Racewank, everyone.

[seriousfic]

So, I'm not a huge fan of The Hunger Games, but apparently there's some racewank over the fact that Jennifer Laurence is the frontrunner to play the lead role, who is described in the books as a brunette (her ethnicity not specified) with "olive skin." And some people are calling this whitewashing, since Jennifer Laurence is a fair-skinned blonde.

Now, perhaps I'm slow, but I did a Google Image Search for olive skin and came up with Kim Kardashian, Johnny Depp, and Mila Kunis. So it's a bit of a reach to go straight from olive skin to "clearly she's black!" And even if you want to complain about Laurence not looking exactly like the character in the book, when someone is an Oscar nominee for one of their first roles, I think acting talent would have to supersede "OMG HER EYES ARE NOT THE SAME COLOR AS IN THE BOOK, FUCK THIS SHIT."

Comments

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

It's true enough that 'olive skin' isn't neccesarily a PoC but the character could range from Italian to Middle Eastern, to ... well, a whole host of ancestries and looks. Any of which would be a lovely choice. None of which are generic blonde/blue eyed media stereotype of the month.

There are plenty of excellent actors who are not blonde, WASP types and it would be nice to see them get roles other than side-kicks, comic relief, and designated best friend/cannon fodder.

So, yeah, it does sort of matter, especially since that sort of whitewashing goes on all the time.

ETA: corrected for a misspell.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I could buy the argument if, say, they were casting Megan Fox or some Disney Channel actress, but I think that it's kinda disingenuous to imply that Laurence would/has been cast because she's a blue-eyed blonde and not on talent. Plus, by definition, there aren't that many actresses who can deliver Oscar-caliber performances, especially within that age range.

[iteari.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that while being olive skinned doesn't automatically make you non-white, the fact is that movie casting specifically calls out for just a Caucasian girl when there could have been potential to cast for someone possibly Spanish or Middle Eastern.

And I feel like there is some racial/class undertone to books---Katniss typically looks like the other residents do in "The Seam," an impoverished area populated by coal-miners like her deceased dad. The wealthier merchant class, including Katniss's mom and sister, are generally described with a fairer coloring.

Personally I always thought Katniss had the possibility of being mixed.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

To be fair, if there's meant to be a racial subtext to the books and the only evidence you can find expressing that is one line about having olive skin, then that's on the author.

[angel-gidget.livejournal.com]

Part of the ruckus is that there are two groups of people in District 12-- the place where the character is from. The people from her part are the "olive-skinned" dark-haired types, and the other group, the merchants, are the more caucasian white-bread sort. There's kind of a ghetto-middle class neighborhood sort of tension there, and it's somewhat plot-pointy regarding why she and her main love interest never spoke much till that point. It kind of makes her notably ethnic inside the reader's mind, even if her actual ethnicity is never mentioned. It's not as whacked as hiring--say, Beyonce to play Emma Frost, but it makes for some skeptical faces.

But yes, the complaints do definitely go to ridiculous levels. Funnily enough, I've been watching a lot of sword-and-sandal stuff lately, and I've noticed that they cast a lot of white dudes to play Greeks, and they totally get around it by using gold-ish lighting on their faces so they seem tan. Cheating? Yes. Helpful with suspending disbelief? Also yes.

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Re: Досуг для взрослых

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Epic narratives with minority heroes mostly don't get made (for the purposes of this discussion let's be generous in our definition of minority). If you like minority heroes, especially if you are a minority and don't feel like you get to see heroes that look lik eyou very often, there's always that moment of excitement. "Oh man ,they're going to adapt that book into a movie and it'll be on the big screen with all the FX and the costumes and the so and so being awesome."

And then you find out the role went to Jake Gyllenhaal (not that Prince of Persia was some great story but it is a famous game seriies) or Jennifer Laurence or Noah Ringer and Nicola Peltz. And there's always supposedly a good reason. There will always be justification for going with the white actor. Most actors are white. And, hey, the vast, vast majority of Academy award winning/nominated actors are white too. Most epic movies "about" minorities and their lives somehow still manage to have a white lead as the POV character. Eventually you kind of feel like no one ever feels like there's any value in casting ethnic for the lead. There's always a legit excuse. There's always some high quality white actor.

