Yes, I know that last one doesn’t fit, but I really like sushi.
-Apparently N’Gai Croal gave an in interview with MTV’s Multiplayer this week on the subject of racism in the Resident Evil 5 trailer. “There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it… There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of ‘othered.’” Really insightful commentary, N’Gai, except it sounds strangely familiar. Like, I said that eight months ago in The Village Voice familiar. Granted, it’s always good to hear complementary and constructive voices, but still…
-According to a recent poll that asked parents what they would find most offensive in a video game, “a graphically severed human head, a man and a woman having sex, multiple use of the F-word, and two men kissing,” 64% of parents said they be more up in arms about basic, non-violent sex content then about bodily gore. On the one hand, I can’t say I’m surprised. On the other, it’s always shocking to see just how ridiculous people are. Would you rather your child be exposed to abusive behavior inspired by rage, or a basic, consensual, human act? Head chopping, please!
-According to Destructoid, restaurant chain Yo! Sushi is taking part in a promotion for Cooking Mama 2. While customers wait for their sushi to be delivered via conveyor belt (I love those things), they’ll get to play the DS game and cook up their own absolutely ridiculous, Asian-inspired food. If only there was a restaurant where they served actually Cooking Mama dishes, like burritos with squid and custard with tiny fish. Yummy.
Happy weekend!
April 12th, 2008 at 7:20 am
that’s what you get with a country founded by puritans :( Funny how that’s never given a negative connotation in history class.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:42 am
That poll is why I love the dutch culture, we don’t censor at all. neither do most of us want censorship, I played Resident Evil and watched dutch movies with full frontal nudity from age of 10 WITH the aproval from my mother, father and grandmother. We all said up yours to PEGI and their attempts to make shops not sell games to underaged persons, I bought Resident Evil on my own. but times changed and hefty fines now make that I can’t sell games to underaged children without their parents aproval still I hope we won’t get so far as America.
April 12th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
You can’t seriously think Croal ripped you off? (And not all the other bloggers who were saying the same thing when the trailer came out?) Don’t mean to be combative, but it just strikes me as an unfair accusation. Croal’s a really good blogger, and I don’t think he needed help figuring out that shooting and objectifying black people is problematic. I’m sure he’s also heard of the concept of “the other” before, like the rest of us who read Conrad in high school.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Dear Bonnie,
I know exactly what you mean about the sex v.s. violence. A friend of mine is high school, whose parents loved “the Matrix,” wouldn’t let him watch “Shakespeare and Love” because it had sex in it. Seriously, we have our priorities backwards.
As to resident Evil 5, you and Croal both got it right. It isn’t that the intent is racist, or that it is racist to kill black zombies; it is that the imagery is frighteningly familiar to certain racist images and ideas.
Loving what I have read of your stuff,
Tristram Draper
April 13th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I cannot believe any of this stuff is taken seriously. I mean, “racist”? Do you even know what that word means? Let’s go over a few basic facts that Bonnie is conveniently forgetting.
“Racism” is not any situation in which a darker-skinned person is portrayed in a negative light. It is the belief in the inherent inferiority of a group of people based upon superficial aspects such as skin color–in this case, the game is not “racist.”
The fact that you continue to extremely overanalyze (redundant, I know, but your article about this topic was quite redundant, as well) the subject and proclaim “racism” this and “racism” that about what YOU see in the trailer says much more about your own ignorant and insecurity than anyone else’s. The fact that you cannot take a game’s setting at face value and go with it shows the hallmark of an immature mind. You clearly have some personal issues you need to take care of, else I’m not sure you’ll appreciate this game at all.
Let’s use one of your quotes: “And that’s the other issue with setting a zombie movie in Africa. The whole idea of zombies is based on our fear of contamination. Get bitten by a zombie, or just drop a tiny bit of undead blood in an open wound, and you’re a goner. Soon you too will carry the disease of the living dead.
Sounds familiar yet?”
Why yes, it does. It sounds like a zombie film. BUT OH NO! Because the zombies in this case happen to be that most horrific of things to you–black–IT’S RACISM.
“Or maybe we’re reminded of the “one drop rule,”"
“We”? No, sorry, but that’s just you and other race-baiting fools with too much time on their hands.
It must be really great to live in a country where we can ignore real problems and instead overanalyze non-existent ones in video games like RE5. Get a clue.
April 13th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Jonas omg do you really write for Penny Arcade?!
April 13th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
BTW, I’m of two minds about people like Jonas. The first is that, while the anti-Bonnie reaction to Bonnie’s Village Voice article went way, way over the top (and so is the reaction to Croal), I also think the article failed to take into consideration the perspective of gamers. It’s not their fault that the next title in their favorite franchise could be taken as racist. A game they expect to like is being attacked on the basis of a trailer. And the mainstream media (which liberally includes the Voice) spends enough time bashing games - why do they have to pick on this one, just because this time, the zombies are black? I’d like to see more critics persuade gamers, and talk to them directly and explain to them why this stuff is problematic - why a game can’t exist in a vacuum, and the context that it brings with it can make it richer, but can also introduce problems.
