Hunger Games and the Limits of White Imagination

[MrScorpio]

Olivia Cole
Posted: 11/24/2013 10:49 pm

After watching Hunger Games: Catching Fire this weekend, I was pleased to see that Beetee, the brilliant inventor and electric genius from District 3, was played by none other than Jeffrey Wright. I was also pleased that I didn't hear any muttering in the theater about the fact that Beetee was black. We all remember the disgusting racist backlash when the first installment of the film cast Amandla Stenberg, a young black actress, as Rue (despite the fact that Rue was indeed black in the book). But my pleasure didn't last long. The next day on the bus, I overheard a young woman and her friends -- who had just come from the film, apparently -- exchanging their thoughts about what they had just seen, and the young woman said, "I thought it was awesome. Well, except for Beetee. Why the f*ck did they make him black? Beetee wasn't black."

Folks. Let me tell you something. You might want to sit down, because this could be a shocker for you. Here it is. Are you ready?

The Hunger Games is not real. (Gasp.) I know. Stunning. This dystopian world in which children are sent into an arena to fight to the death is, in fact, fictional, imaginary, fantastical. And you know what that means. That means that the appearances of the characters therein are also not real. That is, they are subject to the imagination of the reader. Katniss is described as "olive-skinned," which can be interpreted semi-loosely, but Beetee? He was merely described as having "ashen skin" and black hair. Lots to play with there. Right? It's a book. He looks different to all of us in our heads.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-cole/catching-fire-beetee-race_b_4334585.html

[unblock]

1. personally, i'm annoyed enough at actors being cast based on superficial features.

good acting is an amazing talent, a great actor can transport the audience to a different place, a different time, and so on.

i've seen far too many movies where they've clearly passed over great actors in favor of someone who simply looked the part.

look the part and read the lines poorly, and the movie falls flat. but tell a story with passion and conviction and i will readily look beyond the visual.

[Number23]

2. Well, we're constantly told that the only way that white people can 'understand' an issue is when

it comes from the white perspective. See Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Glory etc. etc. etc.

That was one of the reasons for 'The Help' which apparently was created to help white women understand how horribly black women have been treated as slaves/servants in this country. The movie had to have a white protagonist, other wise no one white would have understood what was going on.

I mean, isn't that the reason that so many stories where the role of white people was miniscule at best always have to have a white person in the title role????

[Number23]

3. ...

Black men aren't heroes, we learn. Our imagination and subconscious are so saturated with white supremacist notions of goodness, beauty, and heroism, that when confronted head-on with an image of a black man who is brilliant and kind and normal and who saves the day, we transform into robotic versions of ourselves: Does... not... compute. Hero... must be... white.

Hot Damn!

This isn't about staying true to the book. Suzanne Collins was vague (I believe purposefully so) with the descriptions of her characters, so when we say "I didn't picture Rue as black," or "No, Beetee was white," it is not the text that is leading us. We're following a different illogical path of logic, one in which everything we believe about ourselves as white heroes and heroines is being contradicted. The notions taught by patriarchy and white supremacy do not only effect our day-to-day encounters in reality; they shape our imaginations and our expectations, our intangible realities.

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. Unless, or except when ...

the Black hero is that "Magic Negro", of course. And it is more palatable when the "Magic Negro" gives his/her life in the saving of the day.