Video game fans prove that they aren’t racist by hurling racist slurs
Published by Sabotabby August 3rd, 2007 in Entertainment, Racism, Blogitics, Violence, Dudes, Wankers, Looks like someone needs an interventionKym Platts at Ask This Black Woman/Black Looks posted the other day about some seriously problematic imagery in the new Resident Evil 5 game.
The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. “I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.”
This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.
Now, my knowledge of RE goes about as far as having seen the first two movies (which I liked, incidentally), so I watched the trailer that Kym linked to. And yes, it is disturbing. Because while it’s fiction, with zombies, it can’t be read outside of a cultural context: European imperialist adventures on the African continent, slavery, eugenics, criminalization of Black people, media depictions of people of colour as subhuman and violent, and so on.
She made a good point, and those familiar with how the blogosphere works can guess what happened next. A bunch of white gamer boys immediately leaped on her with responses ranging from “reverse racism!” to “Get back into the cotton fields, you filthy [N-BOMB].” And death threats. Because she dared express an opinion on a video game.
Follow-up posts are here here and here. Stay away from the comments if you happen to be eating—these fanboys are as bloodthirsty as a horde of zombies and about as intelligent.
I couldn’t read the comments. Those that weren’t horrid were … lamentably repetitive: “It’s not racist! It can’t be racist! The white dude also killed white zombies and Hispanic zombies!”
Because video games, of all our cultural artefacts, exist independantly of any cultural or historical context.
Because the fans say so, that’s why.
Did anyone ask what law of nature makes the protag white to begin with? Or why people are so unquestiongly accepting of a white protag? Other than “that’s how the Japanese game designers designed it”?
Not that I saw, but, like I confessed, I didn’t read all the comments.
Unfortunately, gamers that lead the examined life are few and far between. Not that they don’t exist, but as in so many subcultures there’s certainly not enough of them to counter the loudness of those that don’t think. All they know is game = fun, and fun = good, so game = good. Which is too bad, because if you’d get them to calm down a bit they’d see that you can probably make the games way less racist and still hella violent. God of War, for example, wasn’t OMG! overtly offensive (unless you count that scene with the two women in GoWII, oh, my god.) but was incredibly gory and entertaining.
It’s always annoying when people not only insist on making raging jackasses of themselves, but decide that they will represent an entire culture and make pronouncements on behalf of it.
Here’s something I was kicking around though, how much different would the situation be if the protag was black as well? if the guy shooting those zombies was a stranded Kenyan soldier trying to fight his way back to his base? That actually sounds like it would be interesting, but would people then start thinking of all the crimes associated with militias and so forth in Africa? Is there really a way to present the mowing down of an African village and have it not be borderline offensive?
When you kill thousands of faceless, mostly white enemies in a game are you able to add an extra level of distance because you’re not used to seeing white people die in massive numbers? Do those shots of the guy gunning down the zombies have an added effect because it feels more like a repeat of all the networks report on Africa?
I’m black myself and will not drag this out much all I have to say is…..”WHOOPTY FUCKING DOO!!!”
I’m tired of my fellow black people playing victim all the goddamn time! The only ones who got victimized are our great grandparents and beyond! We have no idea what they went through. Stop bitching about nowdays, we have it sooo fucking good! I’ve killed sooo many white zombies my entire RE gaming life, and now he’s in Africa. BOO HOO!! Get over it, when it comes out, I’m lighting their black asses up if they’re trying to kill me, just as quick as I lit their white asses up in the others! ^_^
So I drug it out :-/
One complaint,,,,,,where the hell are the black women in video games, and yes there are fine black women.
Black, White,Asian,Mexican…..a zombie is a zombie…..in the end…..all they want is BRAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNSSSS!!!!!! >:-F