When I first read about Newsweek's N'Gai Croal reacting critically to what he calls "imagery that dovetails with classic racist imagery" in Capcom's Resident Evil 5 trailer, I wasn't sure what to think. When I saw the trailer for the first time myself last summer, I admit that part of me was a little shocked -- and I'll use that word, because it's personally accurate -- by at least some of the imagery. I take full responsibility for my reaction, of course. It's not necessarily the one you had, or should have had. And while I think Croal has some very salient points, I do take issue with his inability to at least acknowledge his own prejudices in the interview. When you make blanket statements like "clearly no one black worked on this game" to drive your point, you sound less like a journalist and more like a reactionary, and that's not where this dialogue, which is extremely important, should be occurring.
Incidentally, Croal's not the first to raise his hand over the trailer, in case any of this is news to you. Back in July 2007, a blog called "Black Looks" fingered the trailer as "problematic on so many levels," indicting things like "the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that [the] video game is marketed to children and young adults." You'll have to make up your mind about the accuracy of that last point, since technically there's not a chance in the universe Resident Evil 5 won't be rated M for Mature. On the other hand, there's also not a chance in the universe it won't be purchased and played by millions of underage U.S. gamers.
Now while part of me recoils at the way racist innuendo is too often wielded as a sanctimonious hammer in media discourse, like Bonnie Ruberg writing last July for the Village Voice, I can't pretend I wasn't on some level "strangely disturbed" by the trailer, and I don't mean just because of the creepy glares and eyeball hemorrhaging and throngs of sickle-waving zombies. Sure, that's disturbing, for the same reasons any moldering dude in rotting button-up and slacks speed-shuffling across a room drooling blood and baring lipless teeth is liable to make someone jump.
The E3 2007 extended Resident Evil 5 trailer.
When I say "disturbed," I'm not talking about the notion that Chris Redfield, who's been part of the series from the beginning, is a white guy fighting what appears to be African villagers in...well, you know, quite probably Africa, where it stands to reason the predominant ethnicity isn't going to be Slavic or Laotian. I'm not talking about superficial analyses that chastise the game for employing blacks as zombies, because the last however many Resident Evil games have focused predominantly on whites as zombies (and Spaniards in Resident Evil 4) and where was the outrage then?
I'm talking about something subtler. Take for instance a moment at 0:29 seconds into the trailer of a seated man -- not a zombie -- the whites of his eyes emerging from behind dark smoke as he turns toward the camera -- arguably and in the context of the shot editing -- glaring at us like a spiteful, "soulless corpse." Ruberg points out that "it's not just that these zombies are black, but that the uninfected black villagers are zombie-like too...it's as if race itself were a disease...the white protagonist has to fight back or be infected."
It's possible I'm reading too much into that moment. That Ruberg is too. It's possible, even probable, that the developers were just trying to create a hostile, hopeless atmosphere, the same sort of hostile ambiance that suffused Resident Evil 4, whether Leon was dealing with the occasional uninfected Spaniard acting psychotic, or the headless, tentacle-flailing, infected variety. Regardless, I think Croal's exactly right when he says:
This imagery has a history. It has a history and you can?t pretend otherwise. That imagery still has a history that has to be engaged, that has to be understood... If you?re going to engage imagery that has that potential, the onus is on the creator to be aware of that because there will be repercussions in the marketplace.
September 11, 2001 has a history. So does Pearl Harbor. Now it's okay, today, 67 years later, to make epic war movies in which all kinds of people get killed and ships blow up at a Hawaiian naval base. But Manhattan's twin towers were scrubbed from the first Spider-Man movie, the issue of 9/11-based imagery on TV and in film is still hotly debated, and to this day it's still impossible to crash a plane properly in Microsoft's post-9/11 versions of Flight Simulator. The point? Imagery with historical proximity to sensitive issues can't be trotted out carte blanche. It has complex cultural baggage. The attack on Pearl Harbor is long past. Racism and racial stereotypes aren't. Which, as far as I'm concerned, makes Croal's point about imagery and history relevant and worth bearing in mind when you see a trailer like this.
I'm as aware as any of you that Resident Evil 5 is intended to be a survival horror game, not some insidious racist credo, and intentions certainly matter. But it doesn't hurt anyone to at least take another look, pause, and reconsider what the images are going to mean -- how they'll resonate -- with a culture like America's, which has a unique history with them.
Further reading:
- NPR has a show from September 6, 2001 discussing "Racism on the Silver Screen" and noting the following:
Some observers say the lack of minority images in the movies is even more destructive than the stereotypes. When minorities do appear, critics say, they tend to be in the background, or cast as expendable sidekicks to white male star.
I list it here because it raises another point for consideration: Does the casting of blacks as theoretically prominent and foreground in a game like Resident Evil 5 actually contravene the older-school Hollywood stereotype?
