mesoteto wins the thread!

Seriously, that's some funny stuff. Thanks for lightening the mood!

You mean like they did in Tropic Thunder? I don't know, you tell me.

Edit:  going to work, bbl.

The gun likes to be fired by men and women equally.  That's why Shiva is in the game. 

I actually haven't seen it yet. But yeah I think so. I think the point of Robert Downey Jr. being a white guy playing a black guy was to be intentionally offensive.

EDIT: I just re-read: And I really don't know. I'm not claiming to have all the answers or to come up with some blanket statement about what is and isn't offensive/inappropriate/racist/etc.

I'm just trying to point out why some people would be offended by RE5.

I don't think we should just ignore those viewpoints because maybe they're valid.

I think people who are uncomfortable with RE5's imagery are justified in feeling that way.

Isn't there a difference between "ignoring" an argument and considering, then rejecting one?  Most of the comments I've read in this thread that argue against the idea that RE5 is racist don't seem to be ignoring contrary viewpoints, but establishing disagreement.

For sure. Obviously few arguments end with either side changing their opinions. When I said "ignoring" I was moreso referring to the beginning of this thread. It's actually become a pretty good discussion now.

I guess all I'm waiting for is for someone to say, "I can see where some people would be be offended by this, and even though I don't personally feel offended, I respect the fact that others are." And then we can all hold hands across the world and play video games and eat cake (and not that lousy lie-cake). So someone please tell me that so that I can go to a more fun thread and post about whether or not Dead Space on Wii will be any good.

Please understand that I'm coming from a fine arts background. Most of my time is spent viewing, reading, and interpreting images, (man that sounds douchebaggy, I'm so sorry). The whole "videogames as art" thing really thrills me, but I often feel like the criticism is still in its infancy. It isn't yet at the level that film, literature, or visual art criticism is.

I'm really just trying to bring another viewpoint to all this.

I read it like this (who dug those pic comparisons btw because they are great):

Both are reflections of reality, or actually representations of reality.

The fascist army pic is representative of a huge thing that occured in Europe of the '30s and '40s.

The riot pic with those people with clubs is a representation of the primitive conditions of many nations in Africa right now. And it's a fact you will often see animal cruelty being performed in public (taking this example since it was meantioned in the OP article about villies kicking a bag) in the developing world - while it does NOT happen in Sweden and most Western nations.

People and cultures are different. Some cultures are more developed than others. But so what? Just because some people make a big deal of it, like racists (but also the opposite - those who love everything exotic just for the sake of it) you shouldn't stop artists, in this case game developers, from portraying the reality - or even a caricature of it.

Hang on, I think I have a solution that will please everyone:

@ Slimebeast:

That's a good point too. And if we're going to consider RE5's developers artists similar to a film maker, we also need to question why they chose this particular setting.

They probably put a lot of time and effort into figuring out where to set the storyline -- and they could have set it absolutely anywhere. So why Africa? Why in an undeveloped part of Africa? Why not Cairo?

I know that they've said it was to symbolize the origin of the virus, because Africa is the origin of humanity. But I wonder why they considered that sort of symbolism without considering the symbolism that is causing this controversey?

Why they chose that setting? Because it's exciting with the most mystical and primitive setting you can think of - as exotic and opposite as possible from the safe, familiar and predictable Western world.

It's not a coincidence that there are a few Zombie-like movies made in the same setting - like a couple of these Satanic zombie-movies like the prequel to The Exorcist and another movie set in Africa had this Pazuzu demon (name of movie escaped me) and many other scary movies set in the similar Voodoo/Creol setting.

Capcom's "the origin of humanity" argument is bullshit - it's just something they're saying to please the politically correct mafia. 

I'm sure you agree with me.

I absolutely agree. I was skeptical of Capcom's explanation from the start. And you're right, I think they did choose the location because it's exotic.

And for some reason, something about that bugs me, though I can't quite put my finger on it. I haven't seen the movies you mentioned -- so maybe I'd feel differently if I saw them?

This whole thing kind of reminds me of Palestinian-American, Edward Said (pronounced 'Saiyeed', I think?), a writer and cultural critic. He wrote a controversial book called "Orientalism" in 1978. It's about the way the post-colonial world outside of the middle east depicts and (mis)interprets the middle east in derisive/prejudice ways. (It's more complicated than that, of course).

Anyway, there's some truth to his writing, and I think some of it applies to the RE5 example.