A funny thing happened to Resident Evil 5 on its way to release, it became the center of a growing race debate in video games.  Of course, this is not shocking really.  Not only is one of the few titles to feature a large group of black characters, but they also happen to be the villains who are savagely trying to tear your character apart.  But wait, that’s a bit too simplistic of a description.

The fifth Resident Evil title leaves behind the Pacific northwest of the United States and dreary Spanish villages for the sun soaked continent of Africa.  In the process, obviously, there’s going to be a significant increase in black characters.  You could perhaps set a title in parts of Africa with a mostly white cast, but certainly that would be more than a little disingenuous.

Since most characters are black, and since Resident Evil games usually wind up with legions of zombies on the attack, therefore the zombies in this game end up being black.  At least, that’s what the trailers have shown so far.  Perhaps there is a secret underground lab with all white scientists, but then that brings up whole other racial stereotype issues.

So, what’s the issue?  Aren’t black Africans just as capable of being zombies as white Americans or Spaniards?  Sure, why not?  It isn’t as if black people have some unique gene preventing them from turning zombie, and there have certainly been black zombies in past games.

Not so fast though, says Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal.  While it may be perfectly acceptable to have black zombies, or even set a horror game in Africa, the footage so far released of the game raises some troubling issues.  In an interview with MTV’s Multiplayer blog, Croal admits some hesitations about the title, saying his first reaction was, “Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game.”  He continued:

“It’s like when you engage that kind of imagery you have to be careful with it. It would be like saying you were going to do some sort of zombie movie that appeared to be set in Europe in the 1940’s with skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people. If you put up that imagery people would be saying, ‘Are you crazy?’ Well, that’s what this stuff looks like. 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.”

The reaction on the Internet has been mostly negative against Croal’s comments.  Many have accused him of playing the mythical “race card.”  Many more have accused him of simply being a whiner who should get over himself.  This reaction, of course, raises a couple of interesting questions.

First, why paint Croal suddenly as a traitor to gaming?  This is a guy who writes professionally about gaming for the mainstream media.  He does so respectfully and intelligently.  In fact, most gamers usually praise him.  He has one unpopular opinion questioning the content of games and the gaming community wants to turn on him?  Why not instead consider that he might have a point?  Why not give him the benefit of the doubt that he might be on to something?  After all, if he is usually sound, isn’t it more plausible that he has a point here too rather than simply being off his rocker?

The second question, of course, is why have fans of the series reacted so vehemently to questioning of the title?  Croal is the second darling of gaming media in the past couple of weeks to get scrutinized for offering any scrutiny of games.  Perhaps these people aren’t so far off base, but instead hitting a little too close to home?

Croal’s criticism, contrary to how it is often summarized, is not calling Resident Evil 5 racist.  Far from it.  Croal goes out of his way to be careful not to label Capcom as a company or the development team as racists.  Instead, he works at making the argument that some images can be viewed as culturally insensitive.

Croal points out that even before the villages turn zombie, there are still some unnerving portrayals.

“There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.” 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?”

Of course, the convenient rebuttal to this point is to ask what about the Spaniards?  Weren’t they also “othered” in Resident Evil 4?  Croal argues, “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.”  And he’s got a point.

Of course, context matters with any media.  The fact that this is a horror game means this isn’t exactly the same as Sony releasing their secret Afrika title finally only to have negative images of the locals presented.  Still, most Europeans don’t have quite the same cultural baggage that those of African descent do.  He makes an excellent point about old Jewish caricatures–how would they be received?  If one has a moment’s hesitation about how their presentation, then don’t Africans also deserve the same consideration?

Because when Croal talks about post-colonial history he doesn’t just mean what actually happened, but he’s also referencing much of the media that has also represented Africa for Western audiences.  Consider the novel Heart of Darkness, which is often taught in high schools and freshman college literature courses.  Chinua Achebe famously criticized the novel for its depiction of the native Africans as being little more than an extension of the black jungle that was so foreboding to Marlow and his men.  While there remains some controversy over this reading of the novel, it is generally accepted by many today.

Resident Evil 5, at least in trailers so far, seems to be presenting a similar vision.  When the character Chris Redfield is walking through the village the natives run in and out of shadows, with only their eyes barely visible.  This is an excellent demonstration of the game’s lighting engine, but is it insensitive toward the way many blacks have traditionally been represented?  If saying yes, does that mean that blacks can never be the main villain within a video game, or simply that native Africans are off limits?  Is it possible that in being offended, some are actually being racist in denying Africans equal representation in games?  Are Africans too fragile to be zombies?  Can they not handle such representations like the rest of people shrug off?

Again, it isn’t that simple or easy.  As Croal points out, no one is accusing Capcom of having racist intentions with the game.  On the contrary, most would chalk it up to ignorance on the designers’ part as most of them are of Japanese descent, and certainly Japan doesn’t have quite the same exploitive background with Africa as Europe does.  Still, ignorance is only an explanation for cultural insensitivity, not a free pass for it.  And most copies of Resident Evil 5 will eventually be sold in North America and Europe, not Japan.  In these two places such ideas and hurt run deep, the same as with Croal’s Jew example.

Of course, everyone will never agree on this issue.  Race is still quite a divisive issue, and many would rather bury their heads in the sand than look at it rationally.  But the trailer can at the very least be labeled borderline culturally insensitive.  How far you go beyond that probably has much to do with your personal background.  Some who have been the victim of racism will likely see more there than those who have never been such victims.  In that way, Resident Evil 5 is opening up a fascinating avenue for dialogue within the gaming community.  The final game might even capitalize on such issues by exploring them, and therefore rendering much of this controversy moot.  Regardless how it turns out, Croal and others opened a can of worms for academic video game criticism and analyzation that will likely never close again.  And that, is a very good trend toward being accepted as legitimate media.

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