Casting for The Hunger Games has sparked controversy among fans.
A recent Guardian headline sums up the debate around the film adaptation of Suzanne Collin’s futuristic, dystopian novel The Hunger Games, with many fans surprised that some of the characters are, indeed, black.
In the article, ”Why wasn’t the The Hunger Games cast as I imagined in my racist reading?!”, writer Bim Adewunmi highlights a peculiarity in the world of literary fiction. ”In these people’s minds all fictional characters, but especially those set in ‘non-modern’ scenarios, are white.” And you’d be hard-pressed to come up with an argument against it.
Some of the original tweets have been deleted but they have been immortalised on the internet. They include gems like ”Why does Rue have to be black, not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie” and ”Omg thought he was white crying omg wtf this movie will suck”.
The very notion that in the West ”black fiction” — usually by black authors and featuring mainly black casts — is often seen as a category all its own is proof of the fact that, in the fictional world — just as in life — white is the norm and everything else is a novelty.
Adewunmi admits that, even as a black reader, she has fallen into the habit of assuming that characters written by white authors are white, unless otherwise indicated. I asked M&G arts writer Percy Zvomuya whether he agreed with this and he suggested that most readers would assume that an author is writing about their own context.
In contrast, The Hunger Games books, while written by a white author, contains characters that aren’t white. It’s not a detail that is given much clarity aside from their height or the colour of their trousers — and many readers seem to have missed it.
It could be argued that Collins is making an aesthetic choice, assembling a pretty United Colours of Benetton cast that would look good in a film adaptation. It’s certainly a cast that reflects the make-up of society and one could assume that — especially in the film adaptation where these things seem more obvious and significant — the politically incorrect alternative (an all-white cast) would have been criticised.
But the tweets reflecting surprise, even anger, that some of the characters are black, are very revealing.
Firstly, as Adewunmi points out, it reveals that many people really should improve their reading skills. If they had paid more attention to the text, they wouldn’t have been choking on their popcorn when characters with ”dark brown skin” (as described in the book) appeared on their screens. Secondly, they reveal that, to many, film characters can’t be different colours ”just because”. As one tweeter put it, ”Why did the producer make all the good characters black?”. To many, there has to be a reason.
Can’t find a reason? Blame tokenism. It’s something self-aware Hollywood itself regularly ridicules.
The US president can’t look like Morgan Freeman without someone suggesting that it’s an attempt to be politically correct (perhaps Obama’s presidency will change this?). Angry black men? Dignified Hispanic women? Ruthless Japanese villains? The world of film is bursting with characters from minority groups who, whether the filmmakers intended it or not, are given an extra layer of meaning along with their skin tone, regardless of whether or not it influences the plot, or even the characters themselves. And this is as true of evil characters as it is of heroes, if not more so.
Maybe it’s inevitable and criticising the way things are is far easier than actually trying to change anything. The way one visualises the fiction they read is, after all, intensely personal and film is a visual medium where every element is up for scrutiny and interpretation. There can be no accidental choices.
Filmmakers often boast about their medium being a mirror of society and it might seem absurd that constructing an accurate reflection needs to be such a deliberate and occasionally awkward process. But if the responses to the casting of The Hunger Games is anything to go by, that whole process says more about society than any film ever could.
