A couple weeks ago, a friend sent me a A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me a
YouTube link. He described it as “African genocide.” Not knowing what to expect, I clicked on it. What I witnessed for those next 3 minutes, was nerve-wrecking, painful, mind-numbing and heart-racing. It was a trailer for a Video Game called “Resident Evil.”
This specific trailer was an eyeful in the most horrid sense. It wasted no time in capitalizing upon the long history of blatant depictions of Africans as savages and helpless imbeciles. The trailer featured a Caucasian male mutilating African villages, along with Africans. With the not-so ancient history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Africa, the issue of racial insensitivity and indifference must be brought to the centerfold. This patent-reality must be interrogated excruciatingly to expose the silliness of those who claim the 21st century marked the dawn of a post-racial world.
What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it.” To say the least, Resident Evil 5 producer, Jun Takeuchi, appears to be a card-carrying member of that classic club which pride themselves in being comfortably uninformed of the racial realities that engulf the societies in which they exist. He claimed to be bitterly misinformed of the racial conundrum he had created. In an interview with Japan's “Famitsu magazine,” he spoke unabashedly about the decision to use Africa as the setting for this installment of the video-game phenomena, saying, "We really wanted to show the origins of the virus, so for the setting we thought, how about using the place where humankind was born... We thought we would use Africa, which is now called the birthplace of humanity." In response to those who labeled his “art-work” as racially-charged, Takeuchi responded, stating, “In terms of the reaction, we're in the business of entertainment… We didn't set out to make a racist game or a political statement. We did feel there was a misunderstanding about the initial trailer.” This act of staged-ignorance is the birth child of a “neo-liberalized” atmosphere that champions Political Correctness as a substantive means of resolving America’s race problem.
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... These articles always seem to come from middle aged whites who, for one, don't seem to understand the concept of ZOMBIES and secondly seem to be speaking on behalf of a race of people who really don't seem to give a flying *bleep* about what goes on in a VIDEOGAME.
Did the Spanish complain about Resident Evil 4 ?
lol @ Killing Zombies being considered Genocide. They're already dead. =/
I think the problem of racism isn't over, not by a long shot. But to get this worked up over Resident Evil 5 is inappropriate, imo. It just does not seem like a good example of actual racism because both Resident Evil and GTA (which the writer also mentions) have used non-Blacks in the same situation.
Also, I feel that perhaps the debate over racism against Blacks has gone on for too long and in the wrong direction. Stereotypes exist because they are true to a degree. I do not think all Asians look the same, but we all have black hair and brown eyes, so I can understand a white person without much exposure to Asians thinking we are too similar at first glance.
But anyway, I just think the issue of Black-racism has gotten out of hand, to the point where many Blacks are seen as aggressive or just too caught up in themselves, like the boy who cried wolf. Because of articles like these and people who bitch about RE5 being racist, we end up ignoring the important issues elsewhere.
Of course one guy doesn't speak for the rest but even if one guy thinks something, there's going to be a lot of others who think the same thing.