Splicetoday

Consume
Feb 10, 2009, 08:55AM

A game is not just a game anymore

The latest incarnation of Resident Evil raises intense questions over the the validity of video games and the social issues they blithely poke.

Ripe for debate:

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 There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain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.

Discussion
  • Japan is a rich and ancient culture that is not especially known for its sophisticated understanding of non-Japanese racial issues. When you combine this trend with video games, developed by a bunch of nerds, you get embarrassing throwbacks like this. The video game industry is so huge and profitable at this point that they seem to believe (maybe accurately) that consumers will buy anything no matter how tasteless it is. On the one hand, I don't think that congress should be wasting time on Grand Theft Auto (produced in, and about, North America), but something about this Japanese take on the dark heart of Africa is creepier and more disturbing than GTA's home-grown racism and sexism.

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