Adam Sessler's opinion on the "black issue" from RE5

[Laivasse]

The whole fuss over this game is so wearying. A bunch of kneejerk whiners coming to the most simplified and bowdlerised interpretation of the game - 'Oh look, it's a whitey shooting blackies!' Waste of time.

Having said that... while I stand by the assertion that there is nothing wrong with making every bad guy in Africa black, there is a kind of implicit racism in the fact that even in a game set in Africa, the overwhelming probability is that the good guy is going to be white. This isn't anything to do with RE5 in particular though. It's not that the good guy is white because the bad guys are black (so as to show some kind of racist contrast) but simply because the good guy is white or close-to-white in almost any game you'd care to mention. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is GTA:SA, and apparently the only way a black protagonist could exist in that game was to stuff it full of negative ghetto culture stereotypes to a puke-inducing degree.

As regards the possible naivety of the developers: IMO they may have stumbled into this without knowing what controversy lay ahead simply because it's being developed in Japan (that is correct, right? If not, scratch this paragraph). The Japanese are typically pretty ignorant and insensitive when it comes to white-on-black racism and controversy. There's also a fair bit of latent anti-black prejudice in SE Asia and that also may be part of the reason you're probably less likely to see a black protagonist in a Japanese-developed game.

 

[Saturos]

What about the nazi outbreak in WW2 and all the WW2 related games that followed? (CoD, MoH etc.) Nazism was indeed an outbreak that infected many poor Germans in it's wake.

Or it could also be called the H-Virus (Short for "Hitler" Virus) :upstare:

Nonetheless, it appears that there are many games that include the slaughtering of different ethnics on a mass scale, and yet like others have similarly stated, these ethnic antagonist star(s) are not complaining are they?

BTW: Who else got slapped with an infraction for stating their opinion in this thread? Sheesh.... I wonder if Adam Sessler got an infraction too?

 

[Slug Advisor]

That's silly.

End of.

 

[Solaris]

I'll say it again, it's not a racism issue, it's a, "how can we sue and rip everyone off so we don't have to work" issue.

Read: 'Black people don't want to work and want to scrounge of the whites'.

I know plenty of good black folk, but many are a bunch of manipulative opportunists, liars, and cheaters and will do whatever it takes to get on top (money wise maybe, but not in society) without actually having to work for it. Even Bill Cosby is ashamed at what his race has become and is not afraid to call these lazy African-Americans on their BS.

'I'm not a racist but...'
Asshole

I for one am glad that our race (white) had an opportunity to star and get blasted apart by the R.C.P.D survivors in RE2 and RE3, but that's just me.

I'm ashamed to have anything to do with you.

BTW: Adam Sessler is a douche. I don't know the guy, but you can just look at him and tell.

Ditto.

 

[Saturos]

Read: 'Black people don't want to work and want to scrounge of the whites'.

Hmmm, another alarmist. I never once mentioned anything about color being the source of the problem did I? I wouldn't care if it was the whites, blacks, browns, etc., that was doing the injustice. What's wrong is wrong, and believe me or not when I say I would stick up for a black man's injustice just as fast as a white man's, or brown man's, OR yellow man's. Besides, there are other ethnics involved other than the blacks. Both those who are on the wrong end and those trying to earn a living. BTW and for the record, the Ku Klux Klan, NAACP, and all other 'color' oriented group can kiss my a$$. They only make things worse imo.

Racism is for the narrowminded simpletons of our society. I have more class and a much higher IQ than that. Com'on.

'I'm not a racist but...'
Asshole

Once again, you are putting words in my mouth. Try to comprehend what I'm saying before playing the rascism card. /facepalm

Me: "What some of these people are doing is just plain wro..."

Solaris: "Racist bas***d"!!!!

I'm ashamed to have anything to do with you.

Oh well. I wasn't the one that made the mistake. :upstare:

Ditto.

At least you understood something I said.

and futhermore...

