21st February 2009, 9:31 AM
I think the difference lies in that ABF is looking at it from the perspective of an onlooker unfamiliar with the game and lazy is looking from the perspective of the story as literally written. ABF is calling it racist not because the characters are literally killing black people and saying "white power!" but in terms of how it could be easily viewed as racist. I have come to believe that's a valid concern, for the same reasons that movies or games in general lacking a large number of black people (and when they are there, they tend to be Barret) may not be racist in terms of the story (no one is hating on Barret in FF7 because he's black or discriminating based on his skin) but racist in terms of a viewer who notices that oddity.
Now it can go overboard in the other direction too. If someone had a game like Fable, in it's setting of eternal fantasy europe, with the vast majority as african americans, that'd be seen as a rather insulting sort of coddling to everyone involved. However, the other way, say a movie set in Japan where the last samurai is a white guy, or a game in africa where everyone is white, would also be insulting.
RE5 kinda crosses the line and then crosses back for me though. On the one hand, it very clearly evokes some very strong images of black cliches, specifically cliches of the 1800s where the "negroid savage of africa" was a wild man engaging in cannabalism and only the enlightened europeans can put a stop to it. On the other hand, the setting of Africa is rather obvious considering the origins of our zombie mythos and that's clearly what they were going for. (That said, african zombies are an altogether different beast, namely witch doctors bring back the dead as slaves who can't reproduce with an infectious bite, so there are hardly hordes of slavering zombies running around eating people in those stories, it's closer to vampire myths than anything.) And yet again, they did try to alleviate the concerns by inserting enemy zombies of other races into the mix of enemies you'll face, though in smaller numbers (which is understandable as it IS Africa after all) and adding a kinda black sidekick (who's also female, but that's another debate).
I'm not even going to try and pretend that racism was the intent of those who made it. I highly doubt that. I also won't argue that the game's story is itself racist. I'm just arguing that there's some strong imagery that looks really really bad and is possible to interpret as racist symbolism, and that much is also true. I'm not arguing that such a setting should never be used in a zombie game, and I'm certainly not arguing for censorship. I'm saying that it's easily understandable why someone should find this offensive. However, I think in the end I've decided that since it IS an open interpretation one can do for it, there's nothing particularly wrong with playing and enjoying the game. In most cases I don't share the idiotic view that "political correctness has run amock" (a statement made by people who think that if you say "I'm sorry I said nigger, I meant black person" but they clearly intend "black person" to have all the same hatred as when they said nigger, that somehow they've pleased someone, as if it was the word in and of itself rather than what they meant by it that offended), but there are some situations where it's true, like when you offend others just by openly questioning their beliefs, as if just asking questions about what someone believes has become, to them, off-limits (a situation that does not occur if you ask, say, a scientist about their latest hypothesis, or someone about why they like this or that movie). This isn't really either of those though.
And then there's me currently reading HP Lovecraft stories. Now THERE was a racist. His early stories in particular were rather blatant in equating the lower rungs of society with "lower races" as he viewed them, and also I remember one of the characters owning a black cat named "Niggerman". And yet, since the racism the author clearly was guilty of rarely became a major story point (never read a story where it turns out that the entirety of "the jews" for example were all secretly horrid aliens from Shoggoth attempting to summon Azathoth) I can ignore it and enjoy the otherwise good writing. Of course, his ideas about race did enter into it all the same. It's kinda hard to ignore how the author's ideas of societal decay (that outdated concept) entered into so many of his stories, where characters go on describing the wretchedness of modern art and design, or his views on races of people being intrinsically seperate when great amounts of his scaryness depend on an idea that I WASN'T raised on shows like Star Trek where the lesson that something looking different shouldn't fill me with dread. (Namely, every time he exposes the details of an alien as "shockingly appauling and deeply fear inducing by the very nature of it's differences" I very rarely ever get a feel for what sort of horror that character is supposed to be going for, and rather am just filled with curiosity because the critter sounds "pretty nifty keen mister".
