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I have not seen/read the Hunger Games, but those comments are a little sickening.

purplefood wrote:

ph34r wrote:So there are characters whose race is not described at all.

And a majority of people imagine them as being white.

And then they are not cast as white.

And people are upset that they do not look as they pictured in the books.

And people call this racist?

The characters people are complaining about are described as black...

I was just basing my post off the "Another character that never has their race or skin tone described at all is played by Lenny Kravitz" quote from the first post.

Bear in mind I have neither read the book nor watched the movie, I'm just trying to understand why people are upset.

I think people give white people far too little credit some times, and leap to assumptions that they are upset because something is of a particular race, rather than being upset that something does not match their imagination.

Being upset isn't necessarily what makes it racist, but statements like "now that she is black I don't care that she dies" does. When you care that a white girl dies, but couldn't give two gaks that a black girl dies, and the deciding factor is race, that is racism.

ph34r wrote:

purplefood wrote:

ph34r wrote:So there are characters whose race is not described at all.

And a majority of people imagine them as being white.

And then they are not cast as white.

And people are upset that they do not look as they pictured in the books.

And people call this racist?

The characters people are complaining about are described as black...

I was just basing my post off the "Another character that never has their race or skin tone described at all is played by Lenny Kravitz" quote from the first post.

Bear in mind I have neither read the book nor watched the movie, I'm just trying to understand why people are upset.

I think people give white people far too little credit some times, and leap to assumptions that they are upset because something is of a particular race, rather than being upset that something does not match their imagination.

AFAIK Lenny Kravitz's character wasn't described to that extent...
At that point it doesn't matter but Rue (described as dark skinned) is who people are complaining about and they are not doing it sensitively...

Ahtman wrote:Being upset isn't necessarily what makes it racist, but statements like "now that she is black I don't care that she dies" does. When you care that a white girl dies, but couldn't give two gaks that a black girl dies, and the deciding factor is race, that is racism.

I agree with this post.

When I pictured the characters while reading the book, Thresh was always black in my mind. I don't know why but I thought Rue was more latino (wierd, seeing they come from the same district).

When she died in the movie it wasn't as emotional for me simply because she wasn't given enough screen time or dialouge to properly connect to her character as there was in the book, not that her skin colour clashed with my mental image of the character.

Also, spoilers.

Sounds about the same as Heimdal being black in Thor. Only problem I had with him was that he only kicked two Giant's asses.

People are stupid, what can you do?

LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't say that. These are the things that happen in movies adapted from books. The chances of finding an actress a team can work with, in the right age group, the right style? That's hard enough. Demanding that the actress look exactly like the character is taking it to a point of absurdity.

There are also some good reasons to age up main characters in terms of making a movie more marketable.

The 24 year old girl that played Annabeth was pretty good looking. The hypothetical 12 year old (more likely 15-16 year old) girl would be 12.

Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:People REALLY need to get over issues of skin color in our culture.

_Tim?

The problem here is that the request by priviledged parties to 'get over issues of skin colour' is really just a request for disadvantaged groups to put up with the disadvantages they continue to suffer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dogma wrote:There are also some good reasons to age up main characters in terms of making a movie more marketable.

The 24 year old girl that played Annabeth was pretty good looking. The hypothetical 12 year old (more likely 15-16 year old) girl would be 12.

There are also limits on the amount of time you can get a minor to work. And the talent pool for minors is a lot shallower than it is for 20 somethings.

Slarg232 wrote:People are stupid, what can you do?

QFT

Also, yes, I admit that sometimes, my generation does sicken me. I hope that I never sink to the level of some of these people. However, it kind of scares me that I wasn't even that shocked to read the article.