So I just saw The Hunger Games

[giandujakiss]

I haven't read the books. What with all the hype for the movie, I was trying to decide whether to read the books, and then I remembered that, in my experience, people who read the book before seeing the movie are frequently disappointed in the movie, but people who see the movie first and then read the book often enjoy both, so I didn't.

Anyhoo, I have to say, the thing that disturbed the hell out of me more than anything else was -



That Katniss had to put on a romantic show with Peeta for the audience. That's how it was supposed to read, right? That she liked him well enough but her true love was Gale? I found that part way more disturbing than the rest of it. Although honestly, she had more chemistry with Cinna than with anyone else in the movie.

Overall, I was totally entertained and genuinely eager to see what would happen next, but it felt like there was supposed to be more there there than there actually was, which I assume comes from what was taken out of the books. Among other things, I was sort of disappointed that after all of the build up about the importance of sponsors, we barely saw them or their largesse. I assume that the reaction of the audience and the gifts they bestow are a bigger part of the book? I also felt like Katniss should have been forced to commit more ruthless acts - another thing that I suspect may occur more in the book? And of course, the actual hunger part seems to have been removed entirely.

Anyhoo, I gather from FList/DWircle posts that I should read the books, or at least the first one. So I plan to do that.

Comments

[florahart]

I adored the first two books and absolutely HATED the third (I have never been so disappointed in any text in the 38 years I have been reading; I was really looking forward to it and found it infuriatingly awful both in execution and in... themes, I suppose). I'm not sure whether I can get over the casting problem to see the movie (Katniss and Gale are explicitly described as dark-skinned in ways that, like, PoC were like hey a heroine that is one of us, so casting white actors for basically everything? Yeesh.) but I suspect the translation to film, esp for your issue here, is a little problematic because the thing that made the books both great and (for the third) an unmitigated failure (in my opinion) was that the POV is very tightly Katniss's. So you get to see her decision-making in the issue of putting on a show, you get to see her taking in advice from others and making her decision, so ...to explain the contrast is probably spoilery, but at least in the first book, even though she is being manipulated beyond what most people would even be able to tolerate and still function, she still has this autonomy and this voice, and it is HER story, you know?

[kore]

....yeah, apparently Jennifer Lawrence is blowing the roof off with her acting, but....she's really not the Katniss in my head. Katniss sounds like one of those people whose light eyes stand out in high contrast, and Lawrence just doesn't look like that at all, despite the fake tan.

[giandujakiss]

I can't speak to how she's characterized in the book, but I really enjoyed watching her in the movie - she's the best thing in it. (Peeta, by contrast, I think is a casting disaster - he's shockingly bland). I really appreciated that she convinced me of her physical toughness - she totally looks like she could survive in the woods and kick your ass.

[kore]

Yeah, everyone says it's a starmaking performance - maybe she'll get nominated for an Oscar again!

[giandujakiss]

Nah, they don't do that for sci fi.

[katewrites]

Random comment trolling, but he is equally bland in the books. Part of why I found him so offensive is that he's literally the "nice guy" stereotype. And despite living in the same district as Katniss, there is a scene at the end of the book where he's shocked that Katniss wasn't madly in love with him, or that it might have been a show on her part to help them both survive the games.

[giandujakiss]

Well, then it was appropriate casting, then. But it was sort of annoying, to have someone so dull take up so much screen time. And he was so bland it left me sort of clueless as to how, as an audience member, I was supposed to react to him.

[giandujakiss]

Yeah, I remember that casting thing now that you mention it - I'd forgotten about it at the time because Hunger Games was barely on my radar screen. It's so frustrating - on the one hand, I'm really happy to see this massive big budget action movie built around a female character who remains fully and even modestly clothed at all times, I love that it's built on a novel by a woman, I love that it appeals to both male and female audiences (I mean, it's great that Twilight showed studios - again, since they keep forgetting - that films that appeal to women can make money, but it's also good to show them that contrary to popular belief, boys will go to movies about girls). But it sucks that they then have to move two steps back by changing the character's race.

[sapote]

Her race was never explicitly described, and she is from an Appalachian mining town. I was glad that they cast someone from the region. In my part of Appalachia, it would be entirely reasonable for her to be from the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation or to be Latina, but I'm not from a coal region. (I spent a while going through the demographics of West Virginia looking for clues when casting first happened, and West Virginia is about 95% white, with the next biggest minority in coal regions being African American).

Of course, if District 12 encompasses the whole Appalachian Region down to the fall line and people move inland as the sea rises, it's going to be heavily African-American and Latino. (Don't mind me, I'm just worldbuilding in my corner here.)

My impression in looking at the scenes I've seen from her hometown (I haven't seen the movie) is that they seemed to have gone pretty heavily for "dust bowl photograph" in their casting. I think that's an interesting example of how a focus in historical documents on white people means that if you want to spell out a certain historical feel in your casting you go and get, you know, some more white people.

