After March 23, there were a great deal of "Hunger Games" fans tweeting about the movie. While some were innocent, others were not so. Tweets carrying the words "When I found out Rue was black, her death was lessened" and "Why did Rue have to be black?" were streamed through the series of tubes known as the Internet.
Wow. That's about as much reaction as one can give. In this day and age, there are still racist bigots going around, and with the use of social media, their voices can be heard a thousand times more easily.
However, if the fans read the books before going to the movie, they would have seen the actor was cast correctly. Suzanne Collins states in the book that both the tributes from District Eleven had dark skin. Dark. Skin.
But even if people hadn't read the books, what does it matter what the skin color the character was? Rue was a twelve-year-old little girl forced into a tournament which claimed her life. Yes, she's fictional. Yes, one has the right to express their opinion. But that does not mean one gets to express their thoughts so ignorantly.
What shocked me more was when some fellow moviegoers in the theater I was in when seeing "The Hunger Games" applauded Thresh's brutal and violent death. While they also applauded Cato's equally brutal, violent and gory death and Clove's end, it still shocked and appalled me. Were they really applauding the death of a teenager their age? Yes, they were. " In this day and age, there are still racist bigots going around, and with the use of social media, their voices can be heard a thousand times more easily."
Not for the first time in my life did I wish for a black hole to suck up all of the ignorant people in the world. A world where people don't care about the color of skin and are just as sad when an African-American twelveyear- old dies as when a 21-year- old Caucasian British red-haired twin dies ... well, that's a world I wish to live in. Hopefully it will come to pass before we are forced to compete in our own "Hunger Games."
