My buddy posted about this interview with N’Gai Croal, and I found it fascinating. Here’s the background information: (1) Capcom released a trailer for the latest installment of Resident Evil, (2) the game takes place in either Africa or the Carribean, and has a white protagonist, (3) the trailer depicts a white man gunning down many dehumanized black bodies, and (4) this has engendered some criticism, though fans have been quick to defend the saga. Before we go any further, here’s the trailer:

Basically, Croal points out that the imagery of the trailer has a history, so using it is evocative and must be done carefully. I won’t over-summarize his claims since you can read the interview yourself, but I do want to expand on some of my own thoughts.

What struck me, really, was the nature of the comments both in response to the Croal interview and on YouTube. People are amazingly defensive of this game. I think there’s this notion that if your favorite game is accused of racist portrayal that you too are being accused as a racist. Unfortunately the comments aren’t offering much rebuttal of either accusation, only showing the lack of depth of consideration on the matter.

Almost every single comment in defense of this game makes the same basic appeal: “Of course the zombies are black, it takes place in Africa, and there’s nothing racist about that. Nobody got upset when we were killing white zombies during the first four installments.”

The critical misunderstanding is at the very surface of these comments, and it is the same misunderstanding I usually encounter when attempting to point out racist or sexist portrayals in movies. The trailer, solely in and of itself, is not racist. That is to say, yes, it is set in a land where the people have black skin, and, yes, it makes sense for the main character to gun down the zombies. The story, in and of itself, is not racist. The point is, there is no such thing as “in and of itself.” These images cannot be isolated from the cultural context in which they are presented. No video game, no movie, no book–nothing can be separated from its cultural context. So we have to take that into account when we see something like this. Skin color has motivated genocide throughout human history. Despite this, Capcom has chosen to use this evocative imagery in order to sell a video game. This is what Croal means when he says this imagery has history. And neither he nor I is saying that it cannot ever be used. But it must always be used carefully.