Can the Subaltern Speak about Zombies?

Both the group presentation as well as the subsequent discussion revolved around the somewhat sensitive issue of racial representations within computer games such as Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 as well as Resident Evil 5. Different researchers in the game studies discipline have throughout the last decades attempted to approach the racial representations within computer games from a media studies perspective, which Stuart Hall’s ideas about the persuasive ideologies behind the modern mass media could be able to illustrate for the reader. In the article The Whites of Their Eyes Hall goes on to argue that the modern mass media still attempts to remediate a number of the classic racist tropes such as the slave, the native as well as the entertainer, since “[…] the media construct for us a definition of what race is, what meaning the imagery of race carries, and what “problem of race” is understood to be. They help to classify out the world in terms of the categories of race.” Hall furthermore points out that the racial presentations within the mass media either could revolve around a so-called overt approach, which is “[…] when open and favourable coverage is given to […] spokespersons who are […] elaborating an openly racist argument […]”, or around a more inferential approach that “[…] enable racist statements to be formulated without bringing into awareness the racist predicates on which the statements are grounded […]”. One can therefore argue that the black gangster persona could be understood as a more modern incarnation for Hall’s ideas about the racial tropes within mass media such as films, music videos as well as computer games, since he often has been depicted as a trigger-happy criminal from the suburban ghetto. In the article Virtual Gangstas David Leonard has for instance argue that the computer game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas attempts to equate the common black man with the criminal gangster, which is why “[…] the values and morals offered through playing GTA: SA […] pose a treat to the national fabric, just as those who inhabit those real-life communities pose an equal danger.”

The classic racist trope of the native could furthermore be found behind the computer game Resident Evil 5 from Capcom Studios Japan, in which a muscular causation male wearing militaristic clothing throughout the narrative must eliminate several hundred black zombies within the poor African environments. One can therefore argue that Resident Evil 5 in fact remediates the narrative discourse or trope from famous colonial novels such as Heart of Darkness, since the white man’s burden should become to civilize the primitive natives inside the dark continents by means of both cunning as well as industrial power. Several computer game critics therefore went on to criticise Resident Evil 5 for being overtly racist in the stereotypical depictions behind the bestial black natives with machetes, and the game journalist N’Gai Croal even pointed out that “[…] clearly no one black worked on this game.” The postcolonial theorist Edward Said has introduced the concept of orientalism in order to encapsulate the historical process, by which western painters, authors as well as filmmakers throughout the decades have managed to create a stereotypical as well as twisted depiction of the so-called orient. One can therefore argue that Resident Evil 5 becomes another example of modern orientalism within the mass media, since the Japanese computer game developer Capcom has tried to construct a credible depiction of Africa from the stereotypical tropes or discourses found within western movies, pictures as well as novels. Furthermore, some people in Japan could in fact be unaware of the sensitive history between the imperial nations within Europe and the colonized countries in Africa, which is why the game designers from Capcom probably didn’t intent to produce a racist computer game in the first place. Hall wanted to point out that the inferential ideologies within the mass media could become so pervasive or natural that the cultural producers remained unaware of their influences on the media artefact, and racism must therefore be understood from within the specific sociocultural context that birthed it in the first place.

The literary theoretician Gayatri Spivak has within the essay Can the Subaltern Speak? attempted to build upon Said’s ideas about orientalism, since she pointed out that the cultural differences between the East and the West hindered the so-called subaltern cultures from speaking for themselves inside the mass media. The cultural producers of mass media in the Western countries have therefore tried to speak on behalf of these subaltern cultures, which is why the excessive racist misconceptions behind for instance Resident Evil 5 could come into existence in the first place. One can argue that the subaltern cultures therefore should learn to speak for themselves inside the mass media in the future, and the African author Chinua Achebe has for instance begun to enrich the western readers with a more realistic as well as varied picture of the African continent within his novels. However, the commercial computer games still constitute one of the most expensive media forms to produce, which is why the subaltern cultures in for instance Africa still could have a difficult time speaking through them in the future. The indie game communities have in the last decade however made it much easier for subaltern cultures to produce computer games in small independent teams, and the African computer game developer QCF Design has for instance won the award for Excellence In Design at the 2011 Independent Games Festival. 

Simon Mikkelsen