I'll say it again, it's not a racism issue, it's a, "how can we sue and rip everyone off so we don't have to work" issue. I know plenty of good black folk, but many are a bunch of manipulative opportunists, liars, and cheaters and will do whatever it takes to get on top

These folks I mentioned are the many who are trying to do right with themselves and their families, and I applaud them greatly. GO HONEST BLACK PEOPLE!!!

 

[Asknoone]

There's a point Saturos and you seem to be missing it.

 

[Saturos]

There's a point Saturos and you seem to be missing it.

Sorry Samon. :upstare: I didn't mean to de-rail the thread, it's just that I get so irritated when someone nails me with the 'rascist' card when in fact, I'm not.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Everybody is up in arms about Sessler's comments, and everybody seems to think that Sessler has actually called the game racist. Yet in fact, he has not.

Sessler's message is a moderate and a reasonable one: he is worried as to how the game might turn out, based on a trailer which he finds "kind of unpleasant and unsettling". Not once does he simply condemn Capcom. He takes great pains to be as equivocal and as reserved as he can. For example, he worries that because Japan is not big on racial sensitivity, the final product will end up "distasteful". Distasteful! God, he's really going for it hammer and tongs isn't he? I don't know what video any of you were watching, but it appears that some kind of previously hidden knee-jerk reactionary response kicked in, and overwrote his words in your brain with the words of another, a complete straw man.

If we read the original N'Gai Croal interview, we find that it also stresses that so far it must reserve judgement, that the concern is based on what the trailer looks like now. Both Croal and Sessler punctuate their dialogue with wheedling get-out clauses: I'm not saying that I think Capcom are the kkk...I don't think it's intentional...I'm not trying to this or that. To construe this as some people have, or as some kind of reverse racism ('double standard!') is to miss the point so entirely that it constitutes a mode of cultural response which I find, frankly, disturbing.

Now let me emphasise before I begin that I do not seek to say that RE5 is particularly worse than other games. I am not interested. There may later be a time for a more general discussion of prejudice and cultural representation in games, but currently I do not believe that redirecting our attention to something else which is supposedly 'worse' at all detracts from criticisms of this game which we are discussing right now. Similarly, RE4 may provoke a similar grievance in me, but I have not played it. I will not comment on it. I'm only going to talk about what I've seen, which is the trailer for RE5.

Because you know what? Sessler and Croal are right, damnit.

*

"We shot zombified spanish people in previous games. Now we're shooting zombified black people. What's the difference?"

"It's set in Africa; of course the zombies are all black!"

"People crying racism over this are silly; it's political correctness gone mad."

Some people are trying so hard to make this an issue that is about racism, to make it an issue of identity politics. In misconstruing criticism, and in their responses, people reveal that they think this is a matter of "racism" - of the game somehow offending the dignity and infringing the rights of an individual who is a member of a marginalised group, but no less of an individual for that.

The question, however, is not one of civil rights or of political correctness but one of artistic representation.

Here in The World we have a thing called 'context'. This means that different arrangements of meanings and signs can create entirely different impressions depending on the thematic environment in which they take place. It's the same principle allows tiny changes in the fabric of a text to drastically alter the general meaning of the entire thing, because the small things are part of that entirety.

While I don't seek to place blame on anyone alive today, or rant about the rest of the world in general, it is true to say that the western world, specifically Europe, really messed Africa up. Permit the generalisations: a lot of white people killed, tortured, raped or enslaved a lot of black people. A lot of black people did this too, but that doesn't change or excuse the fact of the exploitation, the ruin and the violence that empires inflicted on that land. It also doesn't change or excuse the lies those empires told to themselves about what they were doing, the various myths of colonialisation. That the black people were all savages, less than human, demons - or that that they were poor and simple and they were being saved by the light of civilisation. These myths and lies still surface today - for example, in the absurd argument that it was all for the good since Africa is better off for being part of the a foreign empire (this may be true, but it's hardly a defence to what the people who build that empire did. If I try to murder you, but you escape and it changes your outlook on life so much that you become really successful, you may owe it all to me but I still bloody well tried to kill you).

