always-tete:
COLLINS: It is a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There’s been a lot of ethnic mixing. But I think I describe them as having dark hair, grey eyes, and sort of olive skin. You know, we have hair and makeup.
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Can we just talk about the “Panem is supposed to be ethnically mixed but we’re going to use hair and makeup to fake it because we’re so resistant to casting POC” remark? How messed up is that?
Despite the claims that there was ethnic mixing, District 12 in the film was clearly very, very white. They threw in, like, one black person for every 30 white people you saw in the background, and there was nearly always a couple of black people in every Capitol crowd shot so that the filmmakers could be, like, “See?? We’re not racist! We may not trust a POC to be the main character, but we trust them enough to put them in the crowd and cheer.”
And apparently, no brown people exist in Panem, since it was portrayed as very white with some black. But this seems to be Gary Ross’ idea of a multi-racial culture, which is possibly the scariest thing of all.
The thing about this whole uproar is that the focus is on completely the wrong issues. Is Hollywood bad about generating multiracial casts? Yes. Is this the best, or even a good example of that failure? No. Everyone is getting worked up about the tiniest issues when it comes to the Hunger Games, because of all the hype. But TV and movies all over are displaying this same problem, and to a far worse extent. And by freaking out over the supposed “error” in casting with Katniss (and District 12) anti-racism crusaders are yet again putting their feet in their mouths in the name of justified anger. Here’s the thing: although Suzanne Collins might have been insensitive with her comment about hair and makeup, her comment about racial blending is relevant. Time has passed, but Collins makes a point of the geographic locations of the districts, and District 12 is supposed to be located in Appalachia. Appalachia, present day, is almost entirely white. Probably one of the few places where, even if the population mixed for centuries, would still stay primarily white. Because the Districts are so separated from one another, it makes sense for Katniss and her district to be white, or the future equivalent. In District 12, the issue isn’t disparity between races, it’s the disparity within a race, which is also an extremely relevant issue today. District 11, however, is probably in an area that would presently have a large African American population, hence Rue and Thresh (and the majority of their district) having brown skin. And although the movie might have done a poor job of representing different races (although I would argue that compared to most media now, it did a remarkably good job of following the cues for race given in the book) the movie followed the descriptions and logical assumptions about the characters.
The Hunger Games is not a story about race. Race is part of it, but it goes deeper than that. The Hunger Games is a story about oppression, within races and between them. And it is also a story about how the media and entertainment industry have rendered our society apathetic and unwilling to take responsibility for our rights and our lives. The fact that casting in Hollywood is fucked up is not the issue, it is a symptom of the issue, which is that we let the entertainment industry control the way we think about all kinds of issues, including race. Why is the casting of the movie the issue inducing rage? Shouldn’t the issue be that a book about the crazy nature of the entertainment industry’s power to control us has been made into an intensely hyped movie that has broken box office records?
I’m sad that people looking for an issue they can rant about on the internet (rather than do anything about their supposed activism) have zeroed in on this issue and have completely eclipsed the real message of this great series. And taking out ignorance on an author who is being represented by one statement, probably one made in response to a bunch of belligerent comments that no doubt pissed her off, is pathetic. Congratulations to everyone who has made the books about race: you have limited their scope and completely missed the point.
(via bigbardas)
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always-tete