- The Atlantic Online has an interesting article on "Gone With the Wind and Hollywood's Racial Politics" from December 1999 up here. Interesting, because it elucidates the ways in which even Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick's attempt to "come out decidedly on the right side of the ledger" (in relation to the depiction of blacks in that film) can get that depiction sorely wrong.
- In February 2008, New Scientist noted "an unsettling" new study published the week of February 11 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which suggests that...
...Americans of various races still unconsciously dehumanise their black fellow citizens by subtly associating them with apes. In an experiment in which students were subliminally flashed a photo of either an African-American or a European-American face and then shown a blurry picture of an ape, those shown the black face were quicker to recognise the ape. More troubling still, this association is not just confined to psychologists' tests: it also appears to bias people's judgements about whether specific instances of police violence are justified.
The question then being, if the study's bolstered by further research, should this place any special considerations around the ways in which designers craft stories and imagery (in games or elsewhere) where the material engages racially charged imagery?
Re-Play
Fearless or feckless? Have your say below or pelt me with emails here.
From watching the somewhat hard to see (with a glare) trailer, I have to say, I think people are jumping the gun on this.
It seemed like a usual Resident Evil game to me, but it was trying for a "Heart of Darkness" kind of setting. For all we know there could be social critique on race in the game.
Isn't this the same kind of snap judgement that is stacked against games like GTA and Manhunt?
I think that's all potentially true of the final game, Marlowe -- no one knows yet. This is just about the trailer itself, considered in the same capacity you might a movie trailer for a movie, separate from the movie and in its promotional capacity. What's it trying to say? What's it perhaps inadvertently saying despite its best intentions?
The reason I'd say raising the issue isn't a snap judgment -- though I wouldn't claim any of my judgment's are "correct," to differentiate from "snap" -- is that some of the critiques out there do engage the trailer in some detail and critique or outright indict the imagery in a historical context. The debate about Manhunt 2 is in part a debate over whether video games deserve the same treatment as serious books and films. With Resident Evil 5, I'm already *assuming* it deserves the latter. That of course implies it's also subordinate to the same level of cultural scrutiny you'd apply to a serious book or movie.
Also, I apologize for our narrow-band format -- I'm obviously limited by column width when embedding the trailer size-wise. If you want to see this thing as it's meant to be seen, make sure you go somewhere like Gametrailers.com and view the HD version, which you can do by simply clicking on "GTHD" in the trailer box above.
Sorry, I just don't see it. Even when at the point that you reference as :29 you used the words "soulless" which isn't quite right. The depicition I believe they are trying to make here, is the violence. It just so happens that in several pieces of this tralier you see mob scenes that are chaotic and violent. It also happens to be based in Africa. Thus, the black inhabitants. If you look at kenya riot footage or somilia footage for groups you will see very similar behavior to that you see in this trailer. Even then, this is fiction. A story. Something that is using real world images to paint a picture of a non existent reality. If this would have been been set in Mongolia, I bet Mr. Croal wouldn't have batted an eyelash. That said, it is a free country, and Croal has the ability to play the victim as much as the Japanese have the ability to release RE:5.
It was actually the sunlight's fault, and, of course, the super shadowy first half of the trailer.
I get what you are saying, but isn't this still judging a book by it's cover? It just seems so reactionary.
If you make a case to critique or really meta criqtique the imagery of video game trailer, to culturally deconstruct a video game based on generalizing it as "white man kills black people"; aren't you making the case to deconstruct everything into such broad stereotypical strokes? Can any art survive such banl scrutiny? Can any story hold-up against the ivory tower of the politically correct?
I like to give my artists the benefit of the doubt. I like to allow them the risk to tlak about non-PC things to get at a greater truth. If you want to hold video games up to the standard of art, than shouldn't they get the benefit of the doubt?
Absolutely (they should get the benefit of the doubt) and in that sense, I'm not impressed with the way the guys who interviewed Croal sort of let him run the interview and didn't dig in critically and really challenge what he was saying.
I'm saying as someone who's studied media and this subject specifically in an academic capacity, that I can see what he's saying. I'm also saying I'm prepared to acknowledge my own biases here -- this isn't something obvious like, say, the character Ebony White in Will Eisner's The Spirit. And I'm saying it's worth talking about it openly and not letting it fall into the false either-or trap.
The irony is that it says something kind of weirdly good about video gaming, if you agree with my last point, because a game as advanced as RE5 *looks* in that trailer, is elevating itself as an art to the level where having this kind of discussion is possible at all.
With the study, I'm not totally sure that there isn't some physiological reason as well as psychological. I can't see people associating (insert PC term for black... I really don't know) people with apes. I just can't. I think that there should be another test with a black screen shown and pictures of animals flashed up. That would be more balanced test.
I really don't mean to sound racist, sometimes, I just come off that way. Sorry if I offended you.
