Cerise Magazine

The rampant sexism and racism in the horror genre has almost become a joke: witness the way people watching horror movies together bet on how long the beautiful woman will stay alive, or whether or not the black comic relief guy will make it through to the end. While it can be argued that survival horror games aren’t nearly as mired down by these tropes, it is still quite clear that they haven’t entirely left them behind. When an advertisement does something to subvert these stereotypes, it stands out. Of course, when a advertisement does something to clearly reinforce them, it stands out as well–though not in a good way.

Resident Evil Outbreak File #2

Commercial: Resident Evil Outbreak File #2

When I was looking up examples of non-white characters in the Resident Evil series, this is one of the trailers that caught my eye. In stark contrast to the Resident Evil 5 trailer, which used racial difference as one of the ways to inspire horror in the player (link roundup on the issues), race (and gender) is used simply as a backdrop; a way to show the racial demographics of the city.

Although the first shots are of clearly white people (two men and one woman), the second character to have a speaking part is a black man. Unlike the creepy white man who speaks first, this man is a cop with some clear authority. His lines involve strategizing with his fellow cops on how to get out of the sticky situation. It should be noted, though, that the other cops all appear to be white (although at least one is a woman with a speaking part). The next few shots are of the hordes of zombies who, again, are primarily white but some of whom have clearly darker skin (and there’s one who I swear looks a lot like Michael Jackson from Thriller–but maybe it’s just his red jacket).

From a marketing perspective, there was really nothing to lose in choosing a black character to go in the trailer. The first Outbreak included playable characters of color, and so including a character of color in this trailer, especially with all the other characters being white, wasn’t much of a risk. From an anti-racist perspective, having one visible character of color in a sea of whiteness can be read as tokenism, but is infinitely preferable to the reverse imagery that Capcom went with in their Resident Evil 5 trailer.

Bioshock

Commercial: Bioshock 1st Trailer

I am, however, significantly less impressed by the Bioshock trailer. While it doesn’t rely on the titillation of sexualized violence against women, it does still rely on using gendered violence by focusing on the attempted harvesting of a Little Sister.

First off, I’d like to highlight the voiceover that directly precedes the footage of the battle:

So I ask you, my friend, if your life were the prize, would you kill the innocent? Would you sacrifice your humanity? We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.

I pull this out because it shows how the Little Sisters are used as symbols of Innocence in the game, an image reinforced by the screen time they get; they are wide-eyed, helpless, and need to be protected, just like babies. That it is a man who is enacting violence on the little girls only complicates the matter, as does the defender of the little girls being a “Big Daddy”. This positions men as the agents who act on behalf of the girls as well as against them, leaving no room for the girls to have agency of their own. Since this is a column about advertising, and not game critique, instead of continuing the analysis I’ll just point you to the Bioshock’s Killing Little Sisters thread on Iris for in-depth discussion on that issue.

From a marketing perspective, this trailer makes perfect sense. Not only does it showcase one of the key features of the game, but it also sets up the moral ambiguity that is the foundation for the horror that the game attempts to invoke. From a feminist perspective, however, it relies on an already over-used stereotype of the attempted destruction of (feminine) child-like innocence in order to create a feeling of horror in the user, as well as reinforcing tropes of the feminine as helpless and childlike.

Closing Thoughts

Because of the long and continued history of oppression, making decisions on how to represent characters of the “marked” status (in this case, women and people of color) is not easy. What seems like a great way to elicit desired emotions in a player can very easily end up being a turn-off because of the way the tropes being used reinforce negative stereotypes about a group the player belongs to.

In addition to that, the first trailer brings up the issue of tokenism versus true diverse representation. Should we be satisfied because one man of color and two white women are highlighted as normal, non-stereotyped characters? Or should we say, “That’s a great start, but it would be even better if next time the demographics were more representative of a small US city?”

There’s also a third issue, which I haven’t addressed yet: the juxtaposition of race and gender issues. The second trailer showed two humans, both of whom were white. Changing one or both of their races to non-white, however, would have complicated things even further because it would bring the history of racial oppression and stereotypes into the mix.

Although these “closing” thoughts are more like openings to a whole host of discussions, I don’t want to give the impression that just because something is complex and potentially problematic that it shouldn’t be done. Or even that if you are the recipient of heavy criticism for your choice that it was necessarily a bad one. What I do want to impress upon advertisers, however, is that when they do make these choices, they need to be made from an informed perspective with an understanding of the potential problems, attempting to find ways to minimize the harm and maximize the benefits. If advertisers could focus on doing that, in my opinion they would find that they are able to reach a much broader audience than before.

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Market to Me: Race and gender in survival horror games

October 2007 Issue

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Resident Evil Outbreak File #2

Bioshock

Closing Thoughts