It is in the context of those events and those lies that we must see this trailer. We see a horde (mass is important; it dehumanises the individual) of savage, mad, bloodthirsty black people, being shot at by a white person, who is a figure of some authority, associated with martial and military themes, and will inevitably be the star of the show.

One might object that the developers are responsible for the choice of location, and so it's irrelevant that the zombies would 'logically' be Africans. But let's ignore that. Alright, so the zombies would be black - the people there are. Yeah, alright, the person fighting them might well be white. Sometimes it happens that way. But this isn't the problem. The problem is that the game unintentionally recalls and thus incorporates those myths and legends I mentioned earlier. It brings back the idea of the virtuous hero isolated in a foriegn land surrounded by savage locals. It uncomfortably echoes the old depiction of black people as demons and devils. And, like the film Blood Diamond, it shows a white man having to solve the problems of a black country.

Croal himself emphasises the historical nature of his grievances:

There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery....given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It?s not as simple as saying, ?Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in ?Resident Evil 4,? and now ?black zombies and that?s why people are getting upset.? The imagery is not the same. It doesn?t carry the same history, it doesn?t carry the same weight. I don?t know how to explain it more clearly than that.

The trailer, then, brings up various ghost-myths of race and colonialisation, rather victorian ones at that. It buys into a whole discourse of 'otherness' which helped shape, or was shaped by, the oppression of Africa in the past, and which indeed more generally have affected and been affected by oppression and prejudice in general. We might consider, for example, the late-Victorian association of disease, of infection, with degeneracy. Such ideas of degeneration expressed contemporary fears that the massed urban poor, squeezed by terrible social conditions, might at any moment rise up to cause havok. There is a darwinist angle as well, the fear that the english bloodline might become polluted (infected) by the poor or the foreign - who, although 'degenerated', people felt might actually have been more brutally suited, more naturally superior. Consider then how we might apply this to the modern, globalised economy, where the 'third world' is in a sense an entire country of the poor, wracked with civil chaos and disease.

Horror has always reflected contemporary fears, and often enough its response is conservative. Think about Dracula. The vampire is pathogenic, transmitted over the border from another ecosystem and threatens to spread, unabated, across the country. If he is allowed to breed unchecked he will overpopulate London with his own progeny. And so on.

So even though it is difficult to analyse the full extent of RE5's messaging, we can reasonably think, looking at the trailer, that the myths of otherness will be frighteningly exhumed - not that they were ever really buried. So I don't think that the game is necessarily racist but I do think it's uncomfortable - it makes you sqirm a bit - just like Blood Diamond. That film, ostensibly about the problems of Africa, has a likeable, well-written white couple - one of whom is a living remnant of British imperialism, and gets to spill his blood on the red earth of Africa in a heroic fashion - COMPLETELY overshadow the boring, wooden but virtuous black African. Also, a white South African general saves the day.

Know how exasperated I am with the stupidity of arguments on display in this thread to even concieve of making this post. It makes me sound as if I actually give that much of a shit about how racist Resident Evil 5 is. It even risks making me sound like I wish to see the game censored. I am sure some will accuse me of being some kind of black rights crusader. But I simply find the misconceptions of the people in this thread to be ridiculous, and I want to make people aware of the textual dimensions to this issue - make people aware of what demons we're all trafficking with. Arguments that "it's okay because logically they would all be black" or that "you blow the heads off of white people for 4 games in a row, so when you start shooting black people it's not suddenly racist" are stupid. They completely miss the point. They follow the same kind of bizarre logic that makes people say it's okay to call someone a paki because it's just an abrieviation right, why are you getting offended? No, it's not okay, and you can't just dismiss it, because of the cultural baggage it carries. You have to be aware of the artistic dimensions, because it is, at base, an artistic issue, a mythopolitical issue.

No text exists in a vacuum. All texts exist IN CONTEXT. To deny or ignore the potential relevance of that context is, to put it bluntly, absurd.

And you know what? They could have avoided all this if they just did what RJMC said and put a goddamn black African in the lead.