So...most movies are about white people, starring whites. And on top of that, most movies where there's even the possible/plausible/likely chance of casting minority...still star whites.

I have nothing against Jennifer Laurence whatsoever, but part of the reason why she's so well regarded is that she got a chance to show off her chops in an awesome lead role in the first place, and for minority actors, even when circumstances seem to call for it, those chances seem to get short circuited.


I know I'm talking in circles but it's just kind of frustrating and I'm tired.

Also... I kind of don't think it's fair to require that Suzanne Collins lays the ethnic distinctions on with a trowel like it's a message episode of Star Trek for the ethnic distinctions to be important enough to take seriously as part of the character and the world. Katniss isn't blackitty black black, with two stars on her belly. But she's pointedly not fair skinned, in a world where being fair skinned or not really does mean something.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

And then you find out the role went to Jake Gyllenhaal (not that Prince of Persia was some great story but it is a famous game seriies) or Jennifer Laurence or Noah Ringer and Nicola Peltz. And there's always supposedly a good reason. There will always be justification for going with the white actor. Most actors are white. And, hey, the vast, vast majority of Academy award winning/nominated actors are white too. Most epic movies "about" minorities and their lives somehow still manage to have a white lead as the POV character. Eventually you kind of feel like no one ever feels like there's any value in casting ethnic for the lead. There's always a legit excuse. There's always some high quality white actor.

I think there's a gulf between something like Prince of Persia or Avatar, where characters are expressly PoC, and here, where a character could be a PoC... since, well, most characters can be PoCs. It's not like the real Heimdall is going to sue Marvel for having Idris Elba play him in Thor.

I get the criticism, but I can't help but think it takes away from the seriousness of it when you raise the same fuss about something as trivial as this that you would about Airbender.

Also... I kind of don't think it's fair to require that Suzanne Collins lays the ethnic distinctions on with a trowel like it's a message episode of Star Trek for the ethnic distinctions to be important enough to take seriously as part of the character and the world.

If it's authorial intent that a character is black, and that ethnicity is important enough to form part of the subtext, then fandom shouldn't be debating it. I'm not saying she has to like Tyler Perry movies, but at the very least use a less-vague adjective.

[rap541.livejournal.com]

Well, District 12 is supposed to represent the Appalachian mountains and the coal miners - the point is made in the book that Katniss's people had been coal miners for generations before the rise of Panem. The Appalachian coal mines were traditionally mined by Irish settlers and the description of the miners in the book is that of the "black irish" - dark hair, olive skin, but light eyes.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I think I've been unclear. I don't think Katniss is black. I think Katniss is in a society that pays attention to class and race, and she's mixed race and of a lower social class in a way that's physically visible. It just irritates me that Laurence is almost exactly what Katniss is not in her society.

To re-vastly oversimplify, it's as if you had a book featuring a cat heroine living in a society where cats were clearly at a class disadvantage to dogs. And when they went to cast the movie, instead of casting anyone catlike (in an industry where good roles for cats are pathetically rare to begin with), they cast someone incredibly, specifically doglike. Like, about as doglike as you can get.

It's like, what's the point of even ever creating minority or mixed race or "ethnic" characters if, should they ever become really popular, they'll be erased from the narrative in favor of non-minority casting, in a system where non-minorities already get the vast, vast majority of the lead/hero roles anyway? We'll have the cake. You can have the crumbs...you know what actually, we'll take the crumbs too.

[rap541.livejournal.com]

I understand your point - I just don't think its an established fact that Katniss is mixed race. Based on the book's hints, if she's from the Appalachia coal mining areas, her phsyical description suggests she's just some Euro mix. I don't know that it's fair to call it whitewashing when it can't be definitively established that Katniss is or isn't mixed race.

I'd be more upset if the person cast as Rue is blonde and blue eyed.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Whatever her race is, she's darker in hair, eyes, and skin tone than her (fair skinned, blond haired, blue eyed) mother, and that difference is specifically tied to geographical history and class status in her society (her mother came from a wealthier merchant class than the miners like her father that Katniss resembles). The difference between Katniss (and the other "miner types") and her mother's "type" means something in the books, and I wish the casting reflected that, at all.

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

"Olive" skin makes me think Italian, personally (or some other Mediterranean European).