Given the recent hubbub concerning the casting of the film version of The Hunger Games, this seems as good a time as any to honor its protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.
Name: Katniss Everdeen
Why She Rocks: Katniss is a hunter in the dystopian world of Panem, living with her mother and her sister Prim. Every year, Panem holds a competition called The Hunger Games to keep the different districts in line. A girl and boy from each of the twelve districts are thrust into an arena to fight to the death until only one of them is left. In the very beginning of The Hunger Games, Prim’s name is chosen from the drawing. Katniss immediately steps forward and volunteers herself in her sister’s place.
Already, the reader is on her side. How can anyone not root for a character who wants to fight in the place of her sweet little sister? A big sister myself, I gravitated toward Katniss immediately, and I liked her more and more as I read about her.
Being a contestant in The Hunger Games is more about just physical prowess. A tribute also needs to master the public relations aspect of the battle, and this is where Katniss fails miserably. She’s a terrible liar, she speaks her mind, and she comes across as cold. She refuses to play the Capitol’s games. She doesn’t fit into the neat box that the Capitol wants from its tributes. Even though this can cost her some support from the viewers of The Hunger Games, she still won’t completely play their game. This only makes us want to root for her more.
Katniss is not without her flaws, of course. If she were, she’d be a pretty boring heroine. Sometimes her justifiable, righteous anger gets in the way of her thinking about her best interests. She’s a bit clueless when it comes to understanding interpersonal relationships, and really thickheaded when it takes her forever and a day to figure out that Peeta Mellark is head-over-heels in love with her. But she’s admirable, tough, a rebel, and deeply cares about people.
Final thought: Katniss Everdeen is described as olive-skinned with dark hair in the books, with a thin, hungry frame. Suzanne Collins keeps her ethnicity vague, one aspect of the book that I really liked. So, of course, the directors went and cast a blue-eyed blonde after putting out a casting call that SPECIFICALLY asked for white actresses. Fail.
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Agree so much. I also love Katniss, and was also very pissed about the casting – not to diss Jennifer Lawrence, who is a fine actress, but so are lots of non-blonde, non-blue-eyed, even *gasp* non-white people. I wrote about it here: http://gaychristiangeek.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-white-white-white-white-world.html
Great post. This casting is part of a much larger whitewashing problem.
i was really hoping haley steinfeld (from true grit) would get it. there were other unknowns being talked about, and ultimately, that might have been better, but steinfeld would have been a better fit on the whole, i think.
They should have looked for a generic olive skinned of any race including caucasian and Katniss’s mother is blond, however I would never describe Jennifer Lawrence as olive skinned. Her race is quite ambiguous, you’d have to ask the author. My bigger issue is Katniss refers to herself as not very big repeatedly. I would guess someone of no more than 5’5″ if that and they cast someone who seems fairly tall. Then cast someone the same height as her to play the strong and broad shouldered Peeta (compared to 6’4″ Helmsworth/Gale). I read all three books and while I liked Katniss at times found her indecisive, self-pitying, clueless thickheadedness not to mention at times being completely wreckless somewhat trying – always looking at the trees and never the forest. Her character showed no growth in the story, she is the same in the beginning as the end just tormented.
Yeah, I feel like the casting of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss could work OR the casting of Josh Hutcherson as Peeta could work, but the two of them together makes me think she looks like his several years-older sister, and that’s the opposite vibe you want from them.
I understand your POV about Katniss, too. She can be infuriating in that way.
I am a Hispanic woman with olive skin and black hair. When I am reading the book I imagine Katniss looks like Jennifer Lopez or Salma Hayek. Katniss looks like her dad. She has olive skin with black hair. Prim looks blonde like her mother.
I pictured Katniss as more olive-skinned white, but that’s my white privilege speaking, and there’s enough ambiguity in her description that I could just as easily see her played by a Hispanic actress. It’s too bad women of color were excluded from the casting process. I think Jennifer Lawrence did a great job, but others should have at least had a chance to try.