native African. If we turn on the TV, even though we knew that Africa hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2010, however the most common information we received was either the massacre done by one of those African dictator, or the African cannibalism in the discovery channel. When these images became cognize perceived, it was really hard to correct it. If you really want to blame someone for sending out the wrong image, I think you better blame the News agency and maybe the Hollywood, but not Capcom. After the massive amount of brain-wash broadcasting programs ironically from the land of freedom, how could the rest of world not think the native African in such horrible way?