[Movies] The Hunger Games racist?

[Demonakat]

Why do you keep saying "azn"? :\

i like to type azn more than asian. it's just a quirk.

[OhpUldum]

Few things going on with this.

1) Rue was never mentioned to be white, we've seen this with various quotes from the book.
2) Political correctness has gone overboard in peoples minds
3) Trolls on the internet trolling, this isn't new.

The movie is great as a stand-alone sci fi/ action/ drama even for people who haven't read the books, which is what will make this a success across the board. I personally can't wait until the next one.

[Maruka]

Im so tired of the damn racist card being brought up with everything these days.

pretty much this. how can people even notice that kind of shit?

[Syni]

OH NO! A fictional world fails to meet the political correctness standards of INTERNET BLOGGERS?

*facepalm*

Guys. For reals. It's a movie. The real shame is casting a pale white girl in place of the book's "olive skinned" protagonist. But even that's acceptably within the creative wiggle room of making a movie. Just... stop. Rue was an amazing character.

[dethwulf]

Yes, the premise of this thread seems incredibly stupid to me.

The OP basicly is painting the story into a corner: they would have been better off NOT including black folks, rather than portraying them as the heroine from the poorest district, the villian from a rich district, the little girl from the farming district... Look. The point I think needs to be made to folks: Racism is terrible, but overreaction to everything to the point where you consider everything racism - feeds the frustration and racism increases. It's important to recognize racism when it is there, but its important to CRITICALLY DISCERN when something ISNT racism, and to not call it such. Its like the little boy who cried wolf.

[Selxxa]

Rue was an amazing character.

I don't know, I mean... she had potential, but the movie kind of blew it if you ask me.

Oh look, there's this little girl who's supposed to represent Katniss' little sister, we've seen her for seven minutes and now she's dead, what a tragedy. Let's have a death / memorial scene that lasts longer than her entire lifespan in the movie. Let's put the entire plot progression on hold so we can pick some pretty flowers.

I hoped that finally this would be the scene where Katniss developed some semblance of a personality beyond Mary Sue #2045, the idea I got was that she'd create a trap for the others using Rue as bait. Build a little fire, position Rue in such a way that she appears to be sleeping, then hide in a tree and shoot your enemies as they come to her.

But no, the writer of the movie (or book, by extension) would rather have Katniss remain this paragon of morality who is so likeable that she's utterly unlikeable and unrelatable.

This is getting off track from the OP's topic, but it really bothered me.

(Note: I haven't read the book, I'm just basing this on the film which should be viewed in its own right)

[Neyze]

I am sorry everyone got so worked up over this. I didn't mean to make a big deal about it, I just wanted to point it out and see if I was the only one who thought it was a bit stereotypical. I'm not trying to pull the "racism card" and be an activist about it. Sorry if some of you took it the wrong way, as I see a lot of you have.

Yes, the premise of this thread seems incredibly stupid to me.

The OP basicly is painting the story into a corner: they would have been better off NOT including black folks, rather than portraying them as the heroine from the poorest district, the villian from a rich district, the little girl from the farming district... Look. The point I think needs to be made to folks: Racism is terrible, but overreaction to everything to the point where you consider everything racism - feeds the frustration and racism increases. It's important to recognize racism when it is there, but its important to CRITICALLY DISCERN when something ISNT racism, and to not call it such. Its like the little boy who cried wolf.

See these are the kind of comments I'm talking about. Making a thread to point it out AS WELL AS talking about the twitter comments was most certainly not overreacting in my opinion.

[Markluzz]

In today's society everything is racist....

[Neyze]

I hoped that finally this would be the scene where Katniss developed some semblance of a personality beyond Mary Sue #2045, the idea I got was that she'd create a trap for the others using Rue as bait. Build a little fire, position Rue in such a way that she appears to be sleeping, then hide in a tree and shoot your enemies as they come to her.

I'm not sure she could do that, as those huge flying machine things come and take the bodies away. But I see you haven't read the book, and they didn't really show that in the movie. Still that's a great idea, I would've never thought about that

[Zatheyll]

Well let's consider.

It's a world where the rich people from Capitol assign people to Districts to perform the tasks required to keep them living the high life. It's not a stretch that they'd assign people based on colour or even possibly religeous beliefs. How do we know that the asian kids didn't come from an all Asian district?

The writer was giving people a look at an alternative way of looking at the future and all the retards could say was "Hey look at that district with only black people...RACIST".

It's getting fucking stupid now.

Anyways, wouldn't it be smart of the Capitol to put the ones with the skin color best to withstand the heat in a farming district? Anyways, people can't say "it's the poorest district" there is a reason they are districts. Everyone in the district is a slave, the wealth they do have can be taken at whim, all the districts are "poor".

