Deeply disappointed by casting fail

[gryphonsegg]

Those of you who know me know that I love the Hunger Games books and that my favorite characters are all the female tributes. (Yes, all of them. Yes, even her. Yes, I've heard that before, and I'd like to see your evidence that you or any male person would behave better-- whatever your definition of better might be--in her situation.) And you know I had problems with the casting for the first movie. I can't help but think the casting problem is even worse for the second movie. I've had time to get used to it, but I just can't get over this. The casting department made Mags white. They made Wiress white. They made Joanna white. Seeder has apparently been cut out of the story altogether, or her role has been cut down so much that nobody even bothered to include her in any promotional materials, even though they did choose to include Cashmere (who, as a "classically beautiful" blonde, is the only female tribute whose casting perfectly matches her book description). And who is the one prominent female character from Catching Fire who gets played by a woman of color? Enobaria. Enobaria, whose book description in no way implies that she is a woman of color, unlike Mags and Seeder and Wiress. Enobaria, the "savage" victor from the district that is most hated in the fandom (hated even more than the Capital by fans who missed the point of "remember who the real enemy is"), whose entire characterization is built on acceptance of her assigned role as a violent and merciless killer, who seems to be going along with what the Capital wants right up until the very end, who has the least sympathetic portrayal of all the female victors, whose most famous accomplishment is tearing out another tribute's throat with her teeth. Yeah, Joanna is not nice either, but her role in the story is much bigger and more complicated than Enobaria's, and the audience gets to see more of Joanna's reasons for being the way she is. I love book!Enobaria as much as the others. She is exactly what the Capital made her. She internalized the values of the Hunger Games so deeply that rebelling didn't even seem worth it to her, perhaps more deeply than the powers that be in the Capital ever intended because her choice at the end demonstrates that her lack of empathy for the other people of the districts also extends to Capital citizens and their children who were supposed to be safe from the brutality of the Hunger Games. She's an interesting figure, if an unpleasant one. But it looks really, really racist to make her alone a woman of color while making all the other named female characters white. And the alteration to her teeth makes that impression even worse-- the movie could have gone with cyberpunk-inspired metallic teeth, but somebody somewhere in the decision-making chain somehow decided that giving her teeth that look like they've just been filed to points was a totally okay thing to do. It just makes it seem like the people in charge of this movie were actively trying to be racist. I normally don't like to attribute to malice what could be simply stupidity, but how did anyone miss the implications of those teeth on the only woman of color in the group?

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