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silentmatt .
Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 305 Location: Toronto, Ontario
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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But that goes back to the question, if the protagonist wasn't either a) someone you knew already and/r b) white, would that change this perception?
I'm assuming most of the viewers watching the trailer won't have any clue about Chris and his prior experience, so I don't know if his back-story plays a huge role in the current discussion (I might be completely wrong here, but I imagine that the level of character insight on a gaming forum is completely different than in the popular press).
RE4 had Leon infiltrate a Spanish country under the pretense that the President's daughter was kidnapped and noone complained (very much). If they included a tidbit of story like this to show why the protagonist is there in RE5, would that change matters? _________________ PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient." |
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extrabastardformula .
Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 295
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 2:10 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, changing the protagonist would have a huge impact on the reaction. _________________ Signature:
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ryan .
Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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I'm sorry, Chris, but you aren't allowed in some places. Because of your looks? Oh no! No, no, no! It's not that at all! It's ... erm ... your shirt. It's too tight. Way too tight. Regulations, you understand. _________________ Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart. |
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:45 am Post subject: |
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ryan wrote: | I'm sorry, Chris, but you aren't allowed in some places. Because of your looks? Oh no! No, no, no! It's not that at all! It's ... erm ... your shirt. It's too tight. Way too tight. Regulations, you understand. |
My wife also said that he was the "best looking guy" she's ever seen in a videogame. Which... was kind of creepy.
I still don't really have a problem with this game.
Also, people DID put up a fuss about the whole "Y pick on SPAIN yo?!" thing. Just, not as bad. _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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Adilegian .
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 41
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Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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You know, now that I think about it, the international settings factor into the Resident Evil series' accidental criticism of corporate America.
Everything in the series has pretty heavy-handedly moralized against big business, particularly regarding its roles as paramilitary and arms developers. Everything in the trailer seems like the opposite of a colonialist fantasy. In other words, Chris Redfield has to go take stop the ill effects of American corporate capitalism in an area already suffering under colonialism.
I can also imagine complains from that angle too, though. Kind of like how I heard someone calling for the removal of To Kill a Mockingbird from school reading lists because he didn't want black kids to get the idea that they needed a white man to help them out of trouble. |
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Scratchmonkey .
Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439
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Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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The fact that many Japanese videogames, the most technological of mainstream mediums, are centered around distrust of technology is something that deserves a nice fat dissertation (that might already exist, for all I know).
For sure this should be connected to a certain extent to the technological fear that you would develop from having a nuclear bomb exploded on your country, the question to me is how much can really be tied directly to this and what other factors are involved. |
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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Adilegian wrote: | I can also imagine complains from that angle too, though. Kind of like how I heard someone calling for the removal of To Kill a Mockingbird from school reading lists because he didn't want black kids to get the idea that they needed a white man to help them out of trouble. |
HUH? Seriously? _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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Adilegian .
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 41
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Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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Shapermc wrote: | Adilegian wrote: | I can also imagine complains from that angle too, though. Kind of like how I heard someone calling for the removal of To Kill a Mockingbird from school reading lists because he didn't want black kids to get the idea that they needed a white man to help them out of trouble. |
HUH? Seriously? |
YES. I was writing this paper back when I was an undergrad, about the relationship between Southern dialectical patterns and Southern cultural concepts of masculinity and manhood. (I <3 scholarship.) And this was one of the articles that turned up in my general search.
To Kill a Mockingbird was holding blacks back. =( |
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Isfet .
Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 107 Location: A New York
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 12:56 am Post subject: |
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the idea makes sense from a sort of Black Panthers perspective, but at the same time the book is pretty much a period piece so it's kind of a grey area.
Resident Evil 5 can go in a lot of different directions at this point and we don't really know enough about what's involved in it to come to any real, cohesive conclusions about it. i think the only thing i can really state about it though, is that moving the game to a foreign location simply to make the experience "different" or add to the sense of alienation for the player is really very problematic.
even if this game is supposed to be some allegory for the uses and abuses of the citizens of impoverished nations, there are still going to be a lot of underlying issues with how this game approaches it. and once again, i just don't believe that current developers have the vocabulary and ability to handle something like this intelligently and responsibly. |
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dongle .
Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 290
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 5:03 am Post subject: |
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maybe this is only the first area and then chris goes to vietnam or the middle east. then a native american reservation.
have we had a thread about racism and imperialism in tom clancy games yet? |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:08 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | have we had a thread about racism and imperialism in tom clancy games yet? |
you can basically say "tom clancy game" and it's the same thing. implicit, you know. _________________
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Cycle Mac daddy
Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:10 am Post subject: |
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i remember there was this big hub-bub about soldier of fortune when it came out, because if you killed civilians in america you'd fail a mission, but if you were in some middle eastern country, you could kill them willy nilly without reprecusions. _________________
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:55 am Post subject: |
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Cycle wrote: | i remember there was this big hub-bub about soldier of fortune when it came out, because if you killed civilians in america you'd fail a mission, but if you were in some middle eastern country, you could kill them willy nilly without reprecusions. |
Whoa, seriously? Did this make it into the final game, or was that just something that got dropped? I mean, like this is far more serious and intentional than the whole RE5 debate. _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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helicopterp .
Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia
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Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Isfet wrote: | moving the game to a foreign location simply to make the experience "different" or add to the sense of alienation for the player is really very problematic. |
I don't entirely follow where you're going with this. Problematic how?
I think my problem here is the "for the player" part. While I agree that the developers probably chose the setting in large part to mix things up for their audience, I'm not sure that the idea of alienation is meant to translate directly to the player. Do most of the rest of you try to project yourselves onto the protagonist of a game? I don't--immersion is not anything I care about. So, in my view, the point of the setting is to provide a degree of 'differentness' and alienation for Chris Redfield the Character, not Chris Redfield the Extension of the Player's Identity. And it works for me that Chris Redfield the Character would probably feel alienated if he goes somewhere that is culturally very different from what he is used to, just like it's very plausible for anyone from one culture who has to operate in a foreign one not to be able to connect to his or her new environment right off the bat.
Of course, the actual content of the game could change all of that immensely. _________________ Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one. |
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Adilegian .
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 41
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Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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helicopterp wrote: | So, in my view, the point of the setting is to provide a degree of 'differentness' and alienation for Chris Redfield the Character, not Chris Redfield the Extension of the Player's Identity. |
I agree with Isfet here. I think that the jilt is mainly intended to pass over to the player. The RE games pretty consistently use their narration techniques to give the player a sense of things being "off," whether it's through atonal piano melodies (such as in RPD in RE2) or weird camera angles. Since the RE series doesn't exactly have stellar characters outside of cookie cutter motivations, I don't see the Mikami braintrust devoting a whole lot of thought to the relationship between their flat RE characters and the environments. |
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Cycle Mac daddy
Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767
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Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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Shapermc wrote: | Cycle wrote: | i remember there was this big hub-bub about soldier of fortune when it came out, because if you killed civilians in america you'd fail a mission, but if you were in some middle eastern country, you could kill them willy nilly without reprecusions. |
Whoa, seriously? Did this make it into the final game, or was that just something that got dropped? I mean, like this is far more serious and intentional than the whole RE5 debate. |
Yeah, it was left in the game, it might have been patched later. I remember there being some arguement that the soldiers were given permission to kill civilians of needed in some cases in real life and they were basing it off that or some crap, I can't really remember that well. I read an article about it years ago, I wonder if I have that issue somewhere... _________________
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dizzyjosh .
Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 64
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Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:31 pm Post subject: |
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dagnabit.
i done wrote a whole thing about this (http://dizzyjosh.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/zombi-part-1/) and there'll be more later;
i don't trust capcom to do anything particularly brilliant but i would hope that there's at least some superficial insight or sociopolitical framework. Iono, 4 was the first RE game i'd played in a long, long time. Does anyone else find it particularly strange that the gameplay is (and probably will always be) a political non-issue here?
Quote: | Everything in the trailer seems like the opposite of a colonialist fantasy. In other words, Chris Redfield has to go take stop the ill effects of American corporate capitalism in an area already suffering under colonialism. |
yeah, but there's also the guilt-ridden fantasy of being the white dude who goes in and undoes all the evil that the bad white dudes did, thus redeeming your race and your culture and being the singular hero dude who everyone can look up to and respect and they give you magic powers. |
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Dracko .
Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613
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Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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Christ, sorry for being a white established character, guys. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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Harveyjames the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636
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Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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The thing is, this shit is not even a subtext in RE4: 'You Americans think you can police the world forever!' |
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dizzyjosh .
Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 64
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Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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Dracko wrote: | Christ, sorry for being a white established character, guys. |
whoa. maybe i didn't stress this enough: There are a lot of threads that go into trying to either attack or defend the trailer (and the game will probably have more!), and I certainly am not saying that because there are villains with dark skin that the main character has got to be the same tone. It ain't no slur to be a white guy in the sequel (although I wonder if there will be a black PC, and I am honestly curious to see how he's represented, and how different he is from the zombies and villagers).
harveyjames wrote: | The thing is, this shit is not even a subtext in RE4: 'You Americans think you can police the world forever!. |
tienes razon. when i played through that game, i was just happy i could understand the 'mata lo' or w/e being yelled at me from the villagers. But people who approach the story with a political/historical perspective will probably still find (subtle, nuanced, bullshit, whatever) bones to pick about the story,etc. Just like we do with our frameworks about the meanings of games, etc. Trying to talk to both camps like I did is probably a lost cause because both groups bring so much pre-existing dialoguje to the table and I'm not sure what the common threads would be.
