"Dead shopping malls rising up like mountains beyond mountains."

[greygirlbeast]

Just back from a day at the shore, but I'll write about that tomorrow, and there will be photos.

The post-novel depression hit full force while I was sitting there watching the sea. It's a couple of days overdue, but I was still writing even as the editing began, hence the delay. And here I am, back at that place where I want no one to read the novel. I sure as fuck don't want it read and reviewed and "reviewed" and have to watch the sales figures and all that shit.

And that sort of brings me to thing number next:

As we finish up Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay, the part of Katniss Everdeen has been cast for the forthcoming film/s. She will be played by Jennifer Lawrence. And yesterday Spooky alerted me to the great mewling outcry from the books' community of "fans." YA boards and communities were abuzz (and likely still are) with outraged cries of "racebending" and "whitewashing" and all sorts of other nonsense. I wish to state a few thoughts, which I'll put forth as bullet points, as this lamentable format seems so popular these days:

1) Race: Katniss Everdeen has dark hair and olive skin, yes. But she is Caucasian. Indeed, her mother and sister are blondes. Near as we are told, the people of the Seam are mostly, but not all, white. Peeta Mellark has blond hair. People of the Seam often have grey eyes. All this is hardly surprising given that it seems that District 12 is located somewhere in the West Virginia/Pennsylvania region of the Appalachians. So, cries that the casting is racist are...well...it makes me wonder if the people who read the book, you know, read the book. Let us wait to see how Rue is cast before we howl about "whitewashing."

2) Can Jennifer Lawrence play Katniss Eberdeen? How about this. Watch the trailer for Debra Granik's Winter's Bone:

Truthfully? You ask me, this looks like Lawrence having a trial run at playing Katniss. I say she's damn close to perfect.

3) Does the author approve of the casting choice? Yes, very much so. To quote AccessHollywood (there's a first in this blog):

In a statement released by the studio, Author Suzanne Collins and director Gary Ross expressed their excitement at having Jennifer join the cast.

“Jennifer’s just an incredible actress. So powerful, vulnerable, beautiful, unforgiving and brave. I never thought we’d find somebody this perfect for the role. And I can’t wait for everyone to see her play it,” Suzanne said.

Now, for my part, points one and two aside, this ought to shut all the naysayers the fuck up. It won't, of course, but it should. These books do no belong to the fans, not matter how devoted and no matter how much they might believe otherwise. They belong to the author, that person whose name follows the © symbol. Everyone else has the pleasure of reading the books, and may own copies, but the novels belong to the author. And if she's happy with the choice, that's good enough for me.

More and more, I realize there's this great mass of humans who squat in waiting on the internet, just waiting for an opportunity to be offended. The chance to whine and bellyache and point fingers and pull the holier-than-thou routine. And, usually, a chance to be utterly wrong. This is, of course, their right. But they're only embarrassing themselves.

Comments

[spank-an-elf.livejournal.com]

Annnndddd the fuck of it is people feel a sense of entitlement in howling and mewling over everything. I'd love to do a survey to monitor if the same people who howl over nonsense are the ones who cut you off in traffic or pull out in front of you and give you the finger when you beep.

After reading just the first two chapters of Drowning Girl I can't comprehend how you managed to keep yourself in Imp's head space, for lack of a better term, for so long. I would have been screaming in a corner.

You possess stern mental fortitude. I raise my wine to you.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_luaineach/]

Oh, hey, I'm glad to read this news. And, the fact that I agree with everything you said after "Now, for my part, points one and two aside, this ought to..." aside, I think Jennifer Lawrence is a GREAT choice.

[duowolf.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you say here. Some fans seem to think that only what they belive is the truth no matter what anyone else or even the author has to say about something.
You only have to look at all the post about how JK Rowling not ruining her own characters to see that.

[mattbean.livejournal.com]

And here I am, back at that place where I want no one to read the novel. I sure as fuck don't want it read and reviewed and "reviewed" and have to watch the sales figures and all that shit.

You have no obligation to us.

That said, I'm waiting for publication with a great deal of excitement.

[kaz-mahoney.livejournal.com]

More and more, I realize there's this great mass of humans who squat in waiting on the internet, just waiting for an opportunity to be offended.

Oh yeah, this. Exactly.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Seconded. (or thirded, I suppose).

