Entry #5 Sergeant Major Johnson from Halo

Brian Gerker
Entry #5
11/11/2007

Sergeant Johnson, Halo’s Savage

1.Representation of the Item:

Sergeant Johnson Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hakAXRQj_1w
From the Halo video games, Sergeant Johnson is the only African-American in all three.


2. Intro and Why: Halo is a video game series which is set in the 26th century of human existence. In these games, humans have butted heads with an alien species, the Convenant. Also, the humans discovery that there are numerous Halos that exist across the galaxy and each of which are designed to eliminate all living beings, so it becomes up to the humans, and eventually the Covenant to destroy these rings before they are fired by a Covenant Prophet.
In these games, Sergeant Johnson, who is the only African-American character in the game is a Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. He is very brutal and just wants to blow up and kill everything that moves. When a human space craft was attacked by Covenant forces, Johnson told his marines that the he would “. . . rip [the Covenant’s] skulls from their spines, and toss ‘em away laughin.’” Throughout all three games, Johnson shows attitude toward nothing but fighting and slaughtering all of his enemies.
I chose Johnson because the Halo game series is one of my favorites. I have noticed while playing the game that he was the only black character, and also his attitude and brutality were a bit disturbing.

3.Analysis: One thing we have discussed in class that Johnson relates to is how blacks during and before the Civil War were looked at as being brutal, crazed savages. This is coming from I believe, the movie Ethnic Notions. In Ethnic Notions, they say that because of the slavery uprisings and revolts, white people spread about stereotypes that blacks were savage beasts because of this, and to keep them in line. Johnson clearly displays his brutal attitude as he wants to tear the Covanent apart, literally. The mere fact that he would “rip their spine form their skull” shows that Johnson has some savage instincts, and being that he is the only black person in the games, there is a clear under representation of the multi-cultured world we live in. It is obviously shown in Halo that Johnson is given savage-like qualities that match the stereotypes given to African-Americans in the 19th century.

4. Response: When I first played Halo I did not even realize that Sergeant Johnson displays qualities of the stereotypes that were given to blacks in the era of the Civil War. Our class material and discussions have opened my eyes to realize that even though it’s been around 150 years since these stereotypes were given, they still exist in society today. And since Halo is set in the 26th century, these stereotypes will apparently still exist even 500 years from now. I was a little shocked when I realized that one of my favorite video games mirrored something that we discussed in class.