quote falcowned992

Yes, the game is somewhat racist.
The early trailer was depicting of a armed white man (Chris) killing hostile black civilians. The reason this is racist is because of the hisory there, with imperalism and what not. For some people, the early trailers were basically history repeating itself in video game form. The reason why it's not rasict for white people to kill other white people/spainyards is because white people do not have the same type of history with those ethic groups. I do not rember Spain being invaded and the people being enslaved by whites, do any of you?

quote falcowned992

Yes, the game is somewhat racist.
The early trailer was depicting of a armed white man (Chris) killing hostile black civilians. The reason this is racist is because of the hisory there, with imperalism and what not. For some people, the early trailers were basically history repeating itself in video game form. The reason why it's not rasict for white people to kill other white people/spainyards is because white people do not have the same type of history with those ethic groups. I do not rember Spain being invaded and the people being enslaved by whites, do any of you?

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One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.

Later on, there's a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it's not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous "dark continent" and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s. That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara Croft than her thickly-accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it. There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain under wraps for now, whether for these reasons we don't know.

There will be plenty of people who refuse to see anything untoward in this material. "It wasn't racist when the enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4," goes the argument, but then the Spanish don't have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman animals for the past two hundred years. It's perfectly possible to use Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story, but when you're applying the concept of people being turned into savage monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented as savage monsters, it's hard to see how elements of race weren't going to be a factor.

All it will take is for one mainstream media outlet to show the heroic Chris Redfield stamping on the face of a black woman, splattering her skull, and the controversy over Manhunt 2 will seem quaint by comparison.

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I looked at the "Resident Evil 5 trailer and I was like, "Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game." Because I wonder, and I haven't sort of really dug into it that much, but I wonder what sort of advice Capcom gave them. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery.

There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. They're hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who's coming to help the people. It's like they're all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It's not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They're all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images?

It's not as simple as saying, "Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in 'Resident Evil 4,' and now 'black zombies and that's why people are getting upset." The imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, it doesn't carry the same weight. I don't know how to explain it more clearly than that.

If it had been me in that situation, I wouldn't have put out a trailer like that. I think it's very easy to misunderstand what that game is about based on that trailer.

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There are moments that some will never connect with racism, but that others will see as clear use of racist iconography.

The game begins with Chris Redfield walking through an African village that appears uninfected. He sees some men kicking something in a sack. The implication is that even before the infection, these are bad people. If RE5 were set on another continent and these characters had white skin, no one would give it a second thought. Typical "village full of bad guys" gaming clich?. But these characters are black. And as such the imagery can be perceived to have racist undertones.

Later, there is a cutscene depicting a white woman being dragged into a house by an infected black man. In its recent hands-on, Eurogamer criticized this moment in particular for playing into traditional racist fear-mongering. To propagate fear of blacks from the time of slavery and through the Civil Rights movement in the United States, white society was warned that big black men are coming for your daughters.

Do these images and the fact that the core gameplay has you shooting black men and women make RE5 racist? The answer is going to vary greatly from one person to the next and, perhaps more significantly, from one region to the next. In Japan, for example, it's unlikely that the events depicted in Resident Evil 5 will be viewed as racist in any way. Japan and other Asian nations never experienced centuries of racist oppression against blacks. In Europe and America, where racism continues to be an issue to this day, and where, less than two centuries ago, slavery was legal, the imagery will likely resonate more substantially.

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It's easy to see why some will construe this game as racist. It may be easy to forget that these people are, in fact, infected with a parasite that alters their behavior. For the most part, the enemies in RE5 move and react in the same way as the enemies of RE4 -- the only difference? The color of their skin. The bodies of the infected disintegrate, and many will have plagas burst out of them.

Regardless, the imagery can be disturbing. It's unlikely that Capcom has any malicious intent by choosing Africa as the location for RE5.
Although most of the enemies in the game are black, there are a number of strong black heroes in the game as well.

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The scenes of something being beaten in a sack or of a blond woman being dragged off by black men aren't even regarded as the worst, or most-outdated in the game either. There are, reportedly, even more outrageous things displayed later in the game but Capcom has asked these be kept under wraps for the time being.

Villains and enemies in video games obviously come in all shapes, sizes, creeds, and religions. And thats fine because it mimics real life where everyone is capable of doing bad things. But by showing ordinary black people doing unspeakable things when they aren't necessarily the game's bad guys does seem a little beyond the realms of what is acceptable in this enlightened day and age.

Could Capcom be aiming for controversy in order to help sales?

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quote MisterGolyadkin

The sad thing is that you were always going to get this reaction, it's just too salient a premise: A white American mowing down atavistic black people.

Now, if this storyline was for RE 1, or something than I think people may have had a larger cause to complain, but I think it's quite obvious that the virus, which has already affected an entire American city has spread globally and is now infecting vulnerable, defenceless villagers - as with RE 4 - who are being used as guinea pigs. This chapter of that story happens to be set in a predominantly black place (Africa).

This leads me to assume that the harshest critics of this are the ones who have no idea about the RE mythos and are simply taking this game as a standalone example of white v black. But we all know it's not about that at all. And why these critics didn't feel the need to express their disdain at the Spanish 'racism' of RE 4 (which, in principle, is no less offensive), just leads me to conclude that they're of the 'it's only racism when it's against black people' ilk - of whom are the biggest racists themselves.

I've talked to a lot of black resident evil fans about this and not one of them has said this game is in the remotest bit racist because they, like the spanish, like the whites, like the asians, understand the mythos.

quote falcowned992

I'm a Resident evil fan and even I think it's racist. Think about it-an armed white military figure going into an African village and killing hostile black civilians. If that's not racist I don't know what is.

quote Falcowned992

It has portrayed Africans as inhuman savages that need to be killed, every last one of them(which was probably insipried by history), and portrayed the white man as the good guy, the superior, the one who should kill them all(again, inspired by history). When a non-black person looks at this, they probably see "lol it's just a game", "they're zombies so they should be killed", or "that was years ago so it doesn't matter", but when a black person looks at it they get harsh memories of the 1920s and what not.

Wesker isn't shown as an inhuman savage last I checked, he was super-human and trying to play the role of god.