Why the Rue controversy was so stupid.

Catching Fire, the highly anticipated sequel to the first Katniss flavored YA Action film is coming out this week. Come Friday we may be chillin' with our large extra butter popcorn, and mammoth size drink (the one that will make us have to piss a river before the second act), but we should take a quick look back. 

The first film was cloaked in a puff of sparkles that is Jennifer Lawrence, the spirit animal for ''chicks who keep it real'' everywhere. The burping, self-deprecating, candid actress won everyone's heart as a more tan version of herself in the first installment. But, there was a special brand of fool who roared with the fire of a Bizarro Katy Perry, they were angry, pissed, disappointed, confused...that *gasp* a movie from a beloved book series could have the unthinkable, a doe eyed girl of color as one of it's best plot devices. Rue, was black. And OMG, so was Cinna, and Thresh the other tribute from Rue's district. Be-still our thunderstruck hearts.

In this whole thing, I don't know which brand of ignorant is more idiotic or offensive: The idea that being pissed about the ''good characters'' being black could not possibly make one a slave to ingrown prejudice, OR the fact that clearly all those people couldn't read. The book defines Rue as having some color. I don't have much to say here, but I really want people to check their issues before this weekend. I just want to enjoy the movie, and not have a sea of tweeted nonsense to greet me the next day. I hear Katniss' wedding dress is gorgeous. But it's white. Idk. It's kinda gonna ruin the movie for me. (See how dumb that sounds, want to see the foolery in full? go here, here, and here.) 

The target market of this film, in their faux-belligerence against character mis-representation, showed us just how hard old habits die. I shudder at the societal implications. Please remember that ''isms'' are so hard to get rid of because ''nice people'' do them, not just the Skinheads, or the Klan, or the homophobes, or the chauvanists. It also comes from grandpas who fix cars, grandmas who bake cookies, moms who take their kids to soccer, dads who coach the football, teens who hang at malls buying lattes and uggs. The fact is that most of the people who were on twitter lamenting about the little ''nigger,'' and about Lenny Kravitz (whose fineness and badassery one should never lament), are under the age of 30. Sort of guts the hope that we might live in a world where color isn't a big deal, and where value isn't a question of melanin, doesn't it? 

It's clear that there is a strong message about classism and a critique of society, in these stories. I personally feel that these reality competitions are the non-dystopian cousins of The Hunger Games. I don't even mean that as negatively as it sounds, because I tried out for The Glee Project twice. I'm not above it. I do mean it as an observation of how we create valuation lotteries. The real world is kinda shitty sometimes, especially the part where people who work hard enough can naturally progress up the ladder. If some people's ladders start in a cavernous hole, it impacts the results. That discussion was clearly present in this story, much like how Planet of The Apes makes similar editorial comments about the way we do things. So people can recognize a message. That's not a problem. The irony is, because the one of the messengers didn't fit their imagining of events, the lessons were lost on them before the last credits rolled up the screen.