America has exasperated me for the past several weeks with the ongoing coverage and updates on the Trayvon Martin "investigation" and racist campaign bumpers stickers created by Obama non-supporters but I've been trying to bounce back. I try not to let those types of things get me down. Of course, just when I think I can go back to blogging about shoes, bags, and clothes, I come across an article on Jezebel about book fan reactions to The Hunger Games movie. As you all know The Hunger Games movie was released over the weekend. The highly anticipated movie was expected to do well with so many fans of the book written by Suzanne Collins.
The movie did make history by being the 3rd largest grossing movie in box office history ($155 million) but many book fans were disappointed in the casting. More specifically, they were let down that there were so many characters in the movie who were black (namely Rue and Cinna). Wait...what? Nope, you heard me! The Jezebel article has photos of tweets posted by several people who were "disappointed" that Rue was a black girl. One tweeter went so far as to say that Rue's death wasn't as sad after discovering she was black.
This breaks my heart. I've read many books which later were turned into movies. Everyone knows the book is always better because the movie never captures all the details outlined in the book, sometimes it changes the storyline completely. But to be disappointed that the race of the characters weren't what you expected is absurd and straight up racist. It also shows that many did not read the book carefully since the author described Rue as having "dark brown skin". Be sure to read the entire article and view other tweets posted on Jezebel. There is also a The Hunger Games Tumblr (unofficial) page which has many of the comments (positive and negative) from the movie and the book. America has come so far but still has so far to go.
I didn't read the book, so I can't say that I had disappointment as far as the casting goes... But I did think that the movie was 'good', not 'great'. I'd be interested in reading the books for sure. =) xoxo A-
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