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Want to Write a Guest Post for Women and ...Guest Post: Trouble in Hollywood - Hunger Games Fans Resort to Racist Tweets
Rue, along with two other favorite characters Cinna and Thresh, were cast as African Americans. Although author of the bestseller Suzanne Collins specifically introduces Rue as having "dark brown skin and eyes," so-called fans took to Twitter to criticize the moviemakers. One fan wrote, "Cinna and Rue weren't suppose[d] to be black. Why did the producer make are all the good characters black?" Another said, "I just pictured darker skin, didn’t really take it all the way to black." Clearly The Hunger Games readers had their own imagery of what "dark brown skin" meant (perhaps they were thinking George Hamilton or Snooki kind-of-dark?) Whatever the case, the comments progressively got more vicious.
Some even went as far to say that Rue being cast as an African American ruined the entire movie. One even said that her skin color depreciated a certain "tragedy." Some of the tweets are so explicit -- we won't write them here -- although most of the tweets are captured on Jezebel—one of the site that originally wrote about the Twitter trending topic.
After gaining national attention, most of the Twitter accounts taking racial stabs at Stenberg are now privatized or deleted.
Although Stenberg took the racial comments with grace stating to US Weekly, "It was an amazing experience; I am proud of the film and my performance," the young Stenberg unfortunately now has a glimpse of the additional obstacles she may face in her career—something that many actresses of color are already aware of.
Viola Davis, 2012 Academy Award nominee for her role in The Help, recently came forth about the struggle it is being an African American woman in the movie industry, "I'm a 46-year-old black woman who really doesn’t look like Halle Berry, and Halle Berry is having a hard time," Davis told US Weekly.
She addressed the fact that African American women are rarely offered lead roles unless it's a representation of stereotypical black life (in her case a maid); cast as a subject of desire; or if the movie is considered to be a "black movie"—meaning 95% of the cast is African American and targets an African American audience. Even the television industry is lacking in African American lead actresses. Jada Pinkett Smith accomplished a tremendous feat landing the lead role in the now cancelled Hawthorne and now Kerry Washington is appearing as the lead role in the new ABC drama Scandal starting next week.
Hopefully Hollywood and non-black audiences will be more accepting of more African American lead actresses in the near future.
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Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031ATgmail.com
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While this scene is a gratuitous and that is something that the writers, producers and Direct have
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tom and jerry games | September 14, 2012 3:03 AM
you can only watch so many episodes of Tom and Jerry on TV, but Tom and Jerry go on all day, 24/7 on the internet in the form of exciting flash games for the whole family. tom and jerry gamesYou can help Jerry pain, round up cheese, or even play ice ball, all online, for free.
blaqbird | April 1, 2012 11:10 PM
Yeah, so let's just ignore this because it's on twitter...and all these problems will go away. Yes, that's exactly how it works. And to Bes, no, this isn't just a "small group of people complaining". Not. At. All. This happens every time an person of color is cast in a way that doesn't seem traditional. Take a look at the controversy surrounding Idris Elba's role in Thor or Lucy Liu's upcoming role as Watson in the Sherlock Holmes series, and then I suggest you research further. Don't dismiss this because everyone you talked to loved the Rue character.
Bes | March 30, 2012 6:00 PM
Katniss isn't blond, she clearly has plain brown hair. Everyone I talked to loved the Rue character in the movie so this must be a really loud and small group of people complaining.
budmid | March 30, 2012 11:19 AM
This should't have gotten all the attention that it did. I mean they're tweets for goodness sake.