lisah, you know I didn't get that. Katniss contrasted herself pretty specifically (skin tone, hair color) with the district 1 & 2 (?) people. So yes, there was a hunger element, but it seemed to me from those two in particular, there seemed to be a skin tone as well.

I thought it was class shorthand too - and why Kat's mother and little sister are blonde but she takes after her father - who was not in the same social class.

From Slate's review of Limitless, emphasis mine:

The guinea pig in this thought experiment is Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), an unkempt, unaccomplished writer with a book deal but no idea how to get past that tricky first sentence. (Director Neil Burger establishes Eddie's writer's block with the standard tableaux—the writer staring at a blank computer screen, the writer enjoying a midday cocktail—and with a more ingenious, more disturbing scene of artistic stagnation: the writer eating a cold pizza crust while perched on the toilet.

OK, if the scenes of Bradley Cooper smugging it up bigtime in the trailer hadn't already put me off seeing the movie (seriously, are we intended to root for DeNiro in this?), that right there would have done the trick.

I saw a clip of a fight scene from it (including Bruce Lee flashbacks) and I'm still pretty sold on it. I vehemently believe that muscle memory is going to play a big part in making you a good fighter, but it posited a decently reasonable "I grokked this from TV." Better than No Ordinary Family ever has.

Katniss contrasted herself pretty specifically (skin tone, hair color) with the district 1 & 2 (?) people. So yes, there was a hunger element, but it seemed to me from those two in particular, there seemed to be a skin tone as well.

Yes, I see where you could read it that way. I think the class difference was emphasized profoundly by whether or not the character was healthy and well-fed looking that I didn't think that the mention of coloring was meant to tell me something about how race was perceived in that society. If that makes any sense?

I think that kind of blond adonis look is pretty typically the "best" in our culture, though....

Oh look what somebody just left lying around - a link to an mp4 download of the never-released-on-DVD Dark Shadows theatrical feature, "House of Dark Shadows" from 1970.

That could be convenient if one only had a device capable of playing back something in the MP4 format.

I didn't think that the mention of coloring was meant to tell me something about how race was perceived in that society

Her blonde sister and mother are supposed to look better off than her, as well as the blond Peeta. I don't think it's an unfair assumption.

Rue and Thresh were pretty much close to the bottom of the barrel, weren't they?

Even though I was thinking about race as I read, I guess I just focused on knowing that the better off ones were privileged because they appeared to be well fed and healthy and so I didn't really read deeper meaning into the descriptions of people's coloring. I'll have to reread!