The Hunger Games - and Racism?

This is not a movie review (although I thought The Hunger Games was amazing). No. This is a rant. Pure and simple. I truly enjoyed the movie, but some people didn't. Some thought it didn't follow the book well enough (though they did a wonderful job by my standards there), some thought they hadn't cast it correctly for Katniss or Peeta or Gale, and still some... people... didn't like that Rue and/or Cinna and/or Thresh were BLACK. First... did you READ the book?

The following is taken from another blog which quotes the book:

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.

Cinna's skin, as pointed out in this blog (link here), isn't talked about. So that was just whoever they wanted to cast and, personally, I liked Lenny Kravitz as that character. Loved him, in fact. I thought he was great.

I already pictured Thresh as black, but I have to admit I obviously didn't pay much attention to Rue's description, though I saw her with dark hair and eyes. Why was there disappointment, though? Because people are dumb. People are stupid. They think that if someone has a different skin color or a different culture or background, they're inferior.

Think about it. How many times do we see evidence of racism in the news and the media? This is the third highest grossing movie (for its opening weekend) of ALL TIME. THE THIRD! And people are scoffing because there were three black actors? Just because YOU didn't pay attention when you were reading and YOU formed the perfect little white girl or boy as an image in your head, does not mean you are right, first off. Second, I must ask why it matters. I'm caucasian. That's my heritage and I grew up in a mostly white city. My school was the same way. But I am not lying when I say that I never thought about the few black or latino kids who attended my school as drastically different. They lived and were raised in the same community. Had the same upbringing. Why does their skin color matter?

SPOILER

Some people said that, after seeing that Rue was black, her death... her brutal and heart wrenching death... was not as sad. It didn't matter because she was black. One tweet read that it had "ruined the movie". If I didn't care about cursing, this post would be littered with foul language. Seriously, people? Why the hell does it matter that Rue is black? You can't love her because of something so simple?

Did you know that, genetically, one white person is more different from another white person than they are from someone of another skin color or race? Tons of studies have been done to show this. So even though my family hails mostly from the UK and Germany, I'm genetically more similar to Rue than another black girl who resembles her. Or at least, I'm more likely to be more similar. Think about that for a minute.

I'm sorry. That wasn't going anywhere, but I hope you at least got the point. That's it for now. The next post will be happier.

Stay random!