22nd February 2009, 6:22 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Do you consider the Boomers in Left 4 Dead to be just another symptom of fat aggression, or do you interpret it the same way you interpret RE4?
It's fat aggression. Its an over weight male that explodes pus and goo when you shoot them. It's another iconic image created to make a fat person seem disgusting. For the record, he's not actually fat, just brimming with the goo giving him the appearance of being overweight which accomplishes the same goal of simply making fun of fat people. This continues in to other facets of conversations, message boards etc where people yell out BOOMER when they see a person who's overweight. Culture expands with the new gag and the anti-fat campaign keeps on rollin. Being overweight is unattractive, we're hard wired to love a well toned body. But to openly persecute, ridicule and remove the humanity of overweight people in entertainment is so horrible its funny. Like a grotesque car accident.
The zombies of RE4 are several villages of backwoods people kept from society and modern education - infected armies created by a mastermind in an attempt to overtake the world, starting with the infection of the president's daughter. Okay, we got that. can you find a single shred of racism, anywhere, at all? How about descrimination? Sure, the president's daughter is a worthless blond who cant do anything. But then there's Ada who's her polar opposite. Strong, intelligent and fully capable to handle any situation (lets say she's a normal human although the rumors of her being augmented are there). The only descrimination at any point is when a certain somebody tells Leon that the "stupid Americans" wont know what hit them. Then goes on to make fun of US movies, and other fun cliches including terrorism.
Leon approaches the people at first in a way you would expect a human being to interact with other human beings. He only goes to his gun once his life is threatened (in the first minutes of the game). No matter how hard you try to slice RE4, you cant find a shred of racism or discrimination. Unless you count tall people with biker beards and glass eyes but that's a given. And the senseless killing of fish, bats, harmless spiders and the dogs cows and chickens.
RE5 is set in Africa. There are places in Africa that have been at war for years and years, just *driving* through the town could get you exploded in no time regardless of your color. It is violence to an extreme, public executions, riots, beatings, slavery, forced prostitution you name it. It's a war zone as bad as the middle of WW2 at its worst. Chris is introduced in to this area, this culture at war. Part of the fun of the story is that he has to decide (in story) who's the enemy, who's a human being, what is actually safe here. It's Africa and he's white (an obvious outsider) - he's going to be hated. It's a great setup for drama and its already been done in countless movies. It brings up the question of race sure, that's the idea. But it's done as a positive, to idealistically portray humanity.
Quote:Imagine if you will a zombie movie set in a fat camp where a skinny guy was shooting up all the zombified fatties, and you get close to the thing.
That would be an obvious comedic attempt at making fun of fat people. No, what you're saying is that if RE5 actually took place in the United States during the 1800's and you were killing zombified slaves. This game takes place in a modern day warzone (for the past few decades) where an outbreak has hit and shit is hitting the fan a little harder than it has been. You're the epitome of stranger in a strange land and your guide, a combat ready African woman, saves your bacon from all the confusion.
By 'seeing' racism in something like RE5, you're making yourself actually look racist. 'They have thick accents, cant speak English and dress poorly!" They're uneducated street rats who have known nothing but war their entire lives. That's doesn't spell nigger, it's human drama and it happened in every corner of the globe including here. It's human beings struggling against an evil. The evil of corporations and classic masterminds, of government, war and idealism, etc etc. You *want* to see something racist, so you see it (speaking generally to the people who claim RE5 has racist content). Probably just because it involves black people which is really sad. It reminds me of the nerdy debates of Palpatine being racist because he killed Mace. Dont mind the thousands, millions he killed, that crazy cracker is racist because he killed Jackson! It's so fucking childish, i cant believe this stuff continues in to adult minds.
Quote:I've never read anything by Lovecraft to justify the notion that he was ironically poking fun at racism in his books, and to read them it seems more than apparent that he's genuinely racist when he talks about a "repulsively large negroid" in Herbert West, Reanimator. He was no Mark Twain. Other letters seem to justify it, and it was also well known he would make casual remarks against jewish people while walking with his wife, who herself was jewish and she would point that out to him.
Sometimes "reading deeper" is code for "reinterpret it until it fits with what you want to think".
What I read many years ago was that he played with his wife constantly about being jewish as Lovecraft himself was an atheist. The word 'Negroid' is a scientific term. Just like Caucasian. Caucasians can be repulsively large as well. I always though 'Mongoloid' sounded really bad, but its again just the scientific term. Never reinterpret, just boil it down to its core. ;D