Zachary Amaranth said:
Jman1236 said:
Seriousally south america invades the US? I call BS!
You know how zombies were originally an analogue for black people? Well, maybe you don't, but early zombies, before they were a commentary on commercialism or republicans or whatever else the writer wants to call mindless, they were an analgoe for black people. There was this fear that black people were going to take us by storm in the US, and America would be ruined by having....Slightly higher melanin in the skin? I don't know.
I suspect this plays off the fear that 'Mexicans,' because pretty much anyone to the South of the US is called that it seems, are invading us and destroying America. I mean, you'd have to ignore the numbers, where the number of illegals is no longer increasing (and may actually be decreasing, depending on the source), but people seem happy to do it. If you believe Fox News, it's a miracle they haven't completely overrun the South and Southwest. And, because Fox wouldn't be Fox without race baiting, all those imaginary brown people seem to have some sinister plan to destroy America from within.
Brown people from our south attacking us with our own infrastructure sounds like someone played perfectly into that paranoid mess.
Basically, zombies became a thing in America based on the premise that black people are scary.
MMS would probably be a thing, period, but I'm sure cashing in on the notion that brown people are scary isn't hurting anyone's wallet.
...Uh, I think the whole "zombies were originally an analogue for black people" thing had to do with the fact that, well, the concept for a "zombie" CAME from black people, specifically with Haiti Voodoo. As for it becoming the shorthand for "brown-aphobia" for the USA, the whole "zombie" thing didn't really grab the American zeitgeist by the balls until "Night of the Living Dead", which most assuredly NOT playing off the "brown-aphobia" you're talking about.
Admittedly, "brown-aphobia" definitely is a part of American life, if nowhere near as extensively as before the Civil Rights Movement. It's the phobia that made "Birth of A Nation" the biggest cinematic blockbuster for generations, why there can't be any major black characters in fiction UNLESS the story is about making their "blackness" a story-overriding character trait (blaxploitation, their struggle for equality in the Civil War or Civil Rights Movement, etc.), and the reason more black criminals are given the death-penalty in spite of more white criminals being tried and convicted for death-penalty worthy crimes.
I still don't think that the COD having "brown" antagonists makes them racist, it's just that they think "brown" countries are suddenly more "exotic" to white audiences than North America and Western Europe - notice that every other "spunkgargleweewee" shooter has you fighting either Asians (specifically North Koreans, who have pretty much gotten the entire world to hate it's guts), or Eastern-Europeans (neo-Commie or Mafiya Russians obviously, but also Serbians, Armenians, Germans (seemingly indistinguishable from NON-Nazi Germans)). These are groups that aren't "brown" by any stretch of the imagination, but are still pretty damn foreign or alien to "First World" - and by extension, somehow able to pass as shooting gallery targets without needing to give any real "context" to the big, bloody brawl.
As for the whole "this is marketed to conservatives because they like guns and hate brown people", bear in mind right-wing paranoia isn't just limited to racism: just look at "Rainbow 6: Patriots", which riled up a shitstorm for having the decidedly white, yet also decidedly LIBERAL "Patriots" movement, basically as a paramilitary offshoot of Occupy Wall Street. That one was cutting a fine line between examining how badly militant fanaticism can corrupt an otherwise benign cause, and outright catering to the Neo-Conservative Doomsday Bunker players.
That said, I think the reason they made a unified South America stealing our doomsday laser technology the main bad guys this time around isn't COMPLETELY catering to the right-wing nutjob audience. I think they simply wanted to be more "creative" (i.e., they were completely out of semi-plausible ideas), and only figured ramping up the explosions would make a better game (instead of remembering COD 4's semi-serious look into how the War on Terror was shaping up at the time, or even the Black Ops miniseries halfhearted attempts to mix up the morality structure between America and it's enemies).
Of course, none of this shit really matters to "real" COD-players: they just hop on for the multiplayer experience of legalized deathmatches where they can blow the ever-loving shit out of their family, friends and strangers, all while indulging in all the zesty racist, sexist, and homophobic profanities denied discourse in real life!
