But the narrative leaps to rioting, likely only to mimic the riots of Rodney King in 1992. In one way, Rockstar seems to acknowledge that people would be angry about the outcome of corrupt officers not receiving justice. Nothing good is gonna come of this,” Sweet says to CJ. “They just tearing up their own neighborhood. CJ and his brother, Sweet, go back and forth about how the hood is being destroyed. All charges against him are dropped, and later the city begins to riot., upset with the outcome.
MAFIA III KKK TRIAL
Later in the game we are treated to the cast of characters watching the trial of Officer Tenpenny. But, let’s continue just a little further. You can assume Rockstar Games did not add the scene to be racist. It is just racism for the sake of showing racism. Similarly, it does not quite drive a point home. However, to ignore that the act is still racist, despite Tenpenny giving the order, is an example of how showing this in a video game does little to have the player question what they’re seeing. In the “High Noon” mission, where Pulaski pulls the gun on CJ, it is actually Officer Tenpenny–a black officer–who orders CJ to dig and for Pulaski to keep watch. The examples are sometimes subtle, and if you blink, you’ll miss it.Įxamples like these also try to hide the racism, by including a character of color–or in this case two. It certainly makes sense to show these issues through the lens of Carl Johnson, but did we necessarily need the scene where Officer Pulaski points a gun at CJ’s head while he digs a grave for himself and Officer Jimmy Hernandez? Police brutality and corruption, classism, drug addiction and gang violence, to name a few.
MAFIA III KKK SERIES
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the first game of the series where the protagonist is Black, throws a handful of themes at players from the start. When the developer tries to challenge racism and perhaps to an even greater degree, show anti-racist support by giving the player that experience on a tarnished platter. However, It is rarer still, when the developer goes a step further.
We may miss the moments where the developers were telling us “this is bad,” ike, in Final Fantasy X with Wakka’s racist beliefs against the Al Bhed. With video games, we cannot quite get the “very special episode.” When we do, they may be subtle. The character apologizes, life moves on, the audience claps. We would get an episode about a character using a slur and learning the hardships of being black or brown. Sometimes it was why teenagers shouldn’t smoke or have sex before marriage. Television in the 80s and 90s used to have these relevant-for-the-time episodes that most viewers now know as the “Very Special Episode.” It was an episode of a sitcom or family drama with a mostly white cast, where they would challenge some aspect of society that we thought of as wrong.
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