Page 190 - Cyberculture and New Media

Leman Giresunlu 181
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remarks already indicates the people’s entrapment in between. Therefore, it
also caters to the paranoia lore prevalent in American society in regard of
high technology:

9 out of 10 homes contain (Umbrella Corporation’s)
products. It’s political and financial influence is felt
everywhere. In public it’s the world’s leading supplier of:
computer technology, medical products, (and) health care.
Unknown even to its employees, its massive profits are
generated by military technology, genetic experimentation
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(and) viral weaponry.

In this respect, the movie creates a cross-cultural critical approach
against all kinds of oppression, evil and terror in the past and the present, at
home and abroad. Similarly, the pre and post contamination zombie-like Hive
employees are a criticism of the mindless, soulless and memory defective
ignorant masses striving only to appease their primal drives for food. These
masses since have no memory, cannot recall the mentality and dynamics of
the Nazi terror in the past, and in a different geographical context, neither can
they recognize similar manipulative mindsets endemic of giant corporations
for which they are willingly enslaving themselves. In this respect, the movie
is also a critique of potential oppression and abuse giant and impersonalized
corporations may generate. As in the case of the Umbrella Corporation,
marriages between men and women require the corporation’s approval. This
constitutes an example for corporate intrusion into domesticity, in the film.
However, in reference to the first and second movies, Resident Evil
and Resident Evil: Apocalypse it is worth the mention that the choice of the
name Raccoon for a city in this movie is a reference to the animal Raccoon
which generally lives in pairs. That is, they come in twos. Therefore, the
city’s name as Raccoon enforces furthermore the binary mindset. Basically,
the use of the binary implies the possibility that in addition to the actual
incident occurring in Raccoon city, other similar incidents maybe currently
happening somewhere else in the present, might have happened already in the
past, or may as well happen in the future. Thus, the doubling format through
the name of the animal Raccoon for the city in Resident Evil movies enables
a sense of continuity, and sameness in place and in time. On another note, the
name Raccoon chosen for a city is also symbolic in regard of the pastoral
element, amidst the bustle for technology. However, Raccoon city and its
residents disappear in the nuclear blast implemented in order to contain the
virus from spreading any further. Therefore, the natural element symbolized
in the raccoons, terminates.
In this respect, the idea of massive extinction resulting from misuses
of technology is also the subject matter of the third and final film in the