This isn’t super-new, but I’m still mulling over this article on the casting call for The Hunger Games movie. The article’s focus is a little scattered, but I do think it makes some good points.
From her physical description – dark hair, olive skin, gray eyes – I’d assumed that Katniss was of an ethnic type that doesn’t exactly match any of the ones currently existing, but I’d pictured her as looking vaguely Latina. After reading the article and thinking about it, though, I could also picture her as a brunette white girl, as she seems to appear in the promotional materials for the novel. Peeta is obviously white – with blond hair and blue eyes and sans albinism, there aren’t really other options. Rue and Thresh are, I think, the only characters whose descriptions make it very clear that they’re people of color (“dark brown skin and eyes”).
I’m anxious about the casting of this movie. Well, I’m anxious about the movie, period, though in an excited, hopeful way. (I am curious, too, about whether the violence will translate well to the screen without being overly horrifying. I mean, there’s disturbing stuff in the books, but nothing so bad that I couldn’t keep reading. Not sure how well I’d react to actually seeing the same scenes.)
But I am going to be MAD if they cast white actors to play Rue and/or Thresh, and I’m also going to be very ticked if Katniss is blonde.
I don’t mean to seem like I’m looking for reasons to be upset. I very much want this movie to be awesome. I will be going to it as soon as it comes out, probably in some sort of costume. (My “Cinna told me to wear this shirt” shirt is a bit worse for the wear, literally, at this point.) So I am . . . cautiously optimistic. Come on, Lionsgate peeps. Do the right thing.
March 8, 2011 at 9:43 pm
Oh boy! Books 2 and 3 of the trilogy are on hold for me and currently “in transit”. I spent all Saturday morning finishing up the first one. I’m kinda stoked for the movie, if it’s decently written and cast right. (Unlike the embarrassing mess that was Avatar: The Last Airbender.)
Katniss probably makes more sense as vaguely Caucasian since her mother and sister are blonde and blue-eyed. Mediterranean might make sense.
I didn’t picture any particular ethnicity for most of the characters. I knew Rue had dark skin (I missed the description of Thresh somehow; I just remembered he was huuuuuge); I think I saw vaguely Indian in my head, but possibly biracial or multiracial. As someone points out in the comments on the article, this is far in the future and racial blending seems likely.