Putting the Black Swan Blackout in Context:

Sarah Lane, whose heavenly dancing helped make Natalie Portman believable as the ballerina Nina Sayers—thanks to face replacement—was not acknowledged by Portman at the Oscars. Not only that, but Lane was suddenly deleted from a video showing Black Swan’s special effects that was circulating on the web.

Lane said...a Fox Searchlight producer had already called to ask her to stop giving interviews until after the Oscars. “They were trying to create this façade that she had become a ballerina in a year and a half," she said. "So I knew they didn’t want to publicize anything about me.”

I believed the lie!

From an interview on EW

In the books, Katniss is described as being olive-skinned, dark-haired, possibly biracial. Did you discuss with Suzanne the implications of casting a blonde, caucasian girl?

Suzanne and I talked about that as well. There are certain things that are very clear in the book. Rue is African-American. Thresh is African-American. Suzanne had no issues with Jen playing the role. And she thought there was a tremendous amount of flexibility. It wasn’t doctrine to her. Jen will have dark hair in the role, but that’s something movies can easily achieve. [Laughs] I promise all the avid fans of The Hunger Games that we can easily deal with Jennifer’s hair color.

Ahahah. Ahah. Yes. Because what I was really fucking worried about was whether or not you could dye her hair. Not that she's fucking Caucasian.

I believed the lie!

I can't believe I fell for it at all. I know better than to think that that level of ballet is achievable in that time, even training as hard as she may have - I just didn't think they'd go to that level of dissembling about it.

Liese, oy. I haven't even read the books in question, but I'm @@. Looks like Racebending is on it, and the rest of the media is even picking it up. [link] I can't believe they specified white actors only; I know that's standard practice unless the character is explicitly another race, but Hunger Games seems like the perfect opportunity to widen it out a little.

Yeah, I mean, as a white person (privilege!), it didn't occur to me that Katniss wasn't white, but I would have been more surprised to see her as a peaches-and-cream blonde girl than as Native, or Asian, or basically anything that would get to the really specific description in the text.

As a black person, someone with olive skin, straight hair, grey eyes, and a blonde mother and sister that's not specified as a different race is always going to read white to me. I'm really not up in arms about it.

*Maybe* she's biracial, but most likely to me she's white.

*Maybe* she's biracial, but most likely to me she's white.

Yeah, I'd describe three of my siblings as olive-skinned, and I'm the whitest white boy in Whitetown (albeit more a comment on my dancing than my complexion). I saw Katniss' racial background as a pretty diverse set of options than anything definitive.

The casting still feels somewhat wrong to me. I think it's because I have a hard time seeing someone who looks like they'd fit in the cast of Pretty Little Liars as experiencing the level of oppression in that book. (On which note, I just read it a month or two ago, and how messed up was it when they come under attack from the grotesque transformations of their slain competitors? )

Not that I've seen Winter's Bone, so maybe that's unfair to Ms Lawrence.

I think that if the casting specified white actresses only, that's pretty bad, though. Even if Lawrence is more than qualified for the role, the fact that they wouldn't consider someone biracial or Latina or whatever is a real strike against the producers.

I truly wish they'd have to justify Caucasian every time they used it. They just had a casting call for a new character on Fringe, and lo! Caucasian. A show with a regular black character, a regular bi-racial, and a formerly regular Latino guy. Did they cast those by mistake? On purpose? What was that?

Just because I think of Katniss as white (and would *laugh* if they cast anyone whose hair obviously needed straightening) doesn't mean they can't make it work with something else. I just don't consider it whitewashing, since the character seemed written as white, just that she can be played a different way.

billytea,

I flipped out at that part of the book. FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT. And the fact that the issue (in various incarnations) keeps coming up in the trilogy makes it even more disturbing and awful.

BTW, I did not know that Rue and Thresh were African American. Damn. As if all my buttons weren't pushed by the story anyway, this is going to fuck me up on screen.

Note that I've seen Winter's Bone, so maybe that's unfair to Ms Lawrence.

You mean you haven't seen it? Because she played oppressed very well in that.

I truly wish they'd have to justify Caucasian every time they used it.

yeah. There's really no reason that any of the characters in Hunger Games couldn't be any race. There's nothing in the story where race comes into play, unless I totally misread (like Jesse says, privilege!)or am misremembering. So many options to cast good people without regard to race.