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Resident Evil 5 Controversy
LibrarianThorne
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Just saw the new post on GamePolitics. Seems that an African Women's blog is making some noise about how RE5 is training fear of, hatred against, and racism towards black people/women.
I don't get this. We never had a problem killing all the white zombies in the other 5 RE games, and no one made a fuss. Black zombies were getting offed as early as RE2, if I remember correctly. Where was the controversy then? Was RE4 training us to kill eastern Europeans in the advent of some Marxist takeover of the world?
The worry, of course, is that RE5 could be used in such a manner. I'm sure if someone really young did play the game and was encouraged to take that racist message from it that it would affect them in that manner. However, I don't believe the game, as has been presented even in the trailer, could present that message without some outside influence guiding the player towards it.
Opinions?
I don't get this. We never had a problem killing all the white zombies in the other 5 RE games, and no one made a fuss. Black zombies were getting offed as early as RE2, if I remember correctly. Where was the controversy then? Was RE4 training us to kill eastern Europeans in the advent of some Marxist takeover of the world?
The worry, of course, is that RE5 could be used in such a manner. I'm sure if someone really young did play the game and was encouraged to take that racist message from it that it would affect them in that manner. However, I don't believe the game, as has been presented even in the trailer, could present that message without some outside influence guiding the player towards it.
Opinions?
LibrarianThorne on
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Judging fromt he trailer, it's set in Africa somewhere, likely not!Somalia or not!Ethiopia.
Do you have a link to the blog?
It's a bit silly to be mad over this, in all honesty. I can't see anything major happening as a result.
That phrase doesn't mean what you think it means.
Seriously though, I'd take this as about as seriously as I do him. People just like attention/webtraffic. Last week in the UK a pressure group tried to ban a 60+ year old book ->http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6294670.stm
Seeing as it's silly season I suppose this might get some attention but I'm pretty sure it'll be forgotten by the time this comes out.
PS: Sorry for the rubbish bbcode, first time poster here
Nobody complained when you could kill the morbidly obese in Hitman.
Nobody complained when you could kill the Chinese in Command and Conquer: Generals.
They seem to be overwhelmingly pro-'Brains!'
Yeah, but they're not people
Actually on the first and third the governments from the relevant countries did.
There hasn't been a black villian in a Bond movie for years.
WELL NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT THE MORBIDLY OBESE THING
One out of three is good enough for me!
The last one had the African(?) Warlord and cronies. Not the main villains but defiantly a main bad guy.
They couldn't complain because their mouths were full.
Yeah and i'm sure you only kill poor black zombies for the first half of the game. Then you kill Bugs and guys with huge guns and regenerators for the rest of it.
They were in it for about 5 minutes!
Of course. But the ever-so-conscientious mothers of the world are only ever going to see a big white man massacring African villagers. It's silly, but Capcom's going to have fight off these kinds of accusations throughout development of the game.
Whenever a tentacle monster burst out of someone's head, my brother and I would exclaim "Oh, those crazy Spaniards!"
Do you think the Japanese developers care/know how North America feels about these particular aspects of their game?
Black zombies, doo doo doo doo.
To be fair, most of the main protagonists of the series are white and most North Americans (often with ridiculous amounts of special forces / military experience for their age). I doubt anyone in North America had a problem with that. Now if say for example, the main protagonist of RE1 or 2 was a North Korean or an Iranian special agent (but still a "Good Guy", honest, decent person like all heroes are supposed to be) caught up in a city where the archetypal Evil American megacorporation (Umbrella) unleashed a biohazard forcing said agent to kill dozens of zombified white Americans, Hellloooooooooo controversy. There's no doubt in my mind that similar minded people on the opposite side of the fence would be up in arms about it.
This isn't about just BLACK people being over-sensitive to this issue. Odds are that in the scenario above, you'd get the same stick, just from talk-show pundits and outraged "think of the children" bloggers on the "white-hand-side".
To be fair, it's at least partly undertandable. With the footage shown essentially being a stereotypical White American action hero dude going to some African village and shooting up black people who've only got knives and clubs and things to defend themselves. It's not hard for people to see a "keeping 'em down" ethos to the game when they don't know any context to it or anything about the series.
Well, yeah, I dare say they might if it limits sales.
And don't use that tone, thanks. I'm not saying the game's racist, and I don't believe Capcom should do something silly like replace Chris with a black man to offset any inevitable hysteria. All I'm saying is they should be prepared if the media latches on to this and uses the subsequent controversy to sell newspapers.
People like her do more to hurt the cause of equal rights with their ignorance than they do to help it.
White zombies shamble like this.
*cough*cough*Manhunt 2*
All I'm saying is, everyone knows that Black zombies have got more class.
That said, I think Capcom would be best off to throw in white enemies, at least in the early game. Make the opening fights set in an airport or something. Or a Red Cross aid building. Any place where they can justify a mixed group attacking you. Since previews are almost always of the opening areas, I think this would defuse any controversy. They've got til 2009 apparently, so I'm sure it'll work out in the end.
If that came out tomorrow if an edited form then it would sell like hot cakes.
True.
Although I'm sure she'll organize some group in the near future.
I'd be a bit more worried about this if Al Sharpton or Rev. Jesse Jackson were involved. They are the only two African American leaders I know of that could organize a big enough protest to really get noticed.
Actually, it's even more easy to stem this than that. All they need is some footage in there of Chris saving "good" Not_African black people from the zombies, and possibly oing work at the behest of people that need his help or something.
I'd be willing to bet 10-1 there's at least one bit where Chris is actively protecting or helping people in the game (in one form or another). There, situation diffused, Chris doesn't hate black people, he's just fighting a zombie infection yada yada yada the end.
My guess is that this is pretty much going to dissapear as soon as the game is released, the same way the "Bully" controversy did.
But what if he was a flawed character that actually didn't like black people? Because then we are pretty much fucked.
I forgot about them. They'll hopefully be too busy supporting one campaign or another.