Zombie Apartheid

Well wasn’t last Friday an intense class! I wasn’t so convinced that Resident Evil 5 was as racist as some might have felt. So I decided to get out the game in order to make an informed decision. Here are my findings….

The main character in the game is Chris Redfield. He is a white American male, late 20’s and cut like a bull. You might remember him from previous game. Within the first few cut scene he establishes himself as someone who is sensitive to the fact that on a global scale, Americans have a bad rap. This generates the vibe of “Yay he’s not on of those confederate-dick Americans.” Throughout the game Chris works along side a female African character, Sheva. The poster girl for the right of blacks and woman, get out of town. 

Look it's the United Nations

In the spirit of Half-life 2 Chris and Sheva have and egalitarian relationship like Gordon Freeman and Alyx whereby they save and assist each other equally. In this way the game is not so much about a white guy killing a whole bunch of them Negros but rather two heroes, representative of both white and black people, fighting a common enemy… Mother-fucking Zombies.

Now I have quite a lot of respect for the zombies in the game. Aside from be the aggressor these zombies hardly have a negative characterization, like being portrayed as a bunch of lazy porch monkeys or hood rats. The zombies are strong, intelligent, fight quite systematically and most important of all and most importantly THEY ARE NOT ALL BLACK! There Arabic zombies looking and even white zombies. Bet you didn’t think Redfield would pop off his own kind!

Is that Eminem?

In class it was mentioned that there is a cut scene in which some “black” Zombies attack a poor innocent white women. Boy do I have news for you! It just so happen that white woman is a zombie who has a razor sharp tentacle head and you have just stumbled into her trap. I don’t know how you interpret this but I believe this is enough evidence to accept that the game seek to single ethnicity by establishing them as the enemy. Also a point in class I raised was that the game is set in Africa, so the fact there are black people walking about getting infected with the T-virus seem quite reasonable.

My final point relates to the theories we have been exploring in the lecture. Many of us have probably come to accept that violent videogame do not make people violent. We have become aware of terms such as hypermediacy, which acknowledge that we have the capacity to acknowledge something as part of a media construction. Or the concept the Magic Circle in which whatever we do with in the game-space is only happening within the game-space.  I’m mean the kiddies didn’t strike the Bodo doll hoping to make it cry (Psychology inside joke, wiki Bodo Doll Experiment).

This is Immediacy

First of all these are not real humans, or real black people, they are fiction computer generated image. Second, incase we should forget this there are moments of hypermediacy within the game, like when a this human-like character head open up into something that looks like a Venus Fly Trap, to remind us that we are playing a game and these are not real people. Third, most of the gaming community doesn’t play these games to have a good lynch, do they?

This is Hypermediacy

Anyway, this is just my experience and opinions on the game. I have come to the conclusion that the game doesn’t come across as racist. I’d highly recommend renting it out A) because it’s an awesome game and B) because maybe you might want to come to your own conclusion about Resident Evil 5.