According to Willie Jefferson's recent post for The Houston Chronicle, the upcoming zombie shooter from Valve is, in fact, racist simply because "...players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans" when the game launches this fall. "When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath."
Quick to rebut was Destructoid's own Jim Sterling, who finds it completely unreasonable to call a game set in New Orleans featuring a certain percentage of black antagonists racist, responded with a rather incendiary response, calling Jefferson's statements "the most ridiculous and convoluted racism link in history." Here's a link to the full response.
While I wouldn't necessarily go as far as Sterling's response, I would find it hard to believe that Valve's upcoming title is as racially charged as Jefferson suggests. Saying that "Setting the game in a city that was scene of dead, bloated bodies floating by so soon afterward was a bad call, IMHO," seems a little extreme, but responding by writing "When you're saying L4D2 is racist because some black people happen to be IN it... then you've lost your grip on reality."
I'd say that Valve--by picking the Deep South as the locale for Left 4 Dead 2--needs to be careful to ensure that stories like this don't blow up to the extent that they did surrounding Resident Evil 5 (I still think most of that hubub was as over-exposed as most of it was ill-informed and dramatized). And, while I haven't been following the game extremely closely, I'm personally more concerned about a L4D sequel coming so soon than I am about the racial representation in the game.
What do you think? Of course, there's no telling what it will be like until it comes out, but here's some pictures and such to give a basic idea.
2 comments:
Yeah. I'm not too worried about racism in L4D2 either.
I think the main difference here is that L4D has established itself as a series that depends on having flat, almost non-characters for its plot and humor. The four protagonists of L4D were pretty much designed to be stereotypes.
By contrast, RE5 treads dangerous ground because it seems to take itself seriously. There's frequent social commentary, even if none of it attempts to say much more than "corporations only want money" and "practice safe science." I think it's problematic that such statements exist alongside a mostly violent, primitive, and dirty depiction of Africa (even pre-infection).
After playing through RE5 for myself I also decided that the debate surrounding it was mostly hot air. There are things about it, however, that still bother me and so I can see where its critics are coming from.
L4D2 by contrast is supposed to be ridiculous and for that reason I'm willing to laugh along with it.
It's accusations like this that have made me cynical towards cries of racism in general. Save it for something important. What about the way women are depicted in GTA? Ellis is a dumb hillbilly in L4D2 and nobody cares about that.
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