I thoroughly enjoyed The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, written by Suzanne Collins. This is a series about which "enjoy" seems an odd word given the dark theme of the stories.
Without intending to spoil anything, and unless you lived under a rock this weekend, you'll know that the movie inspired by the first book was released on Friday and yes, I saw it this weekend along with a good many other adults.
Faithful to the book and adapted for the screen ( the author co-wrote the screenplay) like any book adaptation, there were some things that were different from the book in order to make things flow on screen. What wasn't changed and should not have been a surprise or shock for anyone who read the books, was that two of the characters in the story were black. SPOILERISH: They also happened to be two characters who despite the whole design of the "games" acted selflessly with regard to the protagonist and died as a result. So what's this got to do with this diary?
Apparently there's a cadre of so called "fans" who have exposed their blatant racism on Twitter , expressing shock and some other nasty emotions that these characters were played by black actors. The casting came as absolutely no surprise to most everyone else who actually read and paid attention to the book but these "fans" of the book not so much.
Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed
For those unfamiliar with the story, in a dystopian future, the tyrannical Capitol keeps the Districts under control with an annual event called The Hunger Games wherein a boy and a girl from each of 12 districts that make up the nation, compete in a fight to the finish for one surviving victor. Of the 24 contestants, 23 are supposed to die. Of the 24 contestants, 2 were black. It was clear to me when I read the book that these characters were black. It wasn't a huge plot factor any more than the characters the author made a point of describing as blonde or red headed or large small etc. It just was.
But when it came to the casting of Rue, Thresh, and Cinna, many audience members did not understand why there were black actors playing those parts. Cinna's skin is not discussed in the book, so truthfully, though Lenny Kravitz was cast, a white, Asian or Latino actor could have played the part.
But. On page 45 of Suzanne Collins's book, Katniss sees Rue for the first time:
…And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that's she's very like Prim in size and demeanor…
Later, she sees Thresh:
The boy tribute from District 11, Thresh, has the same dark skin as Rue, but the resemblance stops there. He's one of the giants, probably six and half feet tall and built like an ox.
Dark skin. That is what the novelist, the creator of the series, specified. But there were plenty of audience members who were "shocked," or confused, or just plain angry.
And as I recall but don't have handy, there were other descriptions in the book that made Rue and Thresh's race clear, at least to me.
To these folks however, it was not only not clear, they let their racist freak flag fly:
For one "fan" it ruined the movie. For another "why did they make all the good characters black" because apparently black people can only be villains and bad people.
For another, what was a very sad death when they thought the character was white, became not so sad when they saw the character portrayed by a perfectly cast and adorable Amanda Stenhberg who I though captured the essence of her character Rue, more perfectly than I could have hoped. There is also discussion about the character of Cinna and how/why Lenny Kravitz was cast to play him. Cinna's ethnicity isn't explicitly stated but interesting how given that, some just assume him to be white.
Sadly it's not just one or two tweets. As Jezebel notes:
The posts go on and on and on. It's not just a coupe of tweets, it's not just a coincidence. There's an underlying rage, coming out as overt prejudice and plain old racism. Sternberg is called a "black bitch," a "nigger" and one person writes that though he pictured Rue with "darker skin," he "didn't really take it all the way to black." It's as if that is the worst possible thing a person could be.
The timing of the release of the movie is purely coincidental to the national discussion taking place about Trayvon Martin. This movie and this story is about the extremes that society can bring upon itself...the excesses of the haves in the Capitol ...the subsistence existence of those in the Districts...children being forced to kill other children to remind the country of the consequences of opposing a totalitarian government.
In rare bright spots it also shows that humanity can be maintained, boldly exhibited by these two characters in particular, and yet the racists among us still come out of their hidey holes. We are far worse off as a society than I thought and as far fetched as the premise of The Hunger Games may seem, it's depressingly easy to see just how people are able to dehumanize one another.
I'll leave you with the words of someone who started a Tumblr to capture all of the hateful comments about these characters:
These people are MAD that the girl that they cried over while reading the book was "some black girl" all along. So now they're angry. Wasted tears, wasted emotions. It's sad to think that had they known that she was black all along, there would have been [no] sorrow or sadness over her death.
There are MAJOR TIE-INS to these reactions and the injustices that we see around the world today. I don't even need to spell it out because I know that you're all a smart bunch.
This is a BIG problem. Think of all the murdered children. Think of all the missing children that get NO SCREEN TIME on the news.
It is NOT a coincidence.
