Chris Holzworth

Finding Resident Racial Evil in Video Games

When Capcom unveiled the teaser trailer for Resident Evil 5 at last year’s E3, it was immediately put under a microscope to study the game’s supposed racial imagery. Many members within the video game community – white and black alike – voiced discomfort experienced while viewing the trailer, most notably game journalists Bonnie Ruberg and N’Gai Croal.

It’s a breath of fresh air that relative experts on video games are lobbying these complaints as opposed to lawyers or politicians who are unfamiliar with the media. Newsweek editor N’Gai Croal has run Newsweek’s video game blog “Level Up” since 2006 and has been the guest on countless podcasts, including 1UP Yours. Bonnie Ruberg blogs about video games for The Village Voice, and has written for Joystiq, Wired, and The Escapist. However, one should expect more from these experts on gaming than knee-jerk reactions over a teaser trailer.

When MTV Multiplayer’s Tracey John sat down with N’Gai Croal and asked for his thoughts on the Resident Evil 5 trailer, Croal admitted that his first reaction was, “Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game.” While it is true that no one “black” was involved in RE5’s development, this is due to the fact that the game was developed in Japan. Japan’s society is one mired in homogeneity – only 1.22% of their population is of non-Japanese descent. As approximately 99% of Japan’s population is native Japanese, the odds of finding a “black” game designer in Japan are slim.

Should Capcom have hired some sort of “Black Consultant” to assist with Resident Evil 5? Of course not. The very idea is absurd. The decision to use race in a creative undertaking does not demand approval by members of that race. Ultimately, the issue with Resident Evil 5’s trailer isn’t the developer’s problem, but the audience’s.

Both Croal and Ruberg point out undeniable racial imagery as the primary issue in Resident Evil 5’s teaser trailer, but fail to mention how perception of this issue is localized. The perceived imagery is the result of racial tensions unique to the United States, consequences of a nation’s history, not the world’s. The Japanese, for example, never experienced a massive civil war fought over the rights of an enslaved race. Because of this, the racial apprehension inherent to American culture does not exist in Japan.

Croal says:

“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.”

The problem is that one wouldn’t think twice about “skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people” because no one, on average, would identify them as “Hasidic-looking”. Who even knows what that means? Would a “Hasidic-looking” zombie sport a yarmulke on his “Jew-fro”? Croal makes this comparison in an attempt to appeal to our collective understanding of the atrocity the Jewish people of Europe suffered during World War II. This is an exceedingly specific illustration, however, and cannot rightly be likened to the abstract imagery being scrutinized over in Resident Evil 5’s trailer.

There’s no denying that dark-skinned people are often ill-represented in the media. But, what exactly is historical about a bunch of dark-skinned people becoming zombified, flipping out, and being shot in defense? The so-called historical imagery is only made complete by the presence of the game’s “white” protagonist, Chris Redfield. Bonnie Ruberg acknowledges Redfield as “the same all-American boy who has been taking down old-school leg-draggers for years.” Beyond this small nod, however, Ruberg seems content on relegating Redfield as “the white protagonist” – dismissing his establishment in the franchise and the relevance in tapping him as the hero.

In addition to their failure to examine Resident Evil 5’s teaser trailer beyond the black and white, Croal and Ruberg’s arguments are rife with presumption. Ruberg points out how “it’s not just that these zombies are black, but that the uninfected black villagers are zombie-like too.” How, exactly, do we know these villagers aren’t infected? The Los Ganados in Resident Evil 4 were not afflicted with classical “zombification.” Instead, their zombie-state was triggered by parasitical mind-control and could be disengaged at the whim of their enslaver.

The real issue with race in gaming isn’t how dark-skinned characters are portrayed, but rather the absence of additional dark-skinned characters so that their differences become noticeable. Augustus Cole, A.K.A. “The Cole Train” of Gears of War fame is regularly called out for perpetuating a “black stereotype.” The issue with this is that Cole’s showboating college football star personality does exist. Anyone who has attended college can attest to this. It’s very unlikely that all dark-skinned people on the planet Sera act like Cole. Unfortunately, there are no other significant dark-skinned characters to make Cole seem unique and as a result he’s relegated to “obligatory black stereotype” status.

Croal and Ruberg’s impressions of the teaser trailer are mired in an innate negativity nurtured by North American upbringing. As a result, both critics failed to examine the potential positive influence Resident Evil 5 may yield. In a game populated by dark-skinned characters, there is a greater chance for several significant, dynamic dark-skinned characters to exist. Of course there will be a considerable number of drooling, snarling dark-skinned zombies. But Resident Evil is, after all, a series about putting bullets in the brainpans of humans become monsters – not humans that are monsters. This is not American social commentary. This is Japanese created entertainment developed for a world audience.

There’s so much we don’t know about Resident Evil 5. Do Resident Evil games typically showcase normal life activities? Or do they usually depict a “scary” situation wherein a hero is threatened by hordes of zombies and monsters? So far all gamers have seen is a light-skinned person shooting dark-skinned people. Capcom recently confirmed the existence of dark-skinned allies to aid Chris Redfield, female protagonist Sheva Alomar in particular. Ultimately, we must reserve judgment on Resident Evil 5 for a more appropriate time – when the game is released and the context of the game’s setting and scenario can be taken into consideration.

Ultimately, while both Croal and Ruberg’s initial impressions of Resident Evil 5’s teaser trailer are understandable, their conclusions leave much to be desired. Tackling the issue of how dark-skinned – or any minority characters – are represented in video games is no easy task. However, there are much more relevant angles of criticism to broach on the topic than what have been shown of Resident Evil 5 thus far. Ruberg’s article, “Resident Evil 5: White Man Shoots Black Zombies,” there is the downplaying of Chris Redfield’s relevance as a protagonist in the franchise as well as makes wild comparisons between “zombification” and the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. While the epidemic is tragic, it should not necessitate that all fictitious accounts of contamination in Africa be off-limits. Additionally, Ruberg fails to successfully support her supposition that the fear of “zombification” in Africa can be likened to the HIV/AIDs situation. This is markedly proven by her article’s Chris Redfield quotation pertaining to mounting casualties… the cause of which is unspecified in the actual trailer. In short, she is drawing conclusions based on a comparison that has no foundation.

N’Gai Croal’s criticism of Resident Evil 5 is similar to Ruberg’s in its conclusions, but the Newsweek editor at least admits that he is passing judgment on the game’s teaser trailer instead of the game itself. Also, Croal only approaches the abstract concept of racial stereotyping in video games rather than focusing on how Resident Evil 5, as displayed in known footage, possesses potential racial overtones. Again, this is because there is not enough information on the game to provide food for criticism. The circumstances surrounding Chris Redfield’s presence in Africa as well as the relevance of setting the game in that country are not revealed in the trailer.

It would be naive to suggest that racial inequalities in society have been abolished. They haven’t. These inequalities are still very much prevalent in society, North America’s especially. These inequalities must be challenged, but we must learn to pick our battles. When it comes to racial misrepresentations in video games, there are plenty of causes to take up. Resident Evil 5, at this stage, isn’t one of them.