After reading the "Hunger Games" trilogy, I've been looking forward to watching the movie. The film has done really well at the box office, but that has been dampered by some people who took to Twitter to voice their displeasure over the casting of the characters Rue, Cinna, and Thresh. These people are upset because the actors are black.
The site Hunger Games Tweets has posted these tweets and they are just upsetting. One girl actually said that the death of the Rue character wasn't as sad once she saw the actress was black. These readers became so attached to Rue and then acted almost betrayed when the actress was introduced.
Were we reading the same book? When author Suzanne Collins desribed Rue as having "dark brown skin", shouldn't that have been a tip off? I keep hoping Collins or the filmmakers will comment on this mess.
I could understand if you maybe "missed" or forgot the description, but to say it ruined the movie experience for you makes no sense. If the character resonated with you, it shouldn't matter whether Rue was black, white, yellow, red or purple.
Some people actually seemed to be confused over the "dark skin" description, imaging pretty much every ethnic group other than African American - or even imagining an individual who is just tan. That just blew my mind. They do know black people aren't literally black, right?
I wanted to post a few more of the tweets Hunger Games Tweets posted, but honestly it's too depressing. I noticed many of the tweeters deleted their accounts or changed their user names after their tweets made sites like Gawker. Maybe they learned something, but probably not. People are disappointing.
