People are Stupid.

[shipperx]

From Huffingtonpost (via Jezebel):

It wasn't all good news for Team "Hunger Games" over the weekend. Despite fawning reviews and record-breaking ticket sales, some fans of the blockbuster young adult trilogy by author Suzanne Collins were upset by the decision to cast an African-American actress as Rue, one of the supporting characters. Never mind that she's described as having "dark brown skin" in the original book.

As Jezebel notes, many "Hunger Games" viewers resorted to sending racist tweets over the fact that Rue (played in the film by young actress Amandla Sternberg) was black.

"Why does Rue have to be black," wrote one ignorant fan, whose Twitter page no longer exists. "Not gonna lie, kinda ruined the movie."

Another girl wanted to know "why they 'made all the good characters black.' "

"Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the innocent blonde girl you picture," wrote another user, whose account has also been deleted.

---

As who pictured? Racists or people who lack basic reading comprehension? 

Rue's description in the book:

…And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that she's very like Prim in size and demeanor…

(elsewhere she's described as having 'dark satiny brown skin'

Thresh's description in the book:

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...

Rue and Thresh were unambiguously characters of color in the book. (As are Rue's and Thresh's families in "Catching Fire.")  What next? These same 'readers' missed the distinct implication that the "adjacent to District 12/Appalachia) District 11 happens to mostly likely be the deep South (and the history that evokes) ... and possibly some of the grain producing mid-West (as 11 was distinctly agrarian).  Did they miss that too?

And even if those characters weren't cast to look exactly the way that they were described in the books (even though they are)  SO WHAT?!  Cinna is played by a bi-racial man in the movie, though I don't recall Cinna's race being discussed in the novels (so he's open to just about any interpretation.)  And, you know what?  It just means that Lenny Kravitz got a job.  It doesn't 'change' Cinna in any way!

Also, why is it upsetting that 'the good characters' are black?  1) Do Peeta, Prim, Haymitch, and Gale not count as 'good"?  2) Does having three 'good' black characters strike them as an 'imbalance'?!!  WTH?

Guh.  People are stupid.

Comments

[elisi]

Tangerially related: Over here, a man has been jailed over racist tweets. Mind you, the target was a critically ill footballer, but still, I like the precedent. (Presuming it then doesn't go haywire.) But yeah - people are stupid.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

OH GROSS. GROSS GROSS GROSS.

Sometimes I really hate people.

[sourisvho.livejournal.com]

A friend just told me about this. I am ... without words. WTF is wrong with people?? On top of the horrid racism, reading comprehension FAIL.

I don't know why, but I always pictured Cinna as black. He looked like tennis player James Blake in my head.

[sp23.livejournal.com]

As who pictured?

OMG, yes! I would never have pictured her otherwise. Apparently not only are these people racists, they're illiterate racists.

I really want to see this movie, I'm just terrified the theater will be fill with noisy, ignorant teenagers.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure who I pictured Cinna as. America's Next Top Model's Jay, maybe? Dunno.

I did have Robert Downey Jr. in my head for Haymitch, though. (Woody Harrelson did a good job. By in-my-head Haymitch was RDJ).

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

You know that what it indicates is that these ignoramuses couldn't 'possibly' picture a young black girl reminding Katniss of Prim.

Guh! Hateful people.

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I'm trying to take heart from the sheer number of people posting their outrage with racist fans, but it doesn't actually dispel my fury and disgust.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Well, evidently black children can't be "innocent"...

Damnit, I hope this shit doesn't splash back on Amandla Stenberg. She was perfect in that role.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

She was. She did Rue perfectly. (and looked just as anyone would expect from Rue's descriptions in the book. Man, Rue's death in the book haunted me for days. It was gutwrenching enough that when it was mentioned in "Catching Fire"... I started crying all over again.)

[shapinglight]

See icon.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

I figured you'd see that sooner or later. Did you manage to catch this?

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17hnfwfqrgml4jpg/original.jpg

And some of the posters who didn't delete their profile, believe it or not, didn't think their comments were racist at all.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Whoops--that's in one of the links :p

Considering what's going on in the news at present...oh hell, I'm not surprised at all. I wish I could say otherwise.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It serves as another reminder of how incredibly racist we still are. We still judge others by race. Whether we want to admit it or not. It's better when it's out in the open - because at least then you can attack the ignorance. When it is repressed and festering - bad things happen and you can't change minds.

