NEWS FLASH: In the future, we may not all be white!
The cast for the movie of The Hunger Games has been known for a while, but a certain segment of the fandom is having a hard time coming to terms with something about it: Namely, that Rue and Thresh, both described in the book as dark-skinned, will be played by African-American actors. Worse, so will Cinna, whose ethnicity isn't mentioned, and therefore must be white.

Hunger Games Tweets has been keeping its eye on some of the worse elements. Warning: Some extremely vile, racist language. Did you know that sweet, innocent girls must always be pale and fair-haired? And gay men can't be black? I'm telling you, it's an education.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go vomit.

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isaiddietpepsi
2012-03-13 04:17 pm UTC (link)

The casting process was still fucked up, though, because at the very least Katniss is meant to be racially ambiguous (and yet I've come across so many idiots insisting that, yes, she's explicitly white in the books....no, no she's not). Even Suzanne Collins has said as much. And yet the casting call only asked for white girls. So it wasn't a definite case of whitewashing, but it was still gross. Collins defended/handwaved the whole thing, but that was just her showing her ass as a clueless white woman.

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	kita0610 2012-03-23 03:57 am UTC (link)
	Wait...calling for only white girls is pretty much the definition of whitewashing, isn't it? What'd I miss?? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	isaiddietpepsi 2012-03-24 01:33 am UTC (link)
	Whitewashing to me is when you take a character who is POC and turn them white. It's never clearly established that Katniss is POC - her race is left ambiguous and one can make arguments either way - so this doesn't technically fall under the whitewashing banner IMO. It's still majorly fucked up, though, don't get me wrong. (Reply to this)(Parent)

isaiddietpepsi
2012-03-24 01:39 am UTC (link)

Of course, I think that even if Katniss had been POC, the studio would have tried to whitewash her anyway. So it's mainly just semantics. I don't like using the whitewashing label here because then you get idiots trying to derail by saying it isn't whitewashing because Katniss isn't POC (which is technically true, but they act like that means there isn't a problem at all). So consider it a preemptive strike!

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