Fuck. I really wanted to write for them.
Well as long as we're on the WWN, let's talk about zombies. And who knows zombies better than CapCom? (George Romero does, but let's ignore that for now.)
Well this is old news, but Capcom finally released the Resident Evil 5 Trailer. (Oooh, exciting!) The synopsis? Zombies in Africa.
And the response?
The race card.
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.
The basis of this argument, ridiculous as it is, doesn't really irritate me that much - and I mean beyond the magnanimously flawed "marketed at children" bit. I think we can all say that we've become so accustomed to this level of uninformed hate-mongering that, like cigarettes, the exposure itself may be harmful to us, but a day without it just doesn't feel right.
So no, the claim itself doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the response this claim has earned in the last few months: "Why is it only racism when black zombies are getting shot? What about when you were shooting up Spaniards in Resident Evil 4?" "Capcom is pushing the envelope by going into Africa, by clinging onto your knee-jerk reaction to 'black people can't be portrayed in a poor light, ever,' you're trying to hold back a potentially insightful medium with crass censorship," and of course, "Why do you capitalize the word "black" but not the word "white"? I think that maybe you are the racist."
A better spelled and much better worded summary of every argument on the internet.
These points are so trite, so unbelievably banal that it irritates me to no end that we - who subscribe to logic - have to put up with these people arguing for us.
So instead of dwelling and harping on the painfully obvious, how about this:
Resident Evil 5 takes place in Africa. Because there have been 4 other Resident Evil games, we can infer a fair amount about the plot. For example: there are zombies in Africa as a result of an outbreak of the T-Virus. Also, the multi-billion dollar international corporation, Umbrella, probably had a hand in the outbreak.
So therefore, to call out Capcom on racism is to imply one of two things:
1.) That having multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical corporations exploiting African peoples is racist. Which is true, to a degree; while not entirely "racist," per se, it is entirely and unarguably unethical. (Oops! Sorry, I've got some bad news concerning corporate ethics...)
OR
2.) That it is racist to depict the populace of Africa as black.
Whatever. I hat a whole list of things I was going to be upset about, but maybe I should have written it down because I don't remember what was after "resident Evil racism thing."