 

[Kyorisu]

'I'm not a racist but...'
Asshole

Funny my attitude towards a certain culture of aboriginals here makes me look like a racist and yet it's the sad truth. Bloody money grubbing bastards, but hey the same can be said for bogans on centrelink payments. Yet the bogans don't get as many benefits as the aboriginals do.

As for RE5 maybe we should wait for the full bloody game or a preview of it before continually bringing up the god damn black issue.

 

[Solaris]

This is the problem Saturos

 

[Kyorisu]

This is the problem Saturos

And why does it matter to you whether or not someone is racist?

 

[Solaris]

Funny my attitude towards a certain culture of aboriginals here makes me look like a racist and yet it's the sad truth. Bloody money grubbing bastards, but hey the same can be said for bogans on centrelink payments. Yet the bogans don't get as many benefits as the aboriginals do.

As for RE5 maybe we should wait for the full bloody game or a preview of it before continually bringing up the god damn black issue.

Another racist.

Boy, the banhammer will have a field day I hope.

I know plenty of good black folk, but many are a bunch of manipulative opportunists, liars, and cheaters and will do whatever it takes to get on top (money wise maybe, but not in society) without actually having to work for it

This is a a statement that obviously hides (poorly) racist predujuice. Otherwise why even mention black people, it's obvious that people of all races can be manipulative etc. But you draw attention to the blacks as if black people are a problem.

 

[Kyorisu]

Another racist.

Boy, the banhammer will have a field day I hope.

That deeply upsets me. I'd even go so far as to consider it a personal attack, you are calling me something I'm not (a very bad thing) with bugger all information about me. Please get a ****ing clue and then maybe I'll care about your pathetic attempt to put me down.

It's very simple.

1. You have bogans. People who don't work and don't even try.
2. You have bogans. People who don't work and don't even try.

Both 1&2 receive benefits from the government for being unemployed. Yet one of them receives more money simply because of their skin colour/history. It's really ****ing hard to make my point that I hate all bogans equally without appearing racist. In my ideal world the bogans would be cut off from support after x time without work or be forced to do community work. Even a low paying job is better than bloody community service, now there's an incentive to get off your arse.

 

[Sulkdodds]

With evidence and argument, you may make the point that incidences of fraud are higher among certain ethnic groups, or that they are unfairly privileged for the colour of their skin. Generalising like Saturos', however, which actively describes characteristics like laziness and sloth as characteristics of a "race" - a word which he used - is a different matter entirely, because he suggests that the characteristics are in fact a result of, or function of, ethnicity.

Neither of these, however, have much of a place in this thread, and I'd ask that people discuss the matter at hand. It's generally irrelevant to this debate whether black people are more or less "money-grubbing" than white people.

k?

 

[Kyorisu]

Sorry I just had to argue the point. Someone may write something that appears racist on an internet forum, hell I do it all the time. That does not necessarily make that person racist. Another individual to come along and then call that person racist is an arse or a sufferer of holier than thou syndrome. End of story.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Maybe, but all we have to go on with regards to your 'personality' is your actions and words on this forum. So, excepting misunderstandings as above, it's kinda fair enough for people to judge you both on that. ANYWAY.

more talk about my long post plzkthx.

 

[Warbie]

They could have avoided all this if they just did what RJMC said and put a goddamn black African in the lead.

Chris Redfield is an established RE lead. To replace him with a black guy simply to avoid offending a few people makes no sense to me. Infact, such a transparent concession would be rather distasteful. In the context of the series - which is what I feel is important here - it's difficult to find offense in the trailer. Taken out of context, I see the parallels that can be drawn, but find it hard to treat these as anything other than arguing the toss when we know full well Chris'll be killing zombies on another continent in a few years time.

 

[PvtRyan]

And you know what? They could have avoided all this if they just did what RJMC said and put a goddamn black African in the lead.

They would have? Wouldn't that still leave the problem that you described in your post: that of Africans being depicted as mythic demons and savages? A black hero for sensitivity's sake would've been a cheap cop-out.

