184: Punch-Out!!'s Black Eye

[squid5580]

I have read through the article and the link as well as all the comments here (no way I am reading 400+ from the other article) and I still don't understand 1 thing with the whole RE5 "controversy". In RE0-3 you are killing American townsfolk in an American town and the majority appear white. No problem. RE4 comes out and you are a white guy slaughtering Spanish ppl in a Spanish town in Spain. No problem. RE5 trailer pops up and it has an American white guy killing a bunch of infected Africans in an African village in Africa and that is racist? The only thing I can agree with in that entire interview is "it is just a game" is not an excuse.

Also it is quite clear in the trailer they attacked him first. Chris was just walkin along minding his own business, admiring the reflection of himself in his shiny gun. All of a sudden some guy with a megaphone orders what I can only guess is ATTACK (prolly said KILL WHITEY but I can't be sure) and they charge him.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Individual characters being stereotypical is not a stereotype, blanket statements about all people of some group is.

Very true, and nowhere in the game does it say, "All French people are like Glass Jaw," or, "All blacks are ignorant jackasses." If that was the case, then I'd agree that there is racism, but it's just like how some Latinos claimed that the Taco Bell dog was racist; it doesn't make a shred of sense.

 

[Kawaii_Nai]

That was an excellent article. With most of the world becoming less xenophobic and more educated about the world and everyone in it, things will continue to get better. Not that all games (or any other medium) will have to be some shapeless, colorless, undefined gauntlet but people will be able to appreciate its artistic and entertainment value.

Thank you Sumantra Lahiri! (^_^)

 

[Nerdfury]

I loathe the vehement anti-racists, and think that anti-racists are racist in themselves. We're supposed to live in an equal opportunity world where women can wear pants and vote, and people who aren't white can work in whatever job they like. Why can't people damn well realise that - you can't expect equal treatment and opportunity while still crying 'racist!' when a developer creates a game set in a predominately non-Caucasian country including non-Caucasian zombies to kill.

If that's the case, then I would like to take every developer, director and writer to court for all the previous history of white people being killed in books, movies and games!

 

[Smokescreen]

The first part of this article, talking about how the gaming culture has advanced as the years have gone by, this was pretty interesting.

However, it's on page two that things start to fall apart.
FTA
"Abe's Oddysee's approach is characteristic of the industry's at large. Whenever there was an opportunity to have a valid discussion about race, their answer has always been the same: Let sleeping dogs lie."

OK, my first problem is that there is a very, very long tradition of approaching sensitive cultural issues in science fiction through allegory and metaphor.

Second, the inclusion of the Oddworld series falls through because as previous posters have mentioned, the storyline in those games while similar, doesn't match up with history very well. If anything, Oddworld wanted to talk about the relationship between the wealthy and the poor and how one is enslaved to the other when it comes to goods being made.

Not that one couldn't involve race in this discussion, but the Oddworld games were-I thought-more about economic conditions than racial ones.

As for Resident Evil 5; I think part of the problems came when someone said; You know, that makes me uncomfortable--and instead of people having a discussion about it that actually does talk about race in America, the overwhelming response was STFU. Now, it's not RE5, or any game's responsibility to be politically correct. It is our responsibility as people to hear each other out though. (Usual reasonable caveats apply)

Suddenly putting a black character in the game doesn't fix the issues that someone might have; knowing you've been heard, that might.

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

I have read through the article and the link as well as all the comments here (no way I am reading 400+ from the other article) and I still don't understand 1 thing with the whole RE5 "controversy". In RE0-3 you are killing American townsfolk in an American town and the majority appear white. No problem. RE4 comes out and you are a white guy slaughtering Spanish ppl in a Spanish town in Spain. No problem. RE5 trailer pops up and it has an American white guy killing a bunch of infected Africans in an African village in Africa and that is racist? The only thing I can agree with in that entire interview is "it is just a game" is not an excuse.

