BlackHeart Biohazards

whateverthefuckyouwantiguess:

Okay, so someone left some tags in a reblog of my “Why Chris Redfield is not a Republican” post about his misogynistic behavior in RE6 and because, being the way that I am, I wanted to talk about it and his whole situation in RE6.

CAPCOM, like many other forms of media do, decided to use amnesia for a plot device for Chris after having suffered a serious head injury where he fought a B.O.W. in close quarters right after the loss of the majority of his team. He suffered a lot of emotional and physical trauma in a short amount of time. When he wakes up in the hospital, he starts exhibiting the symptoms of Post Traumatic Amnesia and runs off. For those who don’t know what PTA is, it is the time after a period of unconsciousness where the injured person is awake, but are exhibiting uncharacteristic behaviors. This is a period of recovery for the person who had undergone the traumatic event. This could take from a few minutes after the incident all the way up to a few months, which happens to be the case for Chris. Before I dissect the opening scene, I just want to list out a few of the symptoms of PTA. Those can include confusion, agitation, distress, anxiety, a tendency to wander, and unable to recognize familiar people. Uncharacteristic behavior they could exhibit would be violence, aggression, swearing, shouting.

Which I say all of this to get to this fact – Chris is unwell throughout the entirety of RE6.

We see him at the beginning of the cutscene sitting at the bar, drinking, smoking A LOT, and getting aggressive with the bartender when she refuses to fill his glass up with more booze. Although smoking is canon for his character, smoking that much definitely is not and everything else that I described as well are all uncharacteristic behavior for him, all because he is still undergoing the symptoms PTA. Usually I would chalk up the misogynistic things he said as just “shitty writing”, but if CAPCOM was trying to show that he is unwell and not himself – then I kind of agree with them keeping that line in there. We’ve seen throughout so many other games how he is with the female characters and he is nothing but kind, helpful, and respectful to them, even if they are throwing themselves at him (looking at you Jessica) where he tries to keep as professional as he can when handling the situation. So him acting in this way is a part of the symptoms he’s exhibiting. Do I think it’s right? Hell fucking no, but I can understand why they kept it in and it was to show that he is, in fact, unwell and in need of professional help.

Of course then when he walks away, he gets aggressive with the man telling him “she asked you to leave”, to which Chris turns violent (again, a symptom) until Piers stops him.

Now, don’t get me wrong I love Piers and I can understand why he would be irritated with Chris throughout the rest of the scene. The guy has been searching for six months for Chris – only to find his captain, a man he held in high regard, acting in a way that he is not used to. But Piers handled the situation in one of the worst ways. Piers immediately shows Chris images of the traumatic events they both suffered, showing him the faces of his dead men, becoming more and more aggressive as he yells at him. In cases where someone is dealing with the symptoms of PTA people and hospital staff are told that they should remain as calm as possible and to remember that the phase will pass. Meeting the person with aggression can cause even more distress because their brain is struggling to cope with the injury. Also, showing him the images and people could bring up traumatic triggers – which if you have not dealt with before – can send you into fight/flight/freeze because your body and brain feels like it’s undergoing the same trauma as it had during the actual events. So Chris panicking, getting aggressive with Piers, is all on par for how he should be acting in this situation, given his condition at this point.

Now to talk about him going back into the field.

The BSAA really fucked up on this one. We don’t know for a fact if they had sent him for a medical evaluation after finding him, but they definitely should have. As someone who works in EHS, anytime there is an injury such as a head injury, they are immediately taken off of the premises and sent for evaluation by a doctor, and if that doctor knows their shit, someone exhibiting signs of distress like that should not have returned to work as quickly as he had. He should have never been sent back to the field so damn quickly – they should have let him take the time he needed to heal properly before being sent back out like that. Chris definitely has a case for suing them if he wanted to for that fuck up. But this also led to him making a handful of decisions that led to mistakes on his end and eventually even losing Piers because of it, the person he wanted to pass on this legacy of fighting bioterroism to.

Chris’ entire story in RE6 is tragic and it makes me incredibly sad the more I think about it. He’s a character who’s been through hell and back multiple times and had experienced more trauma than his brain and body were able to handle – and still continues to do so for the sake of ending what was started so long ago by Wesker and Spencer. He was thrown into one of the worst situations he could have ever gone through in the mansion incident and is now determined on finishing a fight that, right now, seems like it will never end.

Edit: I just want to make it clear that the person who made a comment about his misogynistic behavior in RE6 was not doing it with malice, they were just stating an observation. I just wanted to remind people that he is unwell in those scenes – hence why his character would be off and not like himself.