By Kerri Linsenbigler
Features Assignment Editor
In its opening weekend, “The Hunger Games” grossed $155 million, the third highest in North American box-office history, according to a March 26 CNN article. Despite all the hype, the casting choices have garnered negative attention on Twitter. And by negative, I mean racist.
In the movie, three of the characters were played by black actors. Rue (Amandla Stenberg), Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi) and Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) held varying levels of importance to the plot, but the actors all received racist comments via Twitter. Tweets came in after last Friday’s premiere saying things like, “why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie,” “why did the producer make all the good characters black smh” and “Naturally Thresh would be a black man. #NotImpressed,” according to a March 26 Jezebel article.
Um, is this real life?
First off, both Rue and Thresh were described in the novel as having dark brown skin (“The Hunger Games,” page 45). Cinna’s skin color was never specifically described, but does it even really matter? It’s one thing to criticize an actor’s performance, but race has nothing to do with how well he or she played a role. Book-to-movie translations are never 100 percent accurate. However, even if the picture on screen doesn’t match the picture in your head, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong or not worthy of your time.
The blatantly racist remarks about these actors are disgusting. It truly has nothing to do with the movie or their acting ability. If having black actors somehow discredits a movie, then think of all the great movies that would be disregarded. The tweets and the arguments from this group don’t make any sense. I don’t know if anyone’s ever told them, but this is 2012.
This is an issue I don’t think anyone would have been able to foresee in relation to “The Hunger Games.” I doubt any of the producers, writers or casting directors ever thought their choices would cause racial hate. It’s ridiculous these thoughts even came to so many viewers’ minds.
The ignorance of these tweeters is outrageous. According to the same Jezebel article, the majority of the tweeters quoted in their article either shut down their accounts or made them private. I guess they couldn’t think of any other racial slurs to type out. Hopefully they decided to do something worthwhile, like educate themselves on racial equality.
linsenka10@bonaventure.edu
