stopwhitewashing:

stfuandlistenwhitepeople:

Kaxbe: Sure, you edited it some, but you’re still wrong. For example…

first off, katniss is also described in the books as having blue eyes. try finding an actual olive skinned person with blue eyes (let alone one who could act well enough to play katniss), it’s super rare and probably a product of all the inbreeding in the tiny futuristic district where she lives. it was more important that she look like gale and the other people from the seam, so that they could be believably “cousins” later, which would mean that the directors would have needed a whole slew of blue eyed, olive skinned actors, because looking like gale (having that “seam look”) is a seriously important plotpoint in book # 2.

Do you really think it is oh so hard to find olive-skinned actors? It’s not hard to do. There are tons of actors and actresses of varying skin available in the acting pool to choose from, even if they’re not a well-known actor/actress.

Secondly, Katniss’ mother in the book has blonde hair and blue eyes. her sister does, too, and she and katniss have the same father. is it even possible for a blonde haired, blue eyed woman to have sex with an olive skinned, blue eyed man and produce a child that looks like katniss? (deleted that part because it obviously is, i was just being all hissyfit-y and overstate-y to make my point, like a child. what i MEANT was that katniss is at least part “white”, which, i think, makes it acceptable that a white actress is playing her, especially since she dyed her hair and made attempts to look like the description in the book. many races can have olive skin, including “white” people (thinking of my bestie, who is jewish and has “olive” coloring.

Yeah, sure, but DID Jennifer Lawrence actually try to make her skin look “olive”? Did the makeup team actually try to make her look “olive”? Even then it’s problematic. It’s just like when Jackson Rathbone said that he “started tanning” so he could be dark enough to play Sokka in “The Last Airbender”.

the fact is, katniss’ appearance in the books is basically genetically impossible. okay, it’s not impossible, but it’s unusual in our world. in katniss’ futuristic world, where a small amount of families have been inbreeding for hundreds of years, it’s the norm. but we don’t have a huge population of talented actors and actresses that look like that. i think that the movie did a good job staying true to the races of the characters… think of all the people who were pissed that rue and cinna were black! do you know that people were actually saying that having rue played by a black girl made them less sad when she died? did they not even read the book? of COURSE rue is black people fucking suck! anyway, to my knowledge all of the black characters in the book were played by black actors.

THEY GOT THE BLACK PEOPLE RIGHT, SO OBVIOUSLY WE SHOULDN’T BE UPSET THAT KATNISS ISN’T PORTRAYED CORRECTLY. Stupid prat.

i am also deeply grateful to this franchise for popularizing a female hero that is not overly sexualized or obsessed with the men in her life. in a time where women’s rights have somehow become a voting issue again, the girls in our country need a mockingjay of their own, a pop-culture champion who can show them that girls can kick ass just the same as boys, WITHOUT being sexualized and objectified.

Sure, “The Hunger Games” is a great feminist piece with a strong female character. But that does not in any way make the whitewashing of Katniss okay. HOW IS THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND. Also, “halfie”? Seriously?

Kamanitree:

Ok, this is what I don’t get. Why don’t people understand how problematic it is that the casting call ONLY ASKED FOR CUACASIAN WOMEN? Yes, white women can have olive skin, straight black hair and grey (not blue) eyes, but SO CAN WOMEN OF COLOR. But guess what? They were not even given a chance to audition. Maybe if they could not find even one single olive-skinned person who could do a good job playing Katniss, it would be acceptable to try to make someone look like her, but they never even actually tried.

And as far as the argument about her mom and Prim being blond-haired and blue-eyed goes, they both have what’s called the “merchant look” in district 12. We have no idea what her dad looked like. I’m gonna guess he had the “seam look.” Now, mixed children usually fall kinda in the middle when it comes to sharing common features (skin, hair) with their parents, but not always. They can very easily just have one parents features and not much from the other one (example). And another argument that was made was that it’s hard to find olive-skinned people with blue (supposed to be grey) eyes… umm… they can tan a white girl but they can’t have someone wear grey contacts? Are you actually considering that a valid argument here?