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Perilous Policing: An Analysis of the Resident Evil Series

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Abstract

The current analysis takes seriously representations of the police throughout the Resident Evil series, a hallmark horror game franchise. Drawing from both cultural criminology and gothic criminology, this study involves a grounded theory-based analysis of representations of the police throughout the series, considering them to be culturally salient indicators of attitudes, beliefs, and anxieties concerning police and related institutions of social control in both the USA and Japan. Results of this analysis indicate that the series portrays the police in two ways: (1) stalwart or professional and capable protectors championing good and (2) fallible or corruptible and inadequate. The study interprets these themes through prior research on police occupational culture and identity as well as the American and Japanese historical contexts in which the series emerged, developed, and gained popularity. The analysis also considers how the subversion of the police as protectors in Resident Evil reflects deep seated anxieties about modern policing while also celebrating police violence.

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Notes

  1. While divergent definitions exist, Carroll (1990: 12–42) argues that horror, as a genre, is characterized by the challenging of conceptual boundaries to elicit emotional states of agitation in the audience. Instrumental to the genre are monsters which “breach the norms of ontological propriety presumed by the positive human characters in the story” (Carroll 1990: 16).

  2. Several interviews with the creator of the game(s), Shinji Mikami, indicate that police were an intentional focus. For instance, he stated in a 1998 interview that “I also wanted to let the player fight the fear in its own way. And when a critical, desperate situation arose, I wanted the player to be able to blow the enemy to pieces” (Mikami, 1998b). In another interview that same year, he explained that Claire Redfield was included as a playable character in Resident Evil 2 over another choice because Redfield’s connection to her police officer brother, Chris Redfield, would mean she would be “accustomed to weapons” (Mikami, 1998a). These responses indicate that the use of police was a plausible mechanism to provide players with the ability to combat monsters.

  3. Fredriksson (2019) identifies Gothic criminology as a “subset” of cultural criminology. While we think she is correct that the two are compatible, we are unsure if the architects of Gothic criminology would agree with this assessment and thus do not make that conflation here.

  4. Sales figures drawn from Capcom’s website on February 17, 2022, at https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/salesdata.html.

  5. In addition to being epistemologically consistent, Altheide (1987: 68) himself gestures at the compatibility of ethnographic content analysis and grounded theory in his foundational piece on this method.

  6. Reed (2016: 637) refers to this tendency of Resident Evil to feature corrupted law enforcement as indicative of the series’ penchant toward “corruption of authority.”

  7. According to the Urban Institute, spending on the police had “increased from $42 billion to $115 billion (in 2017 inflation-adjusted dollars).” This statistic was retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/police-and-corrections-expenditures#Question3Police.

  8. Interestingly, the Umbrella Corporation’s official company motto is “Our business is life itself.”

  9. These quotes reflect recorded social media posts by officers retrieved February 10, 2022, at the following URLS: https://cdn.plainviewproject.org/258b8a8e528eb8a679442b3adff7f3ecd89d4928.png and https://cdn.plainviewproject.org/212008df9122ffba6982a66abec217cf7b7cee67.png.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Brian Schaefer and Travis Linnemann for their insights during the writing process. Appreciation is also given to the anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

    Kevin F. Steinmetz

  2. Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO, USA

    Melissa A. Petkovsek

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Steinmetz, K.F., Petkovsek, M.A. Perilous Policing: An Analysis of the Resident Evil Series. Crit Crim 31, 161–180 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09640-1

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