But on the flip side? A lot of gamers seem to be very, very stupid.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:22 am
“I’d like to see more critics persuade gamers, and talk to them directly and explain to them why this stuff is problematic - why a game can’t exist in a vacuum, and the context that it brings with it can make it richer, but can also introduce problems.”
As someone who has tried to do exactly that, it seems to me at times to be a lost cause. The people screeching about “ZOMG teh reverse racism/sexism/homophobia”, are nearly always completely entrenched in their sheltered worldview, and the only effect posting evidence that say minorities and women are more likely to be poor in the US than men only prompts them to add a “well so?” before restating their “argument”.
To be honest, I’ve just given up on tiring to explain to people who are supposedly in my peer group why it’s considered impolite (to say the least) to use racial epithets. They don’t care if the face they present to the public is an immature, socially maladjusted, screeching stereotype of what a gamer is, fine, I don’t really care anymore. (similarly nuts to the general gay “community” if they wont accept me or some of my friends just because we’re either bi or transsexual)
In short:
“But on the flip side? A lot of gamers seem to be very, very stupid.”
Agreed.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:30 am
I’m not saying N’Gai ripped me off, turkmenistan. I’m saying a mention would have been nice. If I’d written something like what he did without linking to earlier voices on the subject, I’d be accused of unfairly claiming ideas, and it seems that standard should be held all around.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I have to admit that i have a problem with seeing the whole racism thing in the trailer. On the one hand there is racist imagery if you have been exposed to these things before and on the other there is just cinematographic techniques at play. It all depends on your experience in life to date.
To me, a lot of the imagery (in the trailer i’ve seen) looks like it was pulled from a documentary on certain places in Africa - nothing and no one looks goofy or typified in a racist or slighted manner. Maybe i just can’t see it?
The only thing i really take issue with in the trailer is perhaps the voice-over.
Maybe one day we can move past all this stuff…
April 16th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
“To me, a lot of the imagery (in the trailer i’ve seen) looks like it was pulled from a documentary on certain places in Africa - nothing and no one looks goofy or typified in a racist or slighted manner. Maybe i just can’t see it?”
You just can’t see it. Or you’re not looking hard enough.
The way the villagers are framed and lit, skulking around in the shadows, staring out at Chris from sunken eyes; the difficulty one has in telling the difference between the uninfected villagers and the zombies (look at any comment thread in the current shitstorm about this and notice that nobody can tell whether the fellow with the shades and the megaphone is supposed to be infected or not); the fact that Chris doesn’t engage the villagers in any way — it all comes together to create a sense of these African villagers being less than human, which happens to play right into every fear and stereotype white people have ever had about blacks: they’re inhuman savages, they’re violent, they’re dangerous, they’re not like us. It’s the white man’s journey into Darkest Africa, with the menacing natives gathering around and then attacking in a mob (hence all of the references people have made to Heart of Darkness and Black Hawk Down).
Unfortunately, gamers (in addition to frequently being fiercely, unreasonably defensive about their favorite products) often come up short on empathy and perspective. “It’s not offensive to me,” they say, “so why should anybody be offended by it?”
Ask yourself, if you’re a white gamer who thinks this is all a big stink over nothing, who thinks that it’s ridiculous to talk about historical imagery and context and so forth when it’s just a game, who thinks we should all just look past race and get over history:
How would you feel if someone burned a cross on your lawn?
April 17th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
“The way the villagers are framed and lit, skulking around in the shadows, staring out at Chris from sunken eyes; the difficulty one has in telling the difference between the uninfected villagers and the zombies (look at any comment thread in the current shitstorm about this and notice that nobody can tell whether the fellow with the shades and the megaphone is supposed to be infected or not); the fact that Chris doesn’t engage the villagers in any way — it all comes together to create a sense of these African villagers being less than human, which happens to play right into every fear and stereotype white people have ever had about blacks: they’re inhuman savages, they’re violent, they’re dangerous, they’re not like us. ”
And that is cinematography at play right there. Foreshadowing techniques, ‘otherness’ techniques and dehumanising of future and current enemies are all the tools of the trade for books, film and art (perhaps even games).
Like i said, it depends on how you view the world. What you’ve been taught growing up and what you’ve experienced.
“Ask yourself, if you’re a white gamer who thinks this is all a big stink over nothing, who thinks that it’s ridiculous to talk about historical imagery and context and so forth when it’s just a game, who thinks we should all just look past race and get over history:
How would you feel if someone burned a cross on your lawn?”
I don’t think it’s ridiculous to talk about these things (you’re putting words into my mouth there)… what i do think is that it’s pointless jumping to conclusions about things. Like you mention in the quote above this one, if you look hard enough you will see it. Sometimes we all look too hard and see things that aren’t there.
As to the question? I’m very much a believer in treat others as you want to be treated yourself. As a religious i’ve been unfairly persecuted (to no where near the degree that minorities have been in the past and even today) because my ‘way’ is different from others. I’d be very angry if anyone touched my property with no good cause - but i wouldn’t jump to condemn all people that belong to those who had… not their children or their grandchildren.
The way to heal wounds quickly is to leave them open to the air - don’t pick at them but do examine them and apply liberal amounts of cleasing washes to help the process.