WHEN SOMEONE SAYS TORONTO IS THE WORST THING ABOUT CANADA
On the outside we’re all…
But on the inside it’s more…
I’m a little that, a little…
White Until Proven Black: Imagining Race in the Hunger Games
On Tuesday, February 28th, a twenty-nine-year-old Canadian male fan of Suzanne Collins’s dystopian young adult trilogy, “The Hunger Games,” logged onto the popular blogging platform Tumblr for the first time and created a site he called Hunger Games Tweets. The young man, whom I’ll call Adam, had been tracking a disturbing trend among Hunger Games enthusiasts: readers who could not believe—or accept—that Rue and Thresh, two of the most prominent and beloved characters in the book, were black, had been posting vulgar racial remarks.
Adam, who read and fell in love with the trilogy last year, initially encountered these sorts of sentiments in the summer of 2011, when he began visiting Web sites, forums, and message boards frequented by the series’s fans, who were abuzz with news about the film version of the book. (The movie, released a week ago today, made a staggering $152.5 million during its first three days of release.) After an argument broke out in the comments section of an Entertainment Weekly post that suggested the young black actress Willow Smith be cast as the character of Rue, he realized that racially insensitive remarks by “Hunger Games” fans were features, not bugs. He soon began poking around on Twitter, looking at tweets that incorporated hashtags—#hungergames—used by the book’s devotees. Like the conversations found on message boards, some of the opinions were vitriolic, if not blatantly racist; unlike the postings on fan forums, however, the Twitter comments were usually attached to real identities.
“Naturally Thresh would be a black man,” tweeted someone who called herself @lovelyplease.
“I was pumped about the Hunger Games. Until I learned that a black girl was playing Rue,” wrote @JohnnyKnoxIV.
“Why is Rue a little black girl?” @FrankeeFresh demanded to know. (she appended her tweet with the hashtag admonishment #sticktothebookDUDE.)
- Anna Holmes writes about the “Hunger Games Tweets” Tumblr:http://nyr.kr/HWuhZo
I am sure there are racist Canadians, but I still love the “Canada is better than America” implications from this story.
Good riddance, you filthy piece of scrap metal.
(Yes, Canada is abolishing the penny!)
Canadian Borg (via Reddit)
Serious Case Of The Giggles of the Day: Russian news presenter Tatiana Subbotina tries her damndest to get through a story about a raid on a Canadian cannabis plantation that was guarded by bears, dogs, a pig, and a raccoon, but it’s just too hilarious.
[metro.]
Canada: Even when we’re doing illegal stuff, we’re hilarious.
“Because he’s the hero Canada deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.”
I. Love. This.
(Source: fuckyeahtoronto)
Rick Mercer Report - March 29, 2011
“So please if you are between the age of 18 & 25, and you wanna scare the hell out of the people that run this country… this time around, do the unexpected. Take 20 minutes out of your day and do what young people all over the world are dying to do- vote”.
Rick is awesome, but I think I have a bigger request. If you’re like me and you think all these candidates are full of crap, and not worth your vote, you should go out on election day and spoil your ballot. I refuse to vote for someone because they’re “better than the alternative” and I’d like to see pople send a message that mud slinging does not incite anyone to vote for candidates either.
Canadian director Denis Villanueve, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for Incendies posing at an Academy Awards event at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.
Photo Darren Decker/A.M.P.A.S.
In case you’re interested, I’ll be blogging my heart out about the Oscars for the next few days. You can follow all that jive here: thegatemag.
