Hunger Games actors attacked in racist tweets

[JRCarter]

The Hunger Games' Lenny Kravitz and Amandla Stenberg Attacked in Racist Tweets
Today 6:05 AM PDT by Alexis L. Loinaz

The Hunger Games' young characters battle it out to the death in a brutal televised bloodsport, but several of the film's stars are now at the center of vicious and real-life attacks of their own.

Lenny Kravitz and Amandla Stenberg have come under fire by fans of the book who question why filmmakers cast black actors to play two pivotal roles in the movie.

And based on these fans' shocking tweets, their verbal knives are just as slicing and lethal as the ones wielded by the movie's tributes.

A Hunger Games fan has put together a Tumblr page that collects ignorant tweets from so-called fans of Suzanne Collins' best-selling YA series.

But the page ended up exposing jaw-dropping tweets about the film's casting. Many of them are directed at Stenberg, who plays angelic Rue and whose character is actually described in the book by Collins as having "dark brown skin and eyes."

One person wrote, "why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie."

Another, who also questioned the casting of Kravitz as sympathetic stylist Cinna, tweeted, "cinna and rue werent suppose to be black," before adding, "why did the producer make all the good characters black."

In one particularly horrible tweet, a user—spoiler alert!—didn't regret Rue's demise, saying, "call me racist but when i found out rue was black her death wasn't as sad #ihatemyself."

Many of the accounts have reportedly been deleted, but if these tweeters are, indeed, fans of The Hunger Games, then it looks like the series' message of compassion and emancipation was lost on them.

Read more: http://www.eonline.com/news/hunger_games_lenny_kravitz_amandla/304193#ixzz1qK7ezlMW

[The Griot]

Is anyone really surprised? The only surprising thing is that they were upset about a character that was described with brown skin in the book being black in the movie. What do they think brown skin signifies? I'm not a fan of making previous white characters black. I'd rather have a character be black from the beginning, like Black Panther, Hardware, etc. The 'blackface' thing is appeasement to keep us quiet. It may be heartfelt, but it doesn't change things.

[Hypestyle]

I haven't read the book(s).  How are they responding to the Lenny Kravitz character?

[JLI Jesse]

As was said before, Rue and Thresh were definitely described as being dark skinned.  I know remember if they mentioned what Cinni looked like but I think Lenny actually did a really good job in the movie.  These people are dummies and pretty damn obnoxious. 

[Vic Vega]

As was said before, Rue and Thresh were definitely described as being dark skinned.  I know remember if they mentioned what Cinni looked like but I think Lenny actually did a really good job in the movie.  These people are dummies and pretty damn obnoxious.  

Read the book, haven't seen the movie yet.

According to the author Rue and Thresh were Black.

Some readers have expressed real frustration that white actors were cast in the roles of Katniss and Gale, who they felt were clearly described as biracial in the book. Do you understand or share any of that dismay Suzanne?

SC: They were not particularly intended to be biracial. It is a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There’s been a lot of ethnic mixing. But I think I describe them as having dark hair, grey eyes, and sort of olive skin. You know, we have hair and makeup. But then there are some characters in the book who are more specifically described.

GR: Thresh and Rue.

SC: They’re African-American.

So will those roles go to black actors?

GR: Thresh and Rue will be African-American. It’s a multi-racial culture and the film will reflect that. But I think Suzanne didn’t see a particular ethnicity to Gale and Katniss when she wrote it, and that’s something we’ve talked about a lot. She was very specific about the qualities that these characters have and who they are as people. Having seen Josh and Liam and Jen perform these roles, that’s really the most important thing. They’re very much the characters to us.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/04/07/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-gary-ross-exclusive/

But since they weren't explictly described as Black or African American in the book, readers imagined them as White in thier minds (maybe like dark skinned Greeks or something).

The part I like is when HG fans say a certain scene (don't wanna spoil either the book or the movie yet) is less impactful for them when the chatacter is Black.

That says VOLUMES to me but at the same time doesn't surprise me at all.

[Mastrmynd]

Sad, so sad.
The younger generation has already been poisoned.
When I read, '**** death meant nothing once i found out **** they were black' hurt my soul.