Also it is quite clear in the trailer they attacked him first. Chris was just walkin along minding his own business, admiring the reflection of himself in his shiny gun. All of a sudden some guy with a megaphone orders what I can only guess is ATTACK (prolly said KILL WHITEY but I can't be sure) and they charge him.

You should read the man's points about the trailer this article links you to. It's not about 'killing whites is fine, killing spaniards is fine, killing blacks is bad!' It's about the colonial imagery that can be found throughout the trailer. Now, understand that it probably wasn't intentional at all, and indeed I'm sure Capcom had many discussions about the racial aspect. The problem is that they didn't spot the Great White Man, wandering in to lowly, horde-like blacks, who are a hidden, inhuman menace, then killing them all. It's like Zulu or something.

As he says, it has to be contextualised. Europe did not come in and slaughter spaniards. Britain fought Spain, hated their guts, but never truly dehumanised them. The earlier REs are based purely upon Romero films and whatnot, no true history there. But is is the naive, innocent ignorance of those who made that trailer that is offensive, or can be offensive.

To be honest, I actually don't think it's that important. To me, Conrad's Heart of Darkness (not the game!) does more or less the exact same thing. But we need to understand why, at least, this is offensive. It's not because black people are being shot.

 

[JWAN]

"Racist undertones" in RE5 are no different than those in RE4 against Spanish peasants

the only discernible difference is the stink raised by the "White video game makers are racist crowd" and the UCLA. (watch Hillary Clinton descend from her seat and condemn the game for being racist, along with AL Sharpton and Jessie Jackson)
all they want is money from the court and air time on CNN, they don't give two shakes and a crap about racism.

Even if it WAS racist and it was meant to BE racist, who cares? they have the freedom of speech like the KKK and the Black Panthers and the Triads and the Mexican Mafia.

None of those groups raised any kind of hell for RE4,
why not?
its because they don't care about the Spanish all they care about are themselves. The self-righteous bimbos that go along with that are just tools that are exploited.

RE5 was never made to spread hate against Africans, at least not anymore than the previous one was spreading hate against Spanish peasants.

If I could I would get on national TV and tell them to take a pill and get over it.

 

[chronicdog]

This article to me represents the overall mediocre quality of the writing on The Escapist.

What N?Gai Croal has to say in a few sentences is much more powerful, relevent, and coherent than this ham-handed drivel.

"Punch out is the most racist game ever"? Statements like that just smack of a total ignorance about the history of the medium and demonstrate a total lack of research about the subject at hand. Its painfully obvious the author never did a ANY research for the entire article, other than playing Punch Out for an hour, which is all too typical for the contributors here at The Escapist.

Racism is discrimination based on the color of one's skin. Thats not whats happening in Punch-Out. As well as conducting some actual research, you might want to consider consulting a dictionary as well.

Its a shame, because the topic is important and it is very relevent.

Also, its a shame that what was once an excellent online publications has devolved into a mess that finds such flimsy drivel fit to print.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

I would point out that Sega Soccer Slam and the entire Street Fighter series would show that things haven't really progressed THAT much.

Okay so I'm probably the only person who owns a copy of Soccer Slam but everyone knows Street Fighter and characters don't get much more stereotypical than that group of palookas.


In all seriousness though.
Let's use the RE: 5 issue here to raise a hypothetical.

Let's say that the story doesn't take place in Africa.
Let's say the main character isn't Redfield but some new addition to the cast, a British special agent tasked with tracking and containing down a bio-terror outbreak in...oh let's say Northern Ireland.

Would anyone have cried foul as loudly as they did when the first footage of RE5 came out?

I would pretty much assume that no, nobody would have even batted an eye at how potentially offensive that might be to a whole bunch of people.
Why is that?


For what it's worth I think the whole thing is a non-issue, and a bigger deal was made about it than it really needed to be.

