posted by Winston Smith at
7:36 PM
Monday, March 26, 2012
Previous Posts
- Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind Or: Nonsense Ab...
- Congratulations Kansas Jayhawks! Fantastic game! ...
- CAROLINA-KANSAS!!!!!! This is the absolute best h...
- Carolina-Kansas, Final Eight These are my two fav...
- Obamaville! Santorum's Alternate Reality LOOOOL ...
- Carolina Without Marshall sigh We are in big tr...
- Congratulations to the Mighty Bobcats of Ohio Fan...
- Jay Bilas on College Hoops and the Sweet Sixteen ...
- Vernor Vinge and the Fall of Civilization Link D...
- "Dean Smith Is The Tie That Binds KU and North Car...
Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]
5 Comments:
Yeah, the books sites on my RSS feed were talking about that as soon as the first still were launched, months ago.
I seriously want to shake these people and go WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
Seriously. I can't put my finger on it, but something about this stuff--despite its relative triviality--struck me as some kind of unusually pure essence of racism. Compared to the Treyvon Martin incident, it's obviously nothing. But it just seems so...again...*pure.*
The very idea that it would matter so much to someone whether a character was black or white...that would be stunning enough to me. But *it ruined the whole movie*???? Whaaaaa??? I...just can barely even process this.
And to top it all off, the book makes the race of the characters clear! I even happen to remember that bit, and liked the fact that they were described as having "dark brown skin" or whatever, indicating that it's just a normal variation of degree of a normal human trait, rather than a whole different category ("he was BLACK!" See? BLACK!)
Weird, weird, weird, WEIRD.
Funny how some relatively small-seeming thing like this can so clearly demonstrate huge differences between people.
What's even more annoying is that they cast an actress who didn't match Katniss' physical description, but most people were OK with that.
Some people thought native American, but being from Appalachia myself, I'd imagined the Italian amalgam that's common in northern West (by God) Virginia. Regardless, at least they dyed the actress' hair brown and didn't make Katniss a blonde.
So I never read the book so going into the movie I had no preconceived idea about what anyone looked like (or heck even who they were). Until I saw this post I never gave the race of any of the characters a second thought. I saw Rue as a sweet/cute little girl who was like all of the children thrown into a crappy situation, but unlike most of them she kept her humanity.
I honestly don't know what to make of this or the Treyvon Martin incident. I am not naive enough to think that racism is gone in this day and age but I had hoped and felt that we had moved away from the point where it so widespread and was acceptable to put so far out in the open. Even the KKK wear masks to hide who they really are. The internet brings out the crazies for sure.
The question I am left pondering is where do do we go from here, how do we combat racism and intolerance? Reasoning works for many people but for some all the logic in the world can't convince them that on a fundamental level we are all the same and all have basic rights, call them "Natural rights", "God given rights", or whatever you want but they are a part of our basic humanity and make us all equal. For those that cannot see this despite well reasoned explanations what do we do? Any action that would significantly curb their impact on society would have the effect of marginalizing them in the same way that we currently rail against them for attempting to marginalize those who are unlike them. It just leaves me with a dim view of society and makes me worry about the future.
E,
I feel ya, man. I wish I had an answer. It's such a bizarre thing.
But things seem to me to be SO MUCH BETTER now than when I was a kid. Perhaps patience is the ticket here. Big progress has been made in the U.S. since, say, the end of WWII. We're a much more moral and just country than we used to be. On the bright side, these morons were held up to very public ridicule.
At least the general thrust of these things seems--to me anyway--to have gone in basically the right direction in the last half-century or so.
Does that seem true or false?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home