Newsweek General Editor N'Gai Croal shared his opinions about the racial controversy surrounding the Resident Evil 5 trailer stating:
"I looked at the Resident Evil 5 trailer and I was like, "Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game." Because I wonder, and I haven't sort of really dug into it that much, but I wonder what sort of advice Capcom gave them. The point isn't that you can't have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn't see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don't understand what you're talking about and think that you're sort of seeing race where nothing exists?"N'Gai continued further with his insight saying:
"There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. 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? It's not as simple as saying, "Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in 'Resident Evil 4,' and now 'black zombies and that's why people are getting upset." 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."
For the full interview with N'Gai, visit MTV Multiplayer HERE.
1 comment:
I disagree to a certain extent. I see it as a white man shooting zombies that happen to be black. Just as I seen it before with a white man shooting zombies that happened to be spanish or white in the other games. I know about the African history, but this is a game involving monsters and zombies, which people seem to forget. The commercial is being looked into too much of its content. I don't think in any of the Resident Evil series where you can kill an enemy that is 100% human (except for RE3 with Nicholai being an optional kill).
They are black zombies in Africa. Were you expecting a lot of white zombies in Africa? How many games are going to be made of zombies in the US of the Resident Evil franchise? That gets boring after awhile. At least in RE4, you were in another country and a completely different environment compared to one in the US. If people are going to complain about racism involving videogames because a character happens to be white and shooting someone that is a different race, then maybe a new game series should be made: Where white people will only shoot white people. Black people will only shoot black people, etc. Then no one should complain about there being no diversity in videogames.
And the game isn't about killing everyone; it is about survival horror, which means running away to save ammo and yourself. Not every enemy has to be killed, just avoided if possible.
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