Personally, I don't see the Capcom trailer for RE5 any more "racist" than the trailer for Black Hawk Down:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2293891353/
"123 elite U.S. soldiers drop into Somalia to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and find themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis."
All the soldiers are white and the Somalis (of course) are...the enemy.
I suppose if you're looking for racism you will find it no matter where you look -- everything begins to look like a "nail" if the only tool you have is a "hammer."
I find the author of this article overly sensitive, much rather aiming towards a racial apologist. I'm not sure if you have reviewed Resident Evil 4, but the trailer of that video game had spanish speaking zombies and the shot down by a white protagonist. Should every observation be politically incorrectly criticized every time some scene that reminds people of racism? Interesting read, but I didn't find the trailer a racial issue as you're portraying. Perhaps we should all go walk outside and astound ourselves by the architectures of our communities linking back Lysistrata-esque analysis that everything in our surroundings are influenced by humanity's sexuality... Don't fall into Freud's madness, not all is perversion.
The problem with the arguments in support of Resident Evil 5 is that their arguments do not address history. Resident Evil 1, 2, & 3 (pre-9/11) were struggles against biomedical conspiracy - Umbrella. The zombies were always presented as being either researchers (who may have deserved their fate) or victims of a horrible conspiracy. Then, in Resident Evil 4 (and now 5), the series switches from biomedical conspiracy to global safety (interesting that this switch happens post-9/11). And at the same time, the threat to global safety is ingrained upon the bodies of people of color. It is indeed interesting that people didn't complain (or perhaps we didn't hear them) during Resident Evil 4, but that lack of opposition does not mean that the critiques of Resident Evil 5 are invalid. Since I am running out of space, a final comment: a similarity in racism between BHD and RE5 (or RE4 & RE5) could be just as likely to indicate that both are racist, rather than that they are not racist.
Who did they expect to be zombie's in an African village? Europeans?
This is yet another example where black people need to chill out. They can find racism in anything if you give them a chance.
I didn't see anything wrong with the trailer. It seems like a typical RE trailer like in the past.
I hope the politics don't cause this game to be anything less then amazing.
I think the problem is that the africans are not quite "normal" looking even prior to becoming zombies in the trailer. I don't believe this to be an example of rascism,but rather insensitivity on some level. I don't think non black peole see black people the way that black people see black people. I recently saw a 20/20 special where this was examined. Blacks focus on different areas of the face when looking at black people; so if a non black creates a black character, they may overlook the features that a black person considers important. Non blacks may consider the finished product a normal view of blacks, but to blacks it may not reflect their view of blacks.
AHAHAHAHA... since when are zombies a "race" of people. If anything the "zombie disease" knows no race or religion.
LOL
Sorry, this is just F'N STUPID. Ok, so what about WWII games, isn't killing germans off level after level considered racist, what about shooting the Japanese soldiers?
This N'Gai Croal guy needs to get a job or do something productive with his time.
I'll be shooting the zombies... wait did I say zombies, oops forgot to put black zombies...there we go.
Shut up N'Gai Croal the only racism being done here is by YOU. Stop singling out your people, how can they, or any race of people be part of the "collective" if we keep singling them out.
And yes, I know racism exists, and always will. I don't like it, I don't promote it, and I'm not proud of it as an American, but it's a fact. If you feel RE 5 is racist, then don't buy it. I'll play it for you N'Gai Croal .
The video is definitely *not* sympathetic with the people there and presents the African village as a hostile, frightening environment, with or without zombies. When its presented like that, there's a definite racial subtext.
But, you know, every news report, every movie, purveys this image of Africa as hell on Earth---ruled by janjaweeds and warlords. The imagery of course has its roots in both imperialist condescension and actual truth, which makes it difficult to parse. If you judge racism in relative terms, I don't think this is really on the radar. Further complicating the issue is that the hostile environment could be maintained by any number of preconceptions about Africa, not all of them racial.
My question is whether Resident Evil needs to have a definite, oversimplified moral message. A game that explores white fears about black Africa, without shying away from its dark, brutal, unnerving implications, is probably a more valuable "literary" piece
The video is definitely *not* sympathetic with the people there and presents the African village as a hostile, frightening environment, with or without zombies. When its presented like that, there's a definite racial subtext.
But, you know, every news report, every movie, purveys this image of Africa as hell on Earth---ruled by janjaweeds and warlords. The imagery of course has its roots in both imperialist condescension and actual truth, which makes it difficult to parse. If you judge racism in relative terms, I don't think this is really on the radar. Further complicating the issue is that the hostile environment could be maintained by any number of preconceptions about Africa, not all of them racial.
My question is whether Resident Evil needs to have a definite, oversimplified moral message. A game that explores white fears about black Africa, without shying away from its dark, brutal, unnerving implications, is probably a more valuable "literary" piece.