This is just ... horrifying

[sholio]

Okay, so fans always complain about the casting when their favorite book gets made into a movie.

But the Twitter quotes in this article are an order of magnitude beyond regular, disgruntled fannish griping. They're AWFUL. And they're a really specific kind of awful.

Basically when they discovered that the character Rue in the Hunger Games movie was portrayed by a black actress -- not a big surprise, seeing how she's black in the books -- certain elements of the fandom flipped their nut in a really ugly way.

These are people saying, flat-out, in so many words, "when I found out Rue was black, her death wasn't as sad". <-- DIRECT QUOTE, YOU GUYS, DIRECT QUOTE. WHAT.

These are people who are so completely gone in the humanity department that they will, in public, call a 13-year-old actress a "black bitch" and a "nigger". Just for existing on their screen.

All of this on Twitter.

There is a part of me that really wants to believe most of these people are just shit-stirring, that they say these stupid, fucked-up things more because they want to get a reaction than because they actually believe what they're saying. Maybe, I guess, because I don't want to believe the world is that awful.

But, as the person who runs the Tumblr collecting the quotes says:

There are MAJOR TIE-INS to these reactions and the injustices that we see around the world today. I don't even need to spell it out because I know that you're all a smart bunch.

This is a BIG problem. Think of all the murdered children. Think of all the missing children that get NO SCREEN TIME on the news.

It is NOT a coincidence.

It's hard to disagree, y'know? There are people who without a trace of irony and under their real, legal names will come right out and say that someone's death means less because they're black. (Here. Now. In 2012.) And yeah, Rue is a fictional character, but this attitude -- some people's lives are worth less, some people's suffering is worth less -- doesn't come out of nowhere, and is why things happen like Trayvon Martin's murder (in which an armed adult pursued and shot an unarmed teenager who was walking home, and the police initially failed to investigate or even to inform the family of their son's death).

Comments

[scrollgirl]

Yeah, I think the racist crap started as soon as Rue's casting became public. I haven't read the books or seen the movie, but that doesn't even matter--there's a real live kid actress playing this character and people are hating her for being black. It's sick.

[sholio]

Yes, this, exactly. I'm not familiar with the books and I hadn't really paid attention until someone on Facebook linked to this article. But ... people just horrify me sometimes.

[nonniemous]

WTF?

Wow. That's just cold, and scary.

[sholio]

It amazes me, the things people will think and say.

[torachan]

It is frightening. And you know, a lot of these people (probably most) will still insist they aren't racist. The disconnect is just mind-boggling.

[sholio]

Yeah, to quote/paraphrase from some of the discussion in the comments to this post over on LJ, I don't really believe in evil people (in certain extreme examples, I guess, but not most everyday ones), but I certainly believe in evil acts, and I think that people are often unwilling to realize they've done something bad or wrong because they don't want to think of themselves as a bad person. Sort of like the racist person vs. racist act distinction (if it really is a meaningful distinction -- personally I think that it is, but I think you could also make a case otherwise).

[torachan]

I think there can be a distinction, but saying black children can't be innocent or that you can't feel sad about the death of a black child is to me firmly in the "racist person" camp.

[sholio]

Oh yes, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. This is completely over the line from "dude, maybe you have some unexamined privilege there" and straight into "horribly racist".

[zillah975]

The world becomes more horrifying every day. Sometimes I think the only thing to do is to keep pointing at this shit and calling it out. Saying "This shit is WRONG and HORRIBLE and INHUMAN, and WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?"

[sholio]

I think my only point of disagreement here is that I don't actually think the world is getting worse. It's just that the horrible stuff is more accessible and widely disseminated than it used to be in the pre-Internet days. But yeah, I don't really know what else to do except point and say THIS IS NOT OKAY.

[zillah975]

That is a very good point. Agreed.

And yeah. *clings to you*