Also how segregated. So many people who live in suburban America have never seen or interacted with someone of another race. My high school was regrettably 99% white. I knew people who weren't, but I tended to gravitate in that direction. While in the city...there were schools that were 89-90% black. The Wire - which I'm not sure you've seen? Underlines this in S4 - where 99% of the kids in the failing public schools in inner city Baltimore are "black". While the kids who get to move on and go to college and go to the better schools are "white".

As one man I know who was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement states...the movement was largely a failure. We are still a racist country. I don't totally agree - the mere fact that Hollywood cast Rue as a Person of Color and not a white blond is progress!

[sourisvho.livejournal.com]

Cinna is my favorite character (except for maybe Buttercup, hee!), and he's the only one I really had a clear picture of in my head. Though most of the casting has fit IMO -- even if they don't fit as perfectly physically, they seem to have the right vibe.

RDJ would've been a great Haymitch.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't think Suzanne Collins (who had a say-so in the casting) ever would have allowed that. I remember an interview after the brouhaha of Lawrence being cast where Collins said that while she understood how people had interpreted Katniss as looking different, race wasn't a factor in Katniss, but she very most definitely intended Rue and Thresh to be of color.

Personally, I grew up in a very small, rather isolated tiny town in the very, very rural deep South (hometown of Harper Lee, so To Kill A Mockingbird... my hometown).

Segregation had happened prior to my being born. But it had caused a fair bit of white flight, such that down the street from the public high school there was a k-12 "private school" which was created to avoid desegrgating.

I attended the public school, however. It was 65%-70% African American/30%-35% White. Although we still had strange arcane practices where we would have one white and one black homecoming queen every year.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yeah but you are in the deep south. I was in suburban Kansas City (aka Johnson County) which is well, wealthy. Very different worlds.

Rural PA did get desegregated in the mid 1970s. I remember that well and is actually more comparable to your experience in some respects. The elementary school closest to where I lived (15-20 minutes) - was all white, the one that we got switched to after a de-segregation zoning law was passed, was an hour and a half away. I actually liked the second school better and found the racial diversity wonderful. Finally I had some cool friends, I stopped being teased, and these two wonderful black guys took me under their wing. It lasted six-seven months, before my family moved from rural/suburban PA in the middle of the 5th grade to Kansas City, and to a much wealthier school district. We went from the bottom school district to one of the top in the country (public school wise). And the new school district was 99% white. So was the neighborhood. This was NOT deliberate on my parents part. It just happened. They didn't really research it. And we never fit in or belonged.

In Law School - I saw more of a mix but not by much - still 85% white. And Kansas was an abolutionist state, unlike Missouri which was a slave state. John Brown was Kansas. Kansas has been Republican since the Civil War and never changed. It's a weird state. I had friends who weren't white. But they were clearly in the minority. What I love about NYC is the diversity.

The Deep South...is more diverse. I remember talking to a woman on a plane on the way home from Maine, she was from Alabama, and kept commenting on how white the population of Maine was. The only blacks she saw appeared to be tourists.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

Some days I just despair of the human race. But then, I'm just a farm animal and don't deserve sovereignty over my own body, so you probably shouldn't listen to me.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Bazinga.

Depressing, isn't it.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

And apparently... people suck.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, people like this. It just makes you want to break something.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I know.

I'm just stunned that people managed to somehow read the book and willfully block out what the author was doing!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I know.

It's just... good god, not only way to miss the point, but way to twist the point into it's polar opposite.

This idiot clearly not only missed Rue and Thresh, but the whole District 11 plot. It takes hell of a blind eye to willfully do that.

Then again Fox News declared that the movie was about the perils of "big government".

Good god.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I want to be sick now.

Sick, dimwitted, illiterate RACISTS!

[queenofattolia.livejournal.com]

Although this is far worse (and baffling considering the descriptions of the character[s] in the book), it reminds me of the people who were put out that the kids in the Harry Potter films had "those English accents." Apparently these people thought that characters born and raised in the UK should speak with the "understandable" American accents they imagined while reading the books.

Yeah. There's no arguing with stupid.