Racism and The Hunger Games

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**Ahtman**

What a strange story. It helps to read the article becuase it shows image captures of the posts described.

Article

Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed

The good news? The Hunger Games made $155 million at the box office its opening weekend, making it the third-best debut in North American box office history. The bad news, however, reflects a level of idiocy that we weren't really expecting.

As CNN reports, "Only Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and The Dark Knight — both sequels, with the strength of a franchise behind each — recorded bigger opening weekends." Plus, unlike those two flicks, Hunger Games was written by a woman and stars a woman (much as we love JK Rowling, her series isn't named after Hermione) — making it a true lady-centric blockbuster franchise.

Now as you may know, Katniss, the main character in the book and film, was described as having "straight black hair" and "olive skin." It's a post-apocalyptic world, so she could be a mix of things, but some pictured a Native American. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jennifer Lawrence won the part and dyed her hair dark.

The rest is difficult to copy and paste becuase of the format but essentially characters described in the books as 'dark skinned' were played by black actors/actress but for some reason people in their head determined they where white and go on to say some pretty despicable things, such as suddenly not caring if the character died becuase now they were black. Another character that never has their race or skin tone described at all is played by Lenny Kravitz, and people threw fits that a black man was playing the part.

All in all a very weird manifestation of ethnocentricism.

**Blitza da warboy**

That's....quite sad, but not surprising. Racism is everywhere, even in the silliest places.

**sebster**

Apparently Lennie Kravitz is really good in it.

Maybe the racist casting crew looked at his name and assumed they were casting a Jew, allowing Mr Kravitz to sneak into the movie?

**Ouze**

I was completely surprised by Lenny Kravitz. I would never have considered him before seeing the movie, and could not consider anyone else after doing so.

**H.B.M.C.**

People never cease to amaze me with their stupidity.

"The girl in the book who was black was black in the movie! OMG how could they???"

Uhh... don't breed...

**KingCracker**

I agree

Soo....dark skin.....what skin tone would that be now? Apparently thats a really tanned white person

Seriously, those posts from twitter they had in the article, brought pains in my head

**Hazardous Harry**

sebster wrote:Apparently Lennie Kravitz is really good in it.

He really is.

The fact that there is some idiocy with people claiming racism is sad, given that it tries to demean what was really, really good acting on his part.

**KingCracker**

Hey, everything boils down to racism man. Welcome to this world

**Hazardous Harry**

KingCracker wrote:Hey, everything boils down to racism man. Welcome to this world

I find this comment to be offensive generalising and racist in the extreme. Class human beings just based the planet we live on, will you?

**Some_Call_Me_Tim?**

People REALLY need to get over issues of skin color in our culture.

_Tim?

**KingCracker**

**Easy E**

This thread is the most interesting thing I have read about The Hunger Games movie.

**Hazardous Harry**

A good song AND on topic. You done good, KC. You done good.

**KingCracker**

*bows*

Its what I do

**Medium of Death**

Just. Wow.

What is wrong with these people?

**KingCracker**

I laughed at the Joe Longly guys comment.....because his picture looks like hes black. But yea, their generation is fething hopeless. It just adds to how much I cannot stand my niece no, as that is her generation, and she is just as fething dumb as these people are showing themselves to be

**Cannerus_The_Unbearable**

Might want to blur the bottom right one for Dakka.

**Manchu**

Please be careful of what you repost. It woould be best not to repost images of posts with racial slurs, even if the point is to criticize the slurmonger. Thanks.

**rubiksnoob**

Wow. . . that is disgusting. And sad.

**purplefood**

Clearly those people didn't read the books or their imagination colours are in negative...

**Morathi's Darkest Sin**

All I can do is roll me eyes at this one. I haven't read the books, but thanks to sites reporting on this I have seen some of what the book had for the description for said chararcters, and yeah, reading fail it seems by a fair few people.

Not that it should really matter, just sad.

**LordofHats**

The weird part is that in the novel Katniss' mother and sister look nothing like her. They both have white skin and blonde hair.

Of course no one noticed that in the Percy Jackson movie the actress who played Annabeth looked nothing like Annabeth did in the book itself.

**Some_Call_Me_Tim?**

LordofHats wrote:The weird part is that in the novel Katniss' mother and sister look nothing like her. They both have white skin and blonde hair.

Of course no one noticed that in the Percy Jackson movie the actress who played Annabeth looked nothing like Annabeth did in the book itself.

AND she was what, 24? They really fethed that whole movie up.

_Tim?

**LordofHats**

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.

**CuddlySquig**

I believe racism is a permanent part of the human condition, not some backwards relic of colonial thinking that will never disappear, ever.

**Ahtman**

CuddlySquig wrote:I believe racism is a permanent part of the human condition, not some backwards relic of colonial thinking that will never disappear, ever.

That sort of misunderstands what racism is, or the fact that a large amount of people aren't racist in an overt fashion. Humans will always categorize things as 'this and not this' but that doesn't rely on race in any capacity, it is just that some people manifest it that way. For others it may be their sports team, or nationalism, or what street you live on. Colonialism just handed us down some things we have to work on, much like Colonialism was a response to an earlier era. Knowing there will probably always be a few people that hate becuase of race doesn't mean we should be apathetic to it or the effects of it.

**Grakmar**

CuddlySquig wrote:I believe racism is a permanent part of the human condition, not some backwards relic of colonial thinking that will never disappear, ever.

It will most certainly have to disappear for a while (even if you do believe humans are inherently racist, which I strongly disagree with).

With humans moving globally becoming much more common, and with interracial marriages becoming less and less unusual, race itself will disappear in a few generations.

Not until we start colonizing the far reaches of space, where people will be cutoff from the rest of humanity for tens of thousands of years at a time, will race be able to re-emerge.

And, of course, that will eventually end when humanity dies out.

**ph34r**

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?

**purplefood**

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...

**LordofHats**

They're specifically described as dark skinned I think. The weirdest one is Rue. How anyone could read Hunger Games, and then be shocked to see a black person playing a character who is "dark skinned" is just plain weird.