What do you call 300 white guys with clubs chasing a black guy?*
It’s an old joke, which is actually just a spin on the great Tiger Woods dominating the PGA, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it still touching a nerve for some people. Even this article itself could be called racist if you believe the idea that simply talking about it actually perpetuates the problem.
The gaming industry is no stranger to backlashes from unfortunate cultural phenomena: A teenager goes postal at a college campus and it’s Grand Theft Auto’s fault. A kid becomes a social outcast and the finger is pointed at World of Warcraft. And Need for Speed draws fire because a reckless driver tried a handbrake turn on the highway.
At this rate they’ll be blaming Eminem’s next shoddy excuse for an album on Singstar Deluxe.
Killing sprees and tone-deaf homeboys aside, the most recent game to bear the brunt of the media’s ignorance is Resident Evil 5.
The story takes the burly Aryan protagonist Chris Redfield into the heart of Africa where he discovers the origins of the insta-zombie virus. Much to the shock and disbelief of narrow minded anti-gaming lobbyists and other fundamentalists struck with tunnel vision and too much spare time, Africa is surprisingly populated by… (wait for it)…
Africans!
Just to make it worse, these bumbling, mindless locals amble about and behave like violent, primitive savages. In fact, they bear a striking resemblance to… (wait again)…
Zombies!
Now, unless you’re a paranoid parent or Tipper Gore, it’s not hard to detect the sarcasm in the previous couple of statements. It’s a zombie game set in Africa for goodness’ sake, what did you expect?
I feel it’s safe to say that although racism is a subjective issue, it’s also one which should be culture-independent. In other words, a Swede should be able to recognize racism just as easily as a Scot, a Serbian or a South African. This becomes an interesting observation though when we consider that the game attracted very little attention regarding this ‘racism’ in Japan, the very country where it was developed and no doubt vehemently marketed.
Do I detect some sensationalist journalism afoot here?
It’s also funny how most of those who slandered Resident Evil 5 missed a lot of the finer details from atop their moral high horse. Did they fail to see the African sidekick, Sheva, who too fights to wipe out the evil hordes? (How could they: she keeps getting in the bloody way all the time.)
Did no one bother to mention the black members of the development team?
Kym Platt, the black writer behind the African-focused blog Black Looks, said of the game, “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 money is definitely on Ms Platt having never played the game before. I’m actually going to double that bet and say she’s not a big follower of the Resident Evil series either.
But when a perhaps poorly (yet innocently) chosen locale (in hindsight) in a survival horror game is mistaken for genocide, a strong comment like this reveals something astonishingly similar to blind ignorance and, ironically, ends up smacking of groundless hatemongering in itself.
This is an opinion piece, so I’m going to state mine. It’s about damn time that people find another scapegoat for society’s faults. Why blame Rockstar Games for a campus killing when you can just as easily call out Smith & Wesson for making the gun? Or the NRA for trying to put a weapon on every bedside table and tattooing the Second Amendment on the inside of their eyelids?
And why did so few blame the parents for the chubby kid who keeled over from exhaustion while playing an MMO game? Might as well sue Mountain Dew or his ISP for this heinous crime.
The sad truth is that someone’s always going to take the fall for unfortunate events like these. Gamers are an easy target as even isolated incidents are blown so out of proportion that it’s hard to avoid the ensuing shrapnel, and titles like Resident Evil 5 end up drawing the short straw and have to be dragged into the public eye and shot.
Until the day that we’re all just tiny sparks of energy inside some digital Matrix world there will always be racism, and that means there’s no foreseeable end to what I’ve come to call ‘game-blame’. As long as there’s a cause to champion or crush, and the kind of stupidity that turns tinfoil into hats, I fear we’re going to have to bunker down and wait this one out.
Oh well, at least we have the faint hope that these fanatics might prevent another Eminem album.
Fingers crossed.
*The PGA Tour
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