Oh ABF, while it's true there's not the 400 year old history there is with black people when it comes to the spanish, there's still clear racism in modern day America when it comes to spanish people so it's still a valid comparison.
Oh lazy, I was wondering, is it true that black people reproduce by laying eggs?
Now it can go overboard in the other direction too. If someone had a game like Fable, in it's setting of eternal fantasy europe, with the vast majority as african americans, that'd be seen as a rather insulting sort of coddling to everyone involved. However, the other way, say a movie set in Japan where the last samurai is a white guy, or a game in africa where everyone is white, would also be insulting.
RE5 kinda crosses the line and then crosses back for me though. On the one hand, it very clearly evokes some very strong images of black cliches, specifically cliches of the 1800s where the "negroid savage of africa" was a wild man engaging in cannabalism and only the enlightened europeans can put a stop to it. On the other hand, the setting of Africa is rather obvious considering the origins of our zombie mythos and that's clearly what they were going for. (That said, african zombies are an altogether different beast, namely witch doctors bring back the dead as slaves who can't reproduce with an infectious bite, so there are hardly hordes of slavering zombies running around eating people in those stories, it's closer to vampire myths than anything.) And yet again, they did try to alleviate the concerns by inserting enemy zombies of other races into the mix of enemies you'll face, though in smaller numbers (which is understandable as it IS Africa after all) and adding a kinda black sidekick (who's also female, but that's another debate).
I'm not even going to try and pretend that racism was the intent of those who made it. I highly doubt that. I also won't argue that the game's story is itself racist. I'm just arguing that there's some strong imagery that looks really really bad and is possible to interpret as racist symbolism, and that much is also true. I'm not arguing that such a setting should never be used in a zombie game, and I'm certainly not arguing for censorship. I'm saying that it's easily understandable why someone should find this offensive. However, I think in the end I've decided that since it IS an open interpretation one can do for it, there's nothing particularly wrong with playing and enjoying the game. In most cases I don't share the idiotic view that "political correctness has run amock" (a statement made by people who think that if you say "I'm sorry I said nigger, I meant black person" but they clearly intend "black person" to have all the same hatred as when they said nigger, that somehow they've pleased someone, as if it was the word in and of itself rather than what they meant by it that offended), but there are some situations where it's true, like when you offend others just by openly questioning their beliefs, as if just asking questions about what someone believes has become, to them, off-limits (a situation that does not occur if you ask, say, a scientist about their latest hypothesis, or someone about why they like this or that movie). This isn't really either of those though.
And then there's me currently reading HP Lovecraft stories. Now THERE was a racist. His early stories in particular were rather blatant in equating the lower rungs of society with "lower races" as he viewed them, and also I remember one of the characters owning a black cat named "Niggerman". And yet, since the racism the author clearly was guilty of rarely became a major story point (never read a story where it turns out that the entirety of "the jews" for example were all secretly horrid aliens from Shoggoth attempting to summon Azathoth) I can ignore it and enjoy the otherwise good writing. Of course, his ideas about race did enter into it all the same. It's kinda hard to ignore how the author's ideas of societal decay (that outdated concept) entered into so many of his stories, where characters go on describing the wretchedness of modern art and design, or his views on races of people being intrinsically seperate when great amounts of his scaryness depend on an idea that I WASN'T raised on shows like Star Trek where the lesson that something looking different shouldn't fill me with dread. (Namely, every time he exposes the details of an alien as "shockingly appauling and deeply fear inducing by the very nature of it's differences" I very rarely ever get a feel for what sort of horror that character is supposed to be going for, and rather am just filled with curiosity because the critter sounds "pretty nifty keen mister".
Oh ABF, while it's true there's not the 400 year old history there is with black people when it comes to the spanish, there's still clear racism in modern day America when it comes to spanish people so it's still a valid comparison.
Oh lazy, I was wondering, is it true that black people reproduce by laying eggs?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)