[pisceanblue.livejournal.com]

I agree; it's one thing if a work is adapted beyond the author's purview and there's some grumbling regarding inappropriate casting, but what also strikes me as interesting is if a work is adapted for film - an entirely different medium - there's really no true way to recreate the experience as rendered by the source material in the first place. But it's wholly another to engage in entitlement-ridden bitching as if you know better; which none of these people do, of course.

I know you've received recommendations regarding the film adaptation of Winter's Bone and I would also like to recommend the novel to you and Spooky. In keeping with your own axiom, Woodrell does not romanticize the hill folk he portrays.

[thecoughlin.livejournal.com]

It's just a sign of a certain level of cultural illiteracy that someone holding the books in such high regard (supposedly) would not have made the link to the undeniable ethic concentrations in District 12 of Hunger games...thank you for the balance and the insight, even if the trolls raising the fuss won't get it.

[ulffriend.livejournal.com]

It seems as though some people have watered down the concept of "offended" the same way that the idea of "friend" has been cheapened.

I am offended that children starve to death in a world filled with food. I am offended that animals are killed because pet owners have been too irresponsible to spay or neuter. I'm offended that people are sent to prison because they suffer from the disease of addiction rather than being provided with treatment.

No matter how much I love the source material, does the casting of a film offend me? Um.....not so much.

Doesn't seem as though these internet squatters have much going on in their lives, if that is all they have to be offended about.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Well put. Put well.

I have to be careful what offends me. At some point I figured that thanks to personality type (i.e., I brood), I could be way too bothered by many, many possible issues and not be able to let go of them, so I told myself OK, try your best not to be offended. This (http://chris-walsh.livejournal.com/77948.html) was a (relatively) rare moment where I did. Five years ago. Obviously I've been offended at times since then, but I try to limit the instances.

I understand wanting a wider representation of types of people in our pop culture and being burned by whitewashing in said pop culture, especially when it got as ridiculous as it did with that Wizard of Earthsea miniseries a few years ago. We can do better at that representation; the stories are out there, as are the potential readers and viewers. (A friend of mine has written a YA superhero novel as told from the POV of a young boy who's black, since he was sick of publishers thinking that young black kids only want to read about sports, if that.) But I don't feel that there's a problem with that here; come to think of it, how often does science fiction deal with Appalachia, the way The Hunger Games most likely does? The closest work that comes to my mind is The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was set in Kentucky.

P.S. Oh, and Caitlin, since it may also help with the mood, actual filming has commenced in New Zealand on Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit (http://www.slashfilm.com/hobbit-official-set-photos-released-production-begins-facebook-page-launched/). The script's by the same team that scripted the LotR films, plus Guillermo del Toro. Howard Shore will provide additional "sweet Shore score" (to borrow Kevin Smith's phrase) to it.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

By the way, Suzanne Collins has said a little more about Jennifer Lawrence's casting. (I'd almost linked you to her initial statement, but I get wary of sharing press release stuff. I've read too many press releases.) Here it is (http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/03/21/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-jennifer-lawrence/):

Dear Readers,

We have found Katniss.

As the author, I went into the casting process with a certain degree of trepidation. Believing your heroine can make the leap from the relative safety of the page to the flesh and bones reality of the screen is something of a creative act of faith. But after watching dozens of auditions by a group of very fine young actresses, I felt there was only one who truly captured the character I wrote in the book. And I’m thrilled to say that Jennifer Lawrence has accepted the role.

In her remarkable audition piece, I watched Jennifer embody every essential quality necessary to play Katniss. I saw a girl who has the potential rage to send an arrow into the Gamemakers and the protectiveness to make Rue her ally. Who has conquered both Peeta and Gale’s hearts even though she’s done her best to wall herself off emotionally from anything that would lead to romance. Most of all, I believed that this was a girl who could hold out that handful of berries and incite the beaten down districts of Panem to rebel. I think that was the essential question for me. Could she believably inspire a rebellion? Did she project the strength, defiance and intellect you would need to follow her into certain war? For me, she did.

Jennifer’s just an incredible actress. So powerful, vulnerable, beautiful, unforgiving and brave. I never thought we’d find somebody this amazing for the role. And I can’t wait for everyone to see her play it.

Thank you all for sharing in this journey and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Love,
Suzanne Collins

So: more signs the author's happy with the casting. For what it's worth.