' |
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Dracko .
Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613
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Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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Man, no-one bitches enough about Barret Wallace any more. Square needs to get rimmed more often. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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helicopterp .
Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:52 am Post subject: |
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People with machine gun arms have never received a fair potrayal in videogames. _________________ Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one. |
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Joe .
Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 179
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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we can't make a game that isn't brain training that won't offend anyone |
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dizzyjosh .
Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 64
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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so last night i sat and down watched dawn of the dead, and i realized part of why I;m so interested in this. For me (and I think for others, although I could be wrong), the history of the zombie movie has *always* had social and political overtones, and I think it's at least fair to consider another zombie work from such angle. the birth of the modern genre,night of the living dead, is a totally fucking rad allegory about political tensions and racism and the distrust that some folk have of other folk. And the introduction to dawn of the dead is a great counterpoint to what the RE5 trailer looks like. and i'm sorry for harping on this, but zombies are something I care about way too much.l
you've got a project in a major city (philadelphia, i think?) finally being raided/rescued by a SWAT team. You've got white guys and black guys coming in to this megabuilding which has largely been on its own during the early stages of the zombie epidemic-- a trigger-happy racist asscop go nuts and starts shooting everyone until his own team puts him down, black cops putting down black zombies, families who've boarded their kids in their bedroom once they've been infected, etc. And it works and is disturbing, but on some level it's pointing to how the housing project was ignored by the police until they had to go in, and in the meantime the people inside dealt with it their own way. They were people without a ton of guns, without the infrastructure that let them fly away, and they seemed to be dealing with it (until the cops break down the barricaded basement and let all the zombies out). In Dawn, you've got a bunch of different people, different reactions, everything is fucked and it seems like a fair, if terribly sad, portrayal of what would happen.
contrast that with the fear that RE5 will be one white dude (with a mysterious pseudogypsy arms dealing stalker) who wanders around a village/castle/gov lab putting down these no-longer-human folk who are storyless, placeless victims. I'm hoping that it's not that blatantly crap (There are scenes of what look like in-game footage of a normal-ish village during the daytime, with women carrying fabrics and pots on their heads etc), and zombie stories are hella excellent places to get into this exact kind of debate, and i bet most of the political commentators aren't giving them any credit whatsoever, but i am saying there's a lot of baggage Capcom acquires by doing this, and that baggage always implies a certain amount of uncomfortability.
bleh. barret watson is totally fucked up and isfet gets more points for pointing out the stereotype that japanese media culture has ridiculous portraits of black folk etc.
((( note: i am not good at talking about race, but i do think it's important. so at the least thanks for letting me vent here.)))
edit: i only played the first 25 minutes of final fantasy seven or so, up to the scene with the tutorial thingie. i played it four times, though. my brother didn't have memory card, and i kept falling asleep and my mom would turn off the machine. so yeah.
Last edited by dizzyjosh on Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dracko .
Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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Rufus Shinra was the only reason to play Final Fantasy VII anyway.
lol aryans _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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dizzyjosh .
Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 64
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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Joe wrote: | we can't make a game that isn't brain training that won't offend anyone |
i'd hope the goal *isn't* to make a product that doesn't offend anyone, i'd hope that the goal is to present something interesting, complicated, intelligent or (even) enlightening. And I'm probably setting a low bar here: enlightening like a good zombie movie, not enlightening like a tapioca-gentle bible reading or something.
i (along with plenty of gamers) will probably play RE5 regardless of how lowbrow or ignorant the backstory was, because it will probably have fricking sweet mechanics and RE4 was one of the few 3D non-FPS games that felt fluid to me. But if it managed to have a compelling and socially, i don't know, not-ass-backwards or antiquated-colonial-mentality thing to it, that would be extra victory. bonus points, as it were, that i would be glad to turn in in greater debates about the social merits of games, because i have those conversations way too often these days. |
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Dracko .
Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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They're not coming round to save you. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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Harveyjames the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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My favorite Capcom black person has got to be Big Landman from Burning Rangers.
I live in a predominantly black community but I've yet to meet anyone with the first name 'Big'.
'Hi, I'm Big, nice to meet you. No, it's my real name. Second name Landman. There's my sister Little. My grandma Tiny. My cousin's a psychic, we call him Medium. Yo, what's so funny motherfucker?'
Don't get me started on Dogs Bowser. |
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