All stones created equal

This week on a very special episode of a very special Modern Culture Shock: the racism issue in Resident Evil 5.

Now, first off, I promise that this will be the last time this game is discussed in this column. It came out last week and as long as there are no more updates like the current DLC that adds a versus mode, then there will be no need to mention it. I will say, however, that it is imperative that you play this game in co-op mode, perhaps with a friend or a family member. If those people are unavailable, then you can use Xbox LIVE to enlist help. If, God forbid, you do not have Xbox LIVE, grab a random person off the street or one of those maintenance people if you live in an apartment complex. Just find someone. This is a game designed, like nuptial bliss, to be savored by two human beings. Anything less is a travesty.

In that spirit of cooperation, we pushed forward with the issue at hand. Ever since the first trailer, which had caucasian protagonist Chris Redfield dashing through African villages and gunning down people of a noticeably darker skin pigment, there have been cries of protest. These cries generally came from outside sources, people who had stumbled across the trailer like some well-hidden macabre treasure in an Indian Jones-style tomb. Series fans were a little more concerned with why Chris now looked like a linebacker and I don’t mean that in the sense that he got a little buff. I mean, the man looks exactly like a linebacker, okay? I’m talking arms and everything. In the game, he tries to tackle people and a boulder. Yes, you read that right; he tackles a big rock. And then he punches it.

But the mistreatment of stones and their brethren isn’t the issue here. I didn’t mention the racism issue in previous articles because I wanted to save judgment, though I was a bit confused as to why the previous Resident Evil outing, set in a backwater village in Spain, had not drawn similar flack. Having played through the game, I can confidently say that Resident Evil 5 is exactly as racist as Black Hawk Down or the Matrix or any Hollywood movie where a group of Arabic or dark-skinned terrorists take hold of a weapon which threatens the world, because the game is all of these movies rolled into one and peppered with zombies. If anything, you could argue that the game has “post-colonial” themes in regards to a) who infects the Africans and b) how they mistreated the natives and drove them off their land to first acquire the virus. Oh yeah, spoilers.

Yet, in some ways, Resident Evil 5 shouldn’t require defending, and I think that’s the real problem. When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows on Nick at Nite was All in the Family, a sitcom about a prejudiced patriarch, the endearing Archie Bunker, and his conflicts with liberal son-in-law, Michael Stivic – also known as “meathead”. The great thing about this show was that it took both Archie and Michael to task. Archie ate crow over his bigotry and Michael ate crow over his idealism and excessive sensitivity, which prevented him from every really connecting with the people whose rights he championed. This is a show that, thanks to political correctness and the Michael Stivics of the world, could never be made today because it handled religious, political, and social issues in a way that would strip the paint off your walls. But it always did it with heart and honesty.

Of course, Resident Evil 5 is no All in the Family. It’s a vapid action blockbuster in video game format, through and through. But I guess what I’m saying is that while those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, we can choose our battles better than this. After all, if we’re always on the lookout for racism or sexism or whateverism, if we’re always censoring ourselves in the presence of others, if the first thought that comes to our mind is what we shouldn’t say, then we haven’t accomplished anything because the specter of whateverism lingers on and hinders relationships in the present. And that makes us all meatheads.