I want to take a look at my favorite black characters in Videogames. I want to parse out why they matter to me, and look at what they reinforce on a larger scale. Let us delve into how they are problematic characters for black people or good for us. I have to start with my first black experience in video games; Balrog from Street Fighter II. Balrog, the boxer turned Shadaloo muscle working for M. Bison in Street Fighter II.
He is named M. Bison in Japan (think Mike Tyson) but that wasn’t going to fly here due to copyright issues etc. Balrog looks a lot like Mike Tyson, big muscles, tough mug, ripped clothes and boxing gloves. Balrog is a charge character with no kicks. All punches, and a devastating headbutt grab. Why does Balrog matter to me? He was my first.
As a young kid (8, 9 years old maybe) he was the first character I have ever seen who looked like me! I’m not a Japanese woman, or a large white Russian man, but I am a black kid and Balrogs looks like me. He was black, he was powerful, he was won fights. Balrog looked like what I thought a man should look like. He was too big for clothes! He was a super hero for me. I could beat anybody with Balrog, and watching my black avatar beat up these other ethnic stereoptypes was a big deal for me as a kid and frankly still holds weight now. When you beat the game (depending on the version) Balrog’s ending animation shows him with riches and white women! Made sense to me as a kid! He was a role model. He is a role model, every once and a while at the gym I look at myself and think, “I am one step closer to looking like Balrog”. Balrog represents pure power to me and he is power I can replicate. He doesn’t shoot orbs or create fire, he uses his fist. I have fist. I can punch. He headbutts, I can headbutt. He is as realistic as a character gets in Street Fighter, hell he looks like a clone of THE Mr. O Ronnie Coleman. As I got older I had to ask…..Is he problematic? Is my hero a mocking stereotype of a black athlete and a black man? Short answer yes, long answer…still yes but that doesn’t mean he is all bad!
What do I mean when I say Balrog is problematic? In the games industry the biggest issue with representations of race is that certain races are represented a very limited basis. If those representations are negative it can have harmful effects. To elaborate, White characters are represented in every capacity in games. They are protagonist, antagonist, drug dealers, and cops. You see enough positive white figures in games that the negative ones don’t stand out. For black characters that is simply not the case. Balrog becomes one of very few black representations we have in gaming. If he was the only black person a white kid in the suburbs saw in ’94 what are they going to think about black people? It’s problematic.
Let’s look closer at who Balrog is and what stereotypes he reinforces.
Stereotype: Lazy Black Man
Balrog got barred from professional boxing due to cheating and gambling. He wanted to get rich the easy way instead of winning and building a career.
Stereotype: UnIntelligent Black Man
In a lot of the versions of Street Fighter II if you beat the game with Balrog they will tell you how he took over Shadaloo and ruined the empire due to his stupidity. Sigh… at least we have a black president who isn’t running the country into the groun…never mind.
Stereotype: Prefers white women
This stereotype is a hot button issue both in the black community and white. The idea is that as soon as a black man gets successful they exclusively date white women. The rationale being they have wanted white women the whole time. When you beat the game with balrog this image below is your reward….. he finally made it…
Stereotype: Athletically gifted
Think Black men are good at basketball and extrapolate that to other sports. It’s problematic because athletic success comes from hard work, and by attributing it to race it devalues the hard work and training black athletes put into their craft.
Stereotype: Black man as criminal
See mass incarceration of black men in America. Statistically 1 in 3 black men will be arrested in their lifetime. Watch the news….it’s a black prison beauty pageant.
This is problematic because Balrog is one of the few major recurring black figures in gaming. If we had more black people in games, negative images like this would not be so harmful but we are not there yet. As a kid this was one of very few options for me to look up to and that’s a shame. At least the white kids had Mario and Luigi!
That said, like Tyler Perry film you have to love that he has persisted throughout the years as a main stay character in the Street Fighter franchise. He is still strong and still a menacing character to use in the game. Over the years Capcom has stuck with Balrog and I still use him to this day. I don’t hate that Balrog exist, I just wish he had a positive character to counter him (maybe DeeJay?). I also think it is important that he was made by a Japanese studio, and their perceptions and knowledge of race in America are limited compared to somebody from the states.
That’s all I got for Balrog! Peace.
J3Blackgamer 