Mutated Spanish Villagers & The President’s Daughter: Resident Evil 4 and Latiné Villainization in Video Games
Written on 3/14/24
Figure 1. Leon Kennedeeznuts. Digital Art by Tumblr user ryo-creampuff. 2023.
In “Who Exactly Is Living La Vida Loca: The Legal and Political Consequences of Latino-Latina Ethnic and Racial Stereotypes in Film and Other Media.” Ediberto Román lists the four most prominent stereotypical depictions of Latiné people in media (specifically film), “Latinas and Latinos are still largely portrayed as one of the following: (1) the hot-blooded sexy character-the macho man or sultry curvy vixen, (2) the gangster or gang-member, who is almost always a drug dealer, (3) the snazzy entertainer, or (4) the immigrant, often an illegal immigrant.” (Román 2000, 39–40).
However, when we take into account the way Resident Evil 4, a zombie-shooter game published by CapCom, depicts the Spanish villagers in the game there is a fifth stereotypical portrayal: the religious fanatic.
Resident Evil 4’s plot centers around Leon S. Kennedy, former rookie cop who survived a zombie outbreak in Raccoon City (a fictional city that was atomic-bombed to prevent the spread of the zombie outbreak), on a mission to rescue the president’s daughter, Ashley Graham from a rural village located somewhere in Spain. The villagers, described by the fandom wiki, “Leon travels to an undisclosed village in Spain where he encounters a huge contingent of unruly villagers who pledge their lives to Los Iluminados, the cult that perpetuated Ashley's kidnapping.” (“Resident Evil 4 (2005)/Plot” 2024).
The villagers are not depicted as victims suffering from a corrupt leader’s vision of a mutated-future, rather, they are depicted as ruthless killers who have taken a helpless white teenager in need of saving.
Figure 2. Untitled. Digital Screenshot. n.d.
Resident Evil 4 was made for white gamers. Rebecca Wanzo in “African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies.” reflects upon the white hostility people of color fans and content creators receive when they become critical of the racism within fandom:
Yet high-profile racist and misogynist speech and bullying demonstrate that some fans of speculative works depend on the centrality of whiteness or masculinity to take pleasure in the text. Sexism, racism, and xenophobia are routinely visible in fan communities, including the cases of Gamergate (the harassment of women who are involved in the video game industry or who criticize it) and the fans of Suzanne Collins's popular young adult novel The Hunger Games (2008) who voiced anger that a tragic young character described as dark skinned in the book is played by an African American actress in the 2012 film (note 5). (Wanzo 2015)
You cannot detach masculinity and whiteness from Resident Evil 4 as its leading man embodies the white savior dream: conquesting land to save his white femme captor from savage ‘others’ who want to take over the world.
Resident Evil 4 is well-received by the white gaming community, as showcased in The Guardian’s article “Pushing Buttons: Why the Resident Evil 4 Remake Works.” Written by Keith Stuart, the article reviews the game and if it ‘holds up’ to a modern gaming standard (Resident Evil 4 was originally released in 2005). Reflecting on the game mechanics, Stuart writes, “Resident Evil 4 is a masterpiece of image, constraint and semiotics. Like Super Mario it teaches you the rules gradually, it tests your learning, and then it lets you master what you have picked up by pitching you against improbable monsters.” (Stuart 2023)
Stuart does not make a distinction between the mutated-monstrosities Leon later encounters in the game and the Spanish villagers, as they are perceived by white fandom to be the same.
The villagers, religious leaders, and main villain are depicted as religious fanatics who serve no purpose other than to spread the word of their prophet. This is a stereotypical portrayal of not just Spanish people themselves– it is a racialized portal of Latiné religious devotion. None of the white characters in the game are affected by the prophet, Leon through inner-game dialogue calls the villagers ‘freaks’ and names their movement as weird.
The religious movement, while based around a mutation-parasite, is a racialization of Latiné religion. These depictions are inherently harmful as they provide overgeneralizations for white audiences on how the ‘other’ (i.e. non-white people) are really like. Román in “Who Exactly Is Living La Vida Loca” evaluates this white-fandom phenomenon:
Critical race scholars have similarly observed that Americans maintain a deep uncertainty as to what they are, and they attempt to resolve that strife by using markers, myths, and metaphors to define minorities and label them as outsiders. American society uses these myths or metaphors as a gauge to determine whether the minority is a "real” American. These myths or stereotypes form a complex web of narratives that "encapsulate the world visions and historical sense of a people or a culture." These narratives reduce centuries of experience to "constellations of compelling metaphors. (Román 2000, 47)
Despite the stereotypes seen in Resident Evil 4 there is BIPOC-centered fandom and cosplay. In the Resident Evil fandom, there is not much for BIPOC fans to attach themselves to (sans the light-skinned side characters who are either never seen again or die while aiding the white main character!), so fans create their own recreations of what Resident Evil fandom can look like. In Figure 3, a reddit user named u/MMDVG40 cosplays Leon Kennedy, inspired by the release of Resident Evil 4 (digitally remastered for the Playstation 5 gaming console), “Did a Leon S. Kennedy Cosplay just in time for the RE4 Remake! Hope yall enjoy :)” (MMDVG40 2023).
Figure 3. Untitled. Posted by u/rMMDVG. 2023.
This cross-racial cosplay of Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 4 demonstrates the intersectionality of BIPOC-fandom and the original content’s racism. I am left wondering, is there a prospective future to be found within BIPOC-fandom’s interpretation of the Resident Evil series?
Works Cited
Román, Ediberto. “Who Exactly Is Living La Vida Loca: The Legal and Political Consequences of Latino-Latina Ethnic and Racial Stereotypes in Film and Other Media.” 4 J. Gender Race & Just., 2000. https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty_publications/313.
ryo-creampuff. 2023. Leon Kennedeeznuts. Digital Art. https://ryo-creampuff.tumblr.com/post/710261223303839744/someone-help-luis.
MMDVG40. “Did a Leon S. Kennedy Cosplay Just in Time for the RE4 Remake! Hope Yall Enjoy :).” Reddit Post. R/Residentevil, March 23, 2023. www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/1200g4f/did_a_leon_s_kennedy_cosplay_just_in_time_for_the/.
Stuart, Keith. “Pushing Buttons: Why the Resident Evil 4 Remake Works.” The Guardian, March 15, 2023, sec. Games. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/mar/15/pushing-buttons-resident-evil-4-remake.
Untitled. n.d. Digital Screenshot. https://screenrant.com/resident-evil-4-real-life-video-village/.
Wanzo, Rebecca. “African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies.” Transformative Works and Cultures 20 (September 15, 2015). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0699.
Resident Evil Wiki. “Resident Evil 4 (2005)/Plot,” March 14, 2024.https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Resident_Evil_4_(2005)/plot.