Final Thoughts On RE5

Seth Schiesel claps back at those who've called Resident Evil 5 racist:

For at least a year some black journalists have been wringing their hands about whether the game, the latest in the seminal survival-horror series, inflames racist stereotypes because it is set in Africa. The answer is no...

So Resident Evil 5 exposes the perhaps uncomfortable truth that blacks and Arabs can become zombies too, just like anyone else. Blacks and Arabs do not have a secret anti-zombie gene. And just like all the thousands of white, Asian and Hispanic zombies that have been dispatched in innumerable other games before them, the African zombies must also be destroyed, or at least neutralized.

I think it's worth reading Schiesel's piece and then seeing whether the arguments he's addressing actually match those made by RE5's most serious critics--such as Dan Whitehead and Evan Narcisse. I'll leave it at that for now. Badder mutherfuckers than me will be tackling this in the coming days. More soon.