[kore]

I think that's an interesting example of how a focus in historical documents on white people means that if you want to spell out a certain historical feel in your casting you go and get, you know, some more white people.

I think the only descriptors we got of her were olive skin, dark thick hair, and grey eyes -- what made me think she was biracial is it's emphasized how different she looks from her mother and Prim and Peeta, who are all very blonde, and Gale is like "her brother" -- "straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same grey eyes....most of the families who work the mines resemble each other in this way." Her blond mother and sister look "out of place" because her mother worked in "the nicer part of District 12" and left it to marry Katniss's father in the Seam. Peeta has "ashy blond hair that falls in waves over his forehead", blue eyes and a stocky build, but he's from the merchant area -- the Seam is right next to the border with lots of woods and the mines and not much else.

Anyway, I just expected her to look different from Peeta at least, and she doesn't really.

[kore]

It's so frustrating - on the one hand, I'm really happy to see this massive big budget action movie built around a female character who remains fully and even modestly clothed at all times, I love that it's built on a novel by a woman, I love that it appeals to both male and female audiences (I mean, it's great that Twilight showed studios - again, since they keep forgetting - that films that appeal to women can make money, but it's also good to show them that contrary to popular belief, boys will go to movies about girls). But it sucks that they then have to move two steps back by changing the character's race.

So much this, yeah.

[laurajv]

Given the location of 12 (which includes my neck of the woods), I actually kind of assumed that the coloration of a lot of 12's residents was not so much "PoC" as "Italian-Greek-Eastern European-Middle Eastern". We've got quite sizeable populations with those ethnic backgrounds here. It was also -- Prim is blond, so Katniss's father would've had to be white or mixed-race.

Obviously it's not impossible for her to be a PoC; it's just that the textual description (both of the residents and of the location of District 12) made me immediately think of the people who live here now who resemble that description.

[florahart]

True; however, the description was such that PoC were feeling as though this was a heroine who looked like them, and the casting call explicitly excluded actresses of color.

http://www.racebending.com/v4/featured/jennifer-lawrence-cast-as-katniss-in-the-hunger-games/ said:

We believe it’s notable that an actress from Louisville, Kentucky was cast to play a character from Appalachia, particularly considering the negative stereotypes and stigmas that have surrounded that region of the United States. Katniss in The Hunger Games remains one of very few young adult novel protagonists who are from Appalachia and speaks with an Appalachian accent. [Click here for a list of books set in Appalachia.] Whether or not the character will speak with an Appalachian accent in the film is unknown. (We hope so!)

Positive representation of this underrepresented region of the United States is very important. However, we also want to stress that despite prevailing stereotypes that the Appalachia is only comprised of lower income white Americans, the Appalachia is diverse and many different cultural groups have influenced Appalachian culture. For example, the earliest settlers of Appalachia were ancestors to the Cherokee and Iroquois nations; several different Native American tribes would live in the Appalchian region for thousands of years before their forced removal by President Andrew Jackson–The Trail of Tears that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians resisted removal and still live in Appalachia today. Generations of African Americans have worked in the coal mines, directly inspiring and influencing bluegrass and folk music. Appalachian clog dancing was inspired by a blend of traditional Scotch-Irish, Native American, and African American dances. A group of “tri-racial” people known (sometimes pejoratively) as the Melungeons are unique to the Appalachia region. They are believed to be of mixed European, African, and Native American descent, have dark hair and olive skin, and have historically faced discrimination.

When considering the ancestry of the (albeit fictional) District 12, it’s important to remember that Appalachia, like the rest of the United States, has been historically diverse and continues to diversify in the 21st century.

I want to add to this: I am white like a fish's belly, and I was born in Appalachia of parents whose families were coal-miners. I get that white is also common in the region, but it's not the only group there, and given that the book explicitly commented on the dark skin and hair, how Katniss doesn't look like her mother and Prim, how she and Gale are both look more typical of the Seam with their dark complexions, I think the casters could have done better, is all. This is not to say Lawrence isn't great (I don't know; I haven't seen her), nor to say that WV and KY and wherever don't have lots of white people. They do. Just, this was an opportunity for the film-makers, in the wake of the Avatar mess and so forth, to get it right, and they explicitly opted against.

[laurajv]

I...am not saying that there aren't PoC in Appalachia, or that the casters couldn't've done better, or that anyone is wrong to think of Katniss as a PoC. Just that I was mildly *surprised* to learn that some folks thought of Katniss as a PoC, that's all.

I was more surprised to learn that some people thought that Rue *wasn't* a PoC, though maybe I should have been. That one is just flat-out racist-ass failure of reading comprehension.

[laurajv]

"maybe I should have been" -- that should be "shouldn't"