You described what context is in your post, thanks for that I guess. But one important aspect was missing from your post: context must be interpreted and is always multi-interpretable, unless the game explicitly stated "black people are evil demons and a white man must come to save the day". You gotta draw the parallels between demons and the black people in this game before you can see them. When I watched the trailer for the first time (the only one that counts, all times after that were tainted with bias by this whole "issue") I saw none of that from what I remember. The only thing I noticed was the use of black skin to make the zombies scarier and more haunting, which I think is a logical balance (if perhaps insensitive) as the game is set in broad daylight. You may say that the developers could have chosen to not set this game in Africa, but I think that doing a horror game in daylight is a brilliant thing to do if they can pull it off (and the game does look terrifying) and such a game could only be set in Africa.

The game can't be blamed for how it's interpreted, unless it's very explicit in how it wants you to see it (which would mean the developers are racist, which you also don't think is so). And I don't think that's the case.

So: it takes a racist to recognize a racist

 

[Sulkdodds]

My longpost brings all the boys to the yard.

Chris Redfield is an established RE lead. To replace him with a black guy simply to avoid offending a few people makes no sense to me. Infact, such a transparent concession would be rather distasteful.

I don't think I'd advocate putting a black guy in the lead just because it would "avoid offending a few people" or for what PvtRyan calls "a cheap cop-out". I'd advocate putting a black guy in the lead because the art produced is less objectionable (a slightly different affair), because it's still quite a new thing to do in gaming, because it's generally more interesting and because honestly? who the hell cares about Chris Redfield? I bet he was such a brilliant character to begin with. Really worth keeping. "Resident Evil has never been known for the depth of its storyline."

They would have? Wouldn't that still leave the problem that you described in your post: that of Africans being depicted as mythic demons and savages? A black hero for sensitivity's sake would've been a cheap cop-out.

You're right, it wouldn't have solved the problems. I concede, with the weak defence that it was mostly a throwaway comment to put on the end of my argument.

I do think it would stop people getting so up-in-arms about it, partly because it would at least reduce the starkness of the myths conjured, and partly because people idiotically see it in terms of identity-racism and no white character would make everybody go "oh that's ok then". I guess it is a bit superficial.

There is an extent to which my post is an over-reaction, but if that's so it's only a deliberate counter to the opposite over-reaction that most people in the thread display.

Context is multi-interpretable but only to a certain extent. Although meaning is, essentially, arbitrary - 'meaning' cannot take place without the beholder - we do not exactly get a choice in how we interpret the world. We do not consciously have a hold over what things mean to us. Meaning is, in a sense, inflicted upon us - and therefore those of us that are familiar with the history of colonialism do not choose to feel uncomfortable when they see a bunch of people that have historically been depicted as savage monsters being depicted as (becoming) savage monsters. Just because the game doesn't out-and-out don a huge hood, it doesn't mean there aren't problems with it, though they might be subtle ones. There are some problems with RE4 I am sure; this whole story of the hero isolated in a foreign backwater where all the locals are pitchfork-wielding crazy degenerates is not exactly innocent iself, is it? It doesn't at all 'take a racist to recognise a racist'. There is no prejudice involved in choosing to criticise this over other games because the grounds on which that choice is made are artistic and historical. The point is merely that there are similarities in image. The old image has been discredited as harmful and ridiculous, and was used to justify exploitation and death. If a new image looks too much like the old one, people who are familiar with both are justifiably unsettled.

 

[Solaris]

Sorry I just had to argue the point. Someone may write something that appears racist on an internet forum, hell I do it all the time. That does not necessarily make that person racist. Another individual to come along and then call that person racist is an arse or a sufferer of holier than thou syndrome. End of story.

So your saying.

1: Somebody writres something that 'appears racist'.
2: An individual calls that person racist
3: Said individual is an arse for doing so.

What grounds are there then for saying somebody is a racist if simply saying something that sounds racist is not enough.

Kyorisu's reasoning is so pathetic is makes me sad that people like that are allowed on these forums.

Fantasti megapost by the way Sulk, I agree 100%.