Anyways, in the books it has been stated Rue and Thresh are black.

I seriously don't get all this, they stand true to the book, and they get yelled at. They have black actors, they get yelled at. If they had only white actors, they would get yelled at.

[Varyk]

Really? another racism thread. Not everything involving black people is racist. Would you have noticed if they filmed it in Malibu and every beach house owner happened to be black? Or is it "okay" if it's projecting something positive? Good fucking grief. If you're automatically resorting to "poor neighborhood=black people" YOU are the one accepting those stereotypes, not the movie.

[Mocha]

This is less a problem with racism then it is about an abhorrent lack of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. While some of the comments were outright racist, many of them were born of the fact that people genuinely didn't understand what they read. I actually find it amusing that most of these posts that were upset about the color of Rue's skin and the demographic of District 11 in the movie were made using the same medium that is probably a huge contributing factor to their lack of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills (although that would be for a completely different topic and debate).

The book was an easy read. It was made for a teenage audience, and is often found in that section of a bookstore (yes, they do still exist). You would need an elementary level reading comprehension at most to understand the book. Now I'm being mean, so I'll give, at most, you probably need a high school level reading comprehension. While you can personalize things when envisioning the book while you read it (I personally made Rue of Italian descent in my head); you would have to completely ignore the words in the book to think she was white.

Given the description of the district and it's location you should be able to understand that it is in what was the south of North America. A place, if you know anything about the world around you, has a high population of black people and agriculture as one of their main economies. What did you think the Capitol did when it first set up Panem? Herd everyone up in a central location and randomly send people to one district or another? They put security measures around the current inhabitants of that area and told them what their purpose in life would be from then on. It's not racist because District 11 has a large population of black people, and that their main economy is agriculture in the book and movie. If you went right now and fenced off a large section of the south, you'd find it fairly similar. More so once you allow for 74+ years of an isolated gene pool for breeding.

My point would be: instead of complaining about something you (and many others) obviously didn't understand or even bother to remotely think about; try spending less time on Facebook, Twitter, and forums and more attention in school and reading books to fix the horrifying lack of basic reading and thinking skills you possess.

[Deleted]

racist lol, when will people stop seing different humans as different races

[Eriaku]

Well district 12 is lower in the pecking order then 11 so why isn't district 12 crawling with black people. On your side note about people think that Rue and Tresh were white. Those are dumb people that haven't even read the book and they deserve to be ignored like all the other ignorant people on facebook/twitter/the internet.

[mickybrighteyes]

Oh come on. It's a poor district with the only black people in the movie, and they're farmers. You can't tell me that just happened by chance.

Apparently someone missed a few scenes in the movie.

[Luko]

Snip

I like this guy. Well worded. Also, I envisioned her as a darker complexion Italian as well. I believe the exact wording in the book was "Olive" skin. Been a bit since I read it through. Definitely not white however. No idea how people are missing this.

[Poppincaps]

Oh come on. It's a poor district with the only black people in the movie, and they're farmers. You can't tell me that just happened by chance.


No, of course the tweets don't make the movie racist. That isn't what I was talking about.

First off before you call me racist I'd like to say that I am black and I am also from Chicago. One thing I learned from living in Chicago is that most of the people in the ghetto are either Black or Mexican. So, by what you are saying... life is racist. The tweets do sicken me though...

[djmitch23]

I personally have not read the book, and just got done seeing the movie. While i did enjoy the film there were some obvious drawbacks. I do see the racism of having the one district of farmers being black, i think most people are missing the bigger picture of the racism. While i do not know if it was the author, or directors plan to keep majority of the districts White! I fail to see how it is even possible for ALL 12 DISTRICTS not to have a mixture of all racist. From Korean, Native American, Arab, Indian, Japanese etc. I am suppose to believe that none of the districts have anyone of color except 11 with only a few white ppl? This is after the fact that after you see the capital of thousands of fans screaming at the tributes, the crowd seemingly appears to be diverse? Again i did not read the book, but give me a break. LIKE IT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE TO MAKE PARTS OF THE MOVIE NOT LIKE BOOKS. more so, if it was a problem, which i am not even sure how it could be one, just to add people from different cultural backgrounds in the districts, the tributes that did not matter but were alive after the initial fight, the mentors, something like that. It was more racist to me that they could put a movie out as tyrannical as watching 24 kids fight to the death and not include all racist among the districts. rather than have 11 districts seemingly all white, and only one black but have a cpl of whites. rather than have a multitude of races in the districts/tributes.