 

[DoW Lowen]

Actually Capcom have openly stated that they haven't made a single change to the game at all. And that african sidekick and all those other deterrents of racist accusations were there to begin with, they just weren't there in the beginning trailers and screenshots.

 

[Pseudonym2]

Odlly enough, I still don't think anything in RE5 was really that bad, and I very strongly disagree with all the emotional hurt and outrage that we've seen across the interwebs because of it. Much more interesting was the hating on the nation of Haiti, than any racial overtones. I do applaud the "no hard feelings" gesture of including a black sidekick, but frankly I think everyone should be able to utilise some level of intellectual detachment when playing a game about an american agent shooting zombies in Haiti. The idea of a Haiti full to the brim with white zombies is what I'd consider TRULY offensive.

You missed one of the main points. Why on earth is the main character white in Hati? Why did they need an American? They could have removed much of the imperialism if they made the main character black.

 

[Capo Taco]

Odlly enough, I still don't think anything in RE5 was really that bad, and I very strongly disagree with all the emotional hurt and outrage that we've seen across the interwebs because of it. Much more interesting was the hating on the nation of Haiti, than any racial overtones. I do applaud the "no hard feelings" gesture of including a black sidekick, but frankly I think everyone should be able to utilise some level of intellectual detachment when playing a game about an american agent shooting zombies in Haiti. The idea of a Haiti full to the brim with white zombies is what I'd consider TRULY offensive.

You missed one of the main points. Why on earth is the main character white in Hati? Why did they need an American? They could have removed much of the imperialism if they made the main character black.

That would have been miles smarter, better and actually kinda cool. There's a big missed opportunity.

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

Let's say that the story doesn't take place in Africa.
Let's say the main character isn't Redfield but some new addition to the cast, a British special agent tasked with tracking and containing down a bio-terror outbreak in...oh let's say Northern Ireland.

Would anyone have cried foul as loudly as they did when the first footage of RE5 came out?

I would pretty much assume that no, nobody would have even batted an eye at how potentially offensive that might be to a whole bunch of people.

Erm, yes that also would have been incredibly offensive, and kicked up a fuss, at least here in Britain. That's like saying if an Israeli character was sent into Palestine and had to kill loads of them it wouldn't have been offensive - it would have.

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

Racism is discrimination based on the color of one's skin. Thats not whats happening in Punch-Out. As well as conducting some actual research, you might want to consider consulting a dictionary as well.

Racism is discrimination based on ethnic background. Your definition says I couldn't be racist to the French, by claiming they all eat frogs and horses.

 

[ShadowKirby]

You should read the man's points about the trailer this article links you to. It's not about 'killing whites is fine, killing spaniards is fine, killing blacks is bad!' It's about the colonial imagery that can be found throughout the trailer. Now, understand that it probably wasn't intentional at all, and indeed I'm sure Capcom had many discussions about the racial aspect. The problem is that they didn't spot the Great White Man, wandering in to lowly, horde-like blacks, who are a hidden, inhuman menace, then killing them all. It's like Zulu or something.

I understand your point but the thing is, Capcom probably did not see the colonial imagery. Japan never had that problem with black slavery. Except the countries that were born form the colonization of the European colonial superpowers in the XVI-XVII century, I don't think most countries saw that either.

Sadly the whole debate may just have hurt the medium's image in general. One side was saying "It's only a game" which is reducing the cultural value of games and on the other side, people (maybe not N'Gai Croal, he is a smart dude) were saying that video games couldn't touch such dangerous subject as racism, and that was reducing too. It got a little too close to the Fox News argument, that games are for kids and thus cannot aboard mature subjects, for me.

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

I agree, Capcom probably did not see the colonial imagery. I just think this shows incredibly bad research on their part. Offense doesn't have to be implied, it can also be inferred, legitimately.

I think we should wait and see how the actual release of the game will be met, both from gamers and the mainstream media. Anything that causes intelligent discussion can never be truly bad. Except for Hitler, he was pretty bad.