Kyorisu is a fine specimen I believe of the lack of contextual awareness in such issues. He decrys the benifits aborigines recieve by equating them with white Australians as if they had equal starting points. Ignoring the outragous discrimination bigots like himself have made them suffer in Australias disgraceful, recent history.

Not content with years of abusing Aboriginal famillies he now seeks to stop any benifits they may recieve which aims to put them on a level playing field with whites who have no disadvantages becuase of their ethnicity.

But he's not a racist, it's not aboriginals he hates, or black people, it's that age old indicator of idiocy and racists if ever one existed: "Political Correctness gone mad!". He isn't anti-immigration, he just hates 'those' who do no work. He hates 'them' that scrounge. 'They' may happen to be black, but thats not got anything to do with why he doesn't like them... "I have lots of black friends but"....

 

[Sulkdodds]

I'm going to leave your post where it is because, in its discussion of contextual and historical issues, it does touch on the subject. The matter of appearance and intention is likewise important. Does it matter what Capcom intended if they appeared a certain way? Even if we need not 'blame' them we can criticise what they have produced.

A lot of your post, however, isn't specifically relevant (especially not whether individuals in this topic are or are not racist), and in any case primarily political rather than 'games and gaming'. It's a good discussion to have, but have it elsewhere, from a standing start. Honestly, all further posts that don't directly touch on the matter at hand are going to have to be deleted (unless I am convinced otherwise).

 

[Eejit]

Context is multi-interpretable but only to a certain extent. Although meaning is, essentially, arbitrary - 'meaning' cannot take place without the beholder - we do not exactly get a choice in how we interpret the world. We do not consciously have a hold over what things mean to us. Meaning is, in a sense, inflicted upon us - and therefore those of us that are familiar with the history of colonialism do not choose to feel uncomfortable when they see a bunch of people that have historically been depicted as savage monsters being depicted as (becoming) savage monsters. Just because the game doesn't out-and-out don a huge hood, it doesn't mean there aren't problems with it, though they might be subtle ones. There are some problems with RE4 I am sure; this whole story of the hero isolated in a foreign backwater where all the locals are pitchfork-wielding crazy degenerates is not exactly innocent iself, is it? It doesn't at all 'take a racist to recognise a racist'. There is no prejudice involved in choosing to criticise this over other games because the grounds on which that choice is made are artistic and historical. The point is merely that there are similarities in image. The old image has been discredited as harmful and ridiculous, and was used to justify exploitation and death. If a new image looks too much like the old one, people who are familiar with both are justifiably unsettled.

You realise such arguments perpetuate the colonial myths at the same time as decrying them? By bringing such history up again and informing more people about it you're simply ensuring that they too will identify such images with colonialism.
Now you may think that that's a good thing, but in my opinion it will encourage people to hold grudges or guilt over things that they personally are not affected by or responsible for.

Let the game be a game, without drawing attention to history, stereotypes and myths that simply reinforce racial divisivness.

 

[Laivasse]

You described what context is in your post, thanks for that I guess. But one important aspect was missing from your post: context must be interpreted and is always multi-interpretable, unless the game explicitly stated "black people are evil demons and a white man must come to save the day".

This. Sure, stories created without the intention of giving offense can inadvertently cause offence by unearthing old prejudices, or appearing to allude to uncomfortable stereotypes.

No developer or storywriter should be under an obligation to self-censor solely in order to avoid this scenario, however. If a game that isn't racist could be interpreted as being racist, how should that be solved? Simple: the developer says "we didn't at all intend for the story to be construed in that way." And that should be the end of it. No retractions, no apologies for inadvertent offence caused - because the public, having received guidance in how to interpret the game, should then cease to be offended if offended they previously were. This isn't a description of the way things work in society atm, btw, but rather how I think they should, if we are to style ourselves reasonable men capable of rationalisation.

