As I woke up this morning I realized that I had slept through my alarm- perhaps because I had tried to get by with an hour and a half of sleep, or perhaps because I was put under the spell of an evil turtle king. I quickly threw on my clothing, gunned down a hoard of rampaging zombies, beat up an old lady and a hooker for their cash, and raced down the steps to the basement of the computer lab. The internet didn’t want to work, but I shot bubbles out of a cannon into a series of matched lines, and made it with almost an hour and a half to spare to be able to begin writing this blog about banning video games while asserting that they do not have an impact upon the course of my life.
The Resident Evil series did not need a gimmick to be popularized- it is one of the older franchises on the market whose success has spawned comic books and even a bad movie. I, unfortunately, have never had the fortune of playing a RE game, so most of what I know comes from hearsay, but it is the most successful zombie-killing game series of all time. When Capcom announced that it was going to release RE 5 the gaming public went all atwitter with excitement. Though the news did titillate , it did not generally appeal solely to the prurient interest, so under ******** its creators had not yet forfeited their First Amendment protections. The game promised new enemies, new weapons, new items, new environments, and amazing graphics. And then it happened. They released a trailer http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22801.htmlat E3, which for those of you who won't play with anything fancier than flat rocks on a water's surface, is major annual event in the video game industry where companies show off their up-and-coming creations. Don't spell check up-and-coming, I'm in a rush here and I'm not even sure the internet will work when I try to save this. :P Go ahead and watch the trailer right now. It will be important from here on out.
What did you see in the trailer? Was it... BLATANT RACISM?!?!?!??!?!?! No, I didn't think so. Most fans were really excited at the idea of playing this game, and wanted to continue the storyline of the characters that they had guided through the first four games main games, as well as the spinoffs which aren't conveniently numbered for easy google searching right now. Wait! HERE WE GOhttp://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Resident_Evil_Wiki. Okay- so there are seven "main" RE games. Anyhow, the game franchise is well-established. It does not need a cheap scandal to sell. This is important to understand.
As soon as the trailer hit the internet, rampaging idiots began to scream racism. In the Resident Evil games, the "zombies" are actually humans infected with a terrible virus that can have its roots traced back to the corruption of a powerful international organization. In the newest installment, the virus has taken hold in Africa, and that's where the protagonists are fighting. This means that the zombies they are killing are Africans. This means that many of them are black, and thus white children are being trained to hunt down and destroy black people. I don't have a source for that- I just picked it up from reading internet arguments about this topic. On one side were people either calmly or furiously trying to explain that the game is not racist. On the opposing side were people who were either shaking their heads and sighing at the ignorance of the gamers, or screaming profanities (well, text screaming) about the white racist crackershttp://www.capcom.co.jp/ responsible for this game. Thishttp://www.gamepolitics.com/2007/08/01/african-womens-blog-critical-of-resident-evil-5-trailer is the most persuasive argument for the "RE is racist and bad" side I could find, and is generally not typical of the rants. Demands to have the game banned started appearing, and thus a First Amendment issue worthy of a blog post was born! There are currently NO video games banned in the United States, and no outcry was made to have an RE game banned when the violence took place in Spain against... that's right... Spanish zombies. Resident Evil 5 is STILL not going to be banned in the United States because even if it was deliberately racist, descrimination against racism is viewpoint discrimination, and that is presumed unconstitutional when performed by the government. The best angle of attack would be for the anti-RE people to have the game banned under a Violent Video Game Law, but ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE ASSOCIATION; VIDEO SOFTWARE DEALERSE ASSOCIATION; AND ILLINOIS RETAIL MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION v. ROD BLAGOJEVICH struck down one such law as unconstitutional, and I believe that such laws will continue to be struck down because they SHOULD BE ruled unconstitutional. Video game makers are not responsible for violence in society (see Joe James v. Meow Media, Inc) but even if you believe that video games are speech, and speech expresses ideas, and those ideas could influence people to do things that they wouldn't normally do, then the games are still protected by the First Amendment. Thought control is not a governmental duty. Yet.
Defenders of the game claim that because the game is set in Africa, it would be racist NOT to have black zombies in the game. Arguably, racists should be pleased that RE zombies are more intelligenthttp://images.roosterteeth.com/assets/media/9_49e0ed80d4d76.jpg than other zombies in previous RE games due to improvements in technology, AI algorithms, and a need to make the game more challenging for experienced players. Some opponents of the game respond that in order to avoid being racist, the game makers should have provided the option of playing as a black man instead of a white man. While good in theory, the RE folks spent YEARS tailoring their storyline to be what they wanted it to be, and they should not be forced to alter the identity of characters that have been in the storyline since the original RE. You are on a mission to save your sister. You came from the same parents. You have skin color as your sister. These are things that must be accepted. If you were some random person instead of one of the original protagonists of the RE series, then the story would suffer for the political correctness, as it is very unlikely that a random person would be in African combatting the evils of a corrupt corporation unless they had been involved in the events of the previous RE games. Why then could the game makers simply not have made some of the original characters black? I like moush's post to answer the question:
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http://www.destructoid.com/anthropologist-resident-evil-5-racism-claims-are-silly-123992.phtml
moush at 03/06/2009 23:48
Of course it's racist, everyone knows Japan hates black people. The real question is why does it matter?
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The real answer is, of course, that when the original http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/RE1_screen.jpgRE game was made, the creators had to deal with greater limitations on graphics capability and storage allotment, and it just was not practical to generate skin tones for multiple races.
If the games somehow incited people to violence- directly, not indirectly, then they could be banned. Fighting words - and if video games express ideas, then they could fall under this category- were narrowed in scope by The UWM Post, Inc. v. Board of Regents of University of Wisconsin System. The University of Wisconsin tried to restrict speech that
1- was racist or discriminatory
2- was directed at an individual
3- was demeaning of the race, sex, religion, color, creed, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or age of the individual addressed
4- created an intimidating, hostile, or demeaning environment for education, univerrsity-related work, or other university-authorized activity.
THEIR ATTEMPTS WERE STRUCK DOWN. Fighting words need to
1. Be directed at the person of the hearer
2. Naturally tend to provoke
3- Create an immediate, hostile reaction, an immediate breach of the peace
By their very design, RE games are so awesome that there will BE no breach of the peace, because people will sit on their butts and play them all day long.
It is important for me to note that, technically speaking, RE games are not "zombie" games but "horror thrillers." This may save me from being flamed by avid/rabid fans who have beaten the game and are now exercising their First Amendment rights by blogging on the internet. There are many ideas that I have yet to explore which I may post about later in the comments section, but right now it is 9:28 a.m. and I really need to publish this post. :)
****NOTE: BLOGGER IS NOT ACCEPTING SOME OF MY LINKS FOR A WEIRD REASON SO I'M PANICKING AND PASTING THEM DIRECTLY TO THE TEXT, THEN REFORMATTING ALL MY TEXT. I AM SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
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