I'm interested in this Katniss debate. I took some time to look into it (I assumed she was white, but I also read the books after seeing the movie so I probably didn't think about it). She is described as Black Haired and Olive skinned. Olive is used to describe Italians usually, and sometimes French or Greeks. (So I usually think Mediterranean). Her Mom is described as straight up white. (I can't find/remember Dad). She she is either Mediterranean heritage or mixed race. Am I wrong?
You know, usually when I get questions like this, Iâm kind of mean to the person, but given the mountain of nonsense Iâve had to climb on tumblr today, this is actually a pretty good message. I like that, even though you, by your own admission, assumed Katniss was white as a result of the movie, youâre willing to both admit and investigate the possibility that you might be wrong. I respect that, seriously. Itâs something there isnât enough of on tumblr, and Iâm really glad youâre seeking out other opinions and sources of information, and even if you donât end up agreeing with me, Iâm glad youâre willing to consider my points from a place of learning, rather than a place of argument. I apologize if my tone in this response seems angry or frustrated, but as you may have seen, Iâve had something of an angry, frustrating day, and this is a subject Iâm particularly passionate about, but any frustration isnât directed at you, itâs mostly directed at Lionsgate Films, some parts of the Hunger Games fandom, and society in general.
Katnissâ mother was white. Her father was Seam, an oppressed ethnic group that does not exist in our world. Olive skin means you have green and gold undertones in your skin, and is a feature that is can exist in any race. For example, in my head right now, I know a Puerto Rican woman who has olive skin, an Indian man who has olive skin, a Green man who has olive skin, a Filipino woman and a Filipino man who both have olive skin, an entire Moroccan family that has olive skin, a black man who has olive skin, several Colombian people who have olive skin, and thatâs literally just the people I thought of off the top of my head.
The status of being white isnât just decided by having white skin, nor by descending from Europeans. Lots of Asian people have white skin, but are not considered white, and lots of people of color have European ancestors. Whiteness is an umbrella term that covers people to whom society gives white privilege. What was âwhiteâ 100 years ago is not the same as whatâs âwhiteâ today.
My grandfather, for example. He was Italian (specifically Sicilian) and in his youth, had olive skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. He was born in 1919, died in 2005. When he was born, he wasnât white. When he died, he was. He didnât change, the umbrella of white privilege just expanded to include Italian people.
(Fun fact: my grandfather grew up in one of the coal mining towns District 12 was based on, where Italian and Greek immigrants, who were not considered white at the time, were the miners and the wealthier German and Anglo residents were the merchants)
âSeamâ is an ethnic minority group, sharing many physical attributes (hair, eye, and skin color), culture, and is discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity. The seam people are forced to work the more difficult, lower-paying jobs, have higher frequency of poverty and starvation, and are more often tributes in the games, because their poverty forces them to take out tesserae. Thereâs also significant prejudice and hate thrown their way on the basis of their ethnicity. Just look at the way Peetaâs mother talks about âseam kids.â Go back and replace âseamâ with âhoodâ and it becomes immediately clear that what sheâs saying is incredibly racist. Katniss even describes the way people in the seam look, then contrasts it against the white merchants, and comments on the fact that people seem to like Prim better (even though Katniss shares all of Primâs good character traits, thanks to V Arrow for bringing that part to my attention).
So based on the structure of Panem society, the fact that Katniss is a member of a discriminated-against ethnic group means sheâs not white, no matter where her distant ancestors hail from. Whatever race Katniss would be in our world, in her world, she is a woman of color.
So when youâre showing a cinematic version of Katniss, for example, if you cast someone whoâs white in our world, then the fact that sheâs a woman of color in her world doesnât read with the audience because we donât live in Panem, and âwhiteâ to us isnât necessarily the same as âwhiteâ to Panem. So when youâre casting Katniss, you should cast an actress whoâs a woman of color in our world, because if you cast a white woman, then the fact that sheâs a woman of color in her world is completely lost on audiences who live on modern earth and not in Panem.
And youâre right, Katniss is multiracial, as is Prim (unless you subscribe to Vâs comprehensive Prim theory, which I personally do not, but I respect how solid it is). However, Katniss described Seeder as having a lot of features in common with herself, going as far as to say the only thing about Seeder that she didnât share with people from the Seam is her eye color. You may remember that after so many Hunger Games fans went off on racist rants because Rue was cast as black, Suzanne Collins had to come out and confirm that the District 11 tributes in the series were black. In fact, itâs one of the few whitewashing opportunities that the Hunger Games film franchise opted not to take. This is the woman who plays Seeder in Catching Fire:
(Incidentally, Maria Howell, the actress pictured
So thatâs the thing, Katniss is supposed to be a multiracial woman who has the same skin tone as a black woman. Even if, by todayâs standards, she is Mediterranean, the character has brown skin, and the actress who plays her should share that feature, especially given Hollywoodâs tendency to prefer people with light skin over people with dark skin.Â
And to go back to your original point, that she would be an olive-skinned, black haired woman who is possibly Mediterranean (Spanish, Greek, Italian, Turkish, Moroccan et cetera), the big issue is that Jen Lawrence is not that person. Katniss, the black-haired, brown-skinned, olive-toned woman who explicitly describes her ethnicity in contrast to white people, was played by a pale, white, blonde woman with no olive tones in her skin, and the other two major characters of color were also cast as pale, white, blonde people with no olive tones in their skin. They remembered to cast Seeder (who, I canât stress this hard enough, has the same skin color as Katniss) as black, but exclusively auditioned white actors for Katniss, Gale, and Haymitch and ended up casting people who ultimately needed to be cosmetically modified with dyes and bronzers so they could come close to resembling their characters. The difference is, of course, that Seeder has very little screentime and doesnât live very long, whereas Katniss, Gale, and Haymitch are central characters who are on screen a lot, and Hollywood isnât even a little bit ashamed of their belief that movies donât sell unless they star white people.Â
So thatâs kind of the crux of it. Katniss, in the books, is olive-skinned with dark black hair, has the same skin tone as a black character (who resembles another black character, whose skin is âsatiny brownâ), and spends a while describing the community dynamics, power imbalance, and discrimination she faces as a Seam woman in contrast to her white neighbors, white mother, and white-passing sister. Katniss, in the movies, is a pale white woman with medium-brown hair, who is significantly lighter-skinned than all the minor characters of color whose skin is described as looking like hers, and who never mentions her ethnicity, never describes the power imbalance between the people of the Seam and the white merchants, never seems to encounter any sort of prejudice because sheâs from the seam, nothing like that. In fact, a great deal of what makes Katniss Katniss disappears if sheâs white, because so much of what she does is based on her culture, on the experience of her being mixed-race, on the fact that she grew up thinking Seam features were unattractive and Prim was prettier than her because she looks white, on the fact that all the living District 12 victors are from the same part of town as her, on the fact that the people with olive skin and dark hair are forced to live in a worse part of town and perform harder jobs that pay less while the people with light skin and hair get to live in a better part of town and do less dangerous work that pays better. Itâs really important that Katniss is a woman of color in her world, especially since itâs made abundantly clear that racism is still a pretty pervasive thing in Panem, and a thing that Katniss experiences her fair share of, even from âgoodâ characters like Effie.
Anyway, the point is, no matter what Katnissâ ancestry, her experience in Panem is not one of racial privilege, and there is no version of the physical description of the character where she looks like Jennifer Lawrence.
Thanks for listening! Hope you have a good night! If you want to read a better-constructed, clearer argument by someone whoâs better at citing their sources, I canât recommend The Panem Companion highly enough. Itâs less than ten dollars and it explains how Panem works way better than I ever could.