Far more offensive to me than the defensive reactions of people in this thread is the opportunistic moralising of people like Sessler. Interpretative problems just shouldn't be a big enough issue to start broadcasting do-gooder speeches about. The fact that he has zero material to really talk about is why he's floundering cluelessly, saying nothing more than 'I don't know, it just makes me uncomfortable.' And then! Because he wants to make himself look good, and because he wants to end emphatically with a nice meaty moral point, he takes some guy's quote from online and MISCONSTRUES AND MISREPRESENTS IT TOTALLY, sewing up his retarded vid with the most no-brainer 'racism is wrong' sentiment ever. (The quote he tried to demonise was a facetious way of saying 'you should complain only if you see something definitively racist in the game'). Why should developers give a shit about the interpretations made by people like Sessler at all, who has demonstrated his interpretations to be so spastically clumsy in the first place?

I've said it before, but while racism may be ignorance, equality is also ignorance, and won't ever be achieved with everyone so hypersensitive to colour.

Having said that I stand by my previous statement about black protagonists being too rare, but perhaps that doesn't apply in the case of RE5 if the white guy is Redfield, since as Raziaar says he's an established main character.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Now you may think that that's a good thing, but in my opinion it will encourage people to hold grudges or guilt over things that they personally are not affected by or responsible for. Let the game be a game, without drawing attention to history, stereotypes and myths that simply reinforce racial divisivness.

I don't think simply ignoring or failing to see such problems is a preferable thing. Recognising them in a rational way should not be divisive, and if people are encouraged to hold grudges or guilt surely I cannot be responsible for that. I don't feel guilty. I emphasise that I'm not looking to blame anybody, and I'd say that nothing I've written attempts to lay blame. But surely there can be no harm in the exposure of division, and the learning from. That which claims not to be 'political' merely allies itself with the least challenging politics.

This. Sure, stories created without the intention of giving offense can inadvertently cause offence by unearthing old prejudices, or appearing to allude to uncomfortable stereotypes.

No developer or storywriter should be under an obligation to self-censor solely in order to avoid this scenario, however. If a game that isn't racist could be interpreted as being racist, how should that be solved? Simple: the developer says "we didn't at all intend for the story to be construed in that way." And that should be the end of it. No retractions, no apologies for inadvertent offence caused - because the public, having received guidance in how to interpret the game, should then cease to be offended if offended they previously were. This isn't a description of the way things work in society atm, btw, but rather how I think they should, if we are to style ourselves reasonable men capable of rationalisation.

Again, I don't care about 'blaming' the developers, and I don't advocate the idea that they should censor themselves. The image that conjures is of the developers as thrashed children, resentfully looking at their feet and, cheeks flushing, agreeing to go along with the whims of those who censure them - even if they do not agree with or understand the criticisms. If I was to advocate anything at all it would be that developers get a goddamn clue and understand the art that they are producing, but I hope I've made it very clear that I only seek firstly to correct people on their mistaken impressions of what Sessler and Croal are saying, defend those two for their opinions, which I find justified, and to explain my own criticisms of the trailer - indeed to echo Sessler's worry that the final game might end up pretty absurd.

I do not think it matters very much what the developers claim that they intend, and I would not accept very much guidance as to how to they tell me their work should be interpreted. This is because I regard the work not as their work but as a text. It may mean things independent of what they wanted to do with it. I just don't think the author has much control over the text once they release it, and I don't think we should necessarily look to them to guide our interpretations as if they were some holy oracles. What do they know? They were just the vectors for the ideas to turn into something tangible. They can of course retract it, in which case I wouldn't see them as responsible for it any more, but since I don't think they realise what they are doing anyway, I don't think that matters much.

I can see where you're coming from, Laivasse, especially on you seeing Sessler's video as opportunistic. You're right that he misunderstands the comment he quotes (or maybe he doesn't; either way he doesn't say enough for us to really know what his objection was so we assume the most obvious). But I object to the idea that this is about "hypersensitivity to colour" - that it is about colour at all, about political correctness, race-as-identity, whatever. The colour is merely a signification. On its own, it's meaningless, but in combination with the other trappings of colonialist myth that are present, it becomes part of a symbol, one letter in a word - a signifier. What it helps signify in this case is a certain history. And that history is the grounds for my objection.

 

[Eejit]

I don't think simply ignoring or failing to see such problems is a preferable thing. Recognising them in a rational way should not be divisive, and if people are encouraged to hold grudges or guilt surely I cannot be responsible for that. I don't feel guilty. I emphasise that I'm not looking to blame anybody, and I'd say that nothing I've written attempts to lay blame. But surely there can be no harm in the exposure of division, and the learning from. That which claims not to be 'political' merely allies itself with the least challenging politics.

Oh sure, we just have to rely on the majority reacting rationally. Something of a long shot I'd say...

I look forward to the day when a white man can kill hordes of african zombies without it reminding people of the mistakes of the past, but in my opinion constantly reminding people and telling them that such a thing is offensive just puts that further out of reach. Oh, I also look forward to the day when you can have a game featuring an Englishman slaughtering mindless Irish zombies without people getting upset btw, I'm no hypocrite.

 

[Sulkdodds]

To be fair, Irish people have rarely been represented as subhuman since, I dunno, the 1500s.

You may get something reasonably close to your wish, though (in terms of british-isles-border-people) - count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who will perceive bad myths in the upcoming Doomsday!

 

[Laivasse]

I do not think it matters very much what the developers claim that they intend, and I would not accept very much guidance as to how to they tell me their work should be interpreted. This is because I regard the work not as their work but as a text. It may mean things independent of what they wanted to do with it. I just don't think the author has much control over the text once they release it, and I don't think we should necessarily look to them to guide our interpretations as if they were some holy oracles. What do they know?

I tend towards the opinion that if people are made uncomfortable by RE5's setting, it's because they have actively sought and made a connection between its imagery and between the atrocities of history. I can only understand people's offence if they then interpret that link to be a deliberately created one. To be offended by a coincidental similarity of symbology makes no sense to me - could you be 'offended' by the nazi symbolism of an eagle landing on a church cross nearby (or whatever)? As such I think the intent of the developers defines the whole debate. If they can demonstrate that they've chosen the elements of their game setting for no reason that is racist, I can't see why it shouldn't be allowed to let slide without criticism. Perhaps the developers could be criticised for their ineptitude in not having anticipated suspicions of racism, but then expecting the Japanese to be sensitive towards issues of black/white racism is I think a bit optimistic.

In any case, I would rather a developer be clumsy and insensitive and give me his unexpurgated vision, rather than be sensitive and give me something that was censored. Again, I know you said that's not what you are arguing for, but I can't help but feel that is what some people raising the hue and cry like Sessler are arguing for. Why make a big deal about their 'discomfort' otherwise? I'm made to feel uncomfortable every day by a variety of things, but I don't try to raise awareness on the internet about it, or act as if I have a right not to be.

I can see where you're coming from, Laivasse, especially on you seeing Sessler's video as opportunistic. You're right that he misunderstands the comment he quotes (or maybe he doesn't; either way he doesn't say enough for us to really know what his objection was so we assume the most obvious). But I object to the idea that this is about "hypersensitivity to colour" - that it is about colour at all, about political correctness, race-as-identity, whatever. The colour is merely a signification. On its own, it's meaningless, but in combination with the other trappings of colonialist myth that are present, it becomes part of a symbol, one letter in a word - a signifier. What it helps signify in this case is a certain history. And that history is the grounds for my objection.

I have to echo what Eejit says here. Of course it is right to attack anything that is obviously racially offensive. But in the case of a game like RE5 - where not only has the game almost certainly been designed without any malicious message in mind, but where it's also possible (nay, encouraged) to interpret it in its simplest terms (it's RE after all), as a game that happens to be set in Africa and which happens to have a white lead - that to start waxing lyrical about matters of race is counterproductive in the long term. People who have actively sought the link between the game's contents and the historical signifier end up implicitly, or unintentionally, encouraging people to look for historical signifiers in any aspect of black/white interaction. This is what I mean by 'hypersensitivity' and equality being ignorance. This criticism of RE5 is a perpetuation of the cycle by which black people and white people view eachother as black people and white people, and not simply as people. *rainbow*

EDIT: Eejit, 'mindless irish zombies' is tautology overdose.