Rue is an Angel

Could there be a better film to show exactly what Adorno & Horkheimer think filmmaking can do to a society? Nope, Hunger Games hits it right on. In the fictional world, the Capital has been hosting and showing the hunger games for over 70 years. It is both propaganda and distraction. The people gain a little bit of hope, enough to keep going. This hope isn’t in their own life or situation, but for the character created on the television screen. Their life’s as good as it’s gonna get. The show creates a unity. There is a classical harmony to the games – it’s exciting, competitive, and full of emotion. This unity is unbalanced, problematic. It shows kids killing kids, yet only a few – like Cinna – are able to see the reality and brutality of it all. Another way they create unity and stitch people into the games is how they film it. They have so many cameras that get really good quality footage. The cameras fly around and can always get the best vantage point. In life there is always the fight between how things are and how they ought to be. By creating an image that looks more and more realistic, the Capital is able to show the game’s reality as if it were how life ought to be, not just how it is right now. They even show clips of old games with awe and respect; it’s a never-ending process.

Hunger Games could also be viewed under the lens of our own reality and what it says about Hollywood and society. One of the saddest things about this film is not what they portrayed but how some people reacted to it. Hunger Games went against a cliché by making some of the most admirable and honorable characters black. Cinna, the only Capital citizen we see who really understands how messed up the world is, and Rue, the innocent, angelic girl who dies helping Katniss succeed. I’m so happy and proud that Lionsgate made those choices. There is no need to perpetuate the idea that black people are less awesome or more likely to be villainous. That’s preposterous. Many fans were upset that these two characters were black. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hunger-games-were-you-upset-rue-was-black-because-a-lot-of-other-people-are-2012-3 This website has a few twitter posts in it like, “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the little blonde innocent girl you picture.” She could not have pointed out the cliché much better than that, and this probably describes many people’s ideal and what they wished they had seen. They wanted Prim’s twin to be shown. Blonde hair = angel, not black hair. Here’s another article with more quotes that infuriate me: http://jezebel.com/5896408/racist-hunger-games-fans-dont-care-how-much-money-the-movie-made “Kk call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn’t as sad #ihatemyself.” The first quote is upsetting because she was basically saying that little white girls should be the cute innocent ones, and not little black girls. But this last quote is almost beyond words. He had the gall to say that the color of her skin made her worth less and made her death less valuable or substantial. There is a reason that some deaths, some situations don’t make the nightly news. It’s because people are still racist, and I hate that.

And lets be honest, she's probably one of the cutest little girls, black or white, that I've ever seen.

Ooh is that a text. Excuse me I'll have to get that.

The readings and the film Digital Nation (2010) gave me a lot to think about this week. One of the biggest conclusions I’ve come to is that details can’t bog us down because there are a lot. Should Media Literacy Education (MLE) have a political agenda; should it be a separate subject or taught within existing subjects; should we encourage production; should MLE be supported by media organizations? Having to have every question answered is being politically correct to a fault. Nichole Pinkard decided to act instead of taking part in a never-ending philosophical debate. She helped create a program. It may not be perfect, but it is helping students now. Yes, it will need adjustments, and yes, it may not be perfect for every student, but I would much rather be a part of that program then the multitude of studies being done on the topic of media and it’s affect on children. I would rather be involved with helping people then sitting and looking at the world cynically.

Cynicism is the problem that I had with Digital Nation. Yeah students, including myself, multitask when it isn’t the most efficient way. Yeah we probably have a shorter attention span, and many people don’t read books anymore. But how dare they define and stereotype everyone. Guess what? I, a young woman, read over 30 books this summer, and many of them I read on digital devices. I sometimes forget my phone at home and don’t really care that it’s missing. I write my notes in class with pen and paper, and I rarely bring my laptop with me. Maybe I’m an anomaly; it wouldn’t surprise me. I have hope for my generation. I think we will find balance.

Well, after taking a long break from writing on this post, I guess I should come back and finish it. Oh wait there’s a post on Facebook I have to go take care of.

Another problem I had with the film is the in-proportionate amount of time they spent on video games. Video games can be addicting and over-used. That’s not new. It’s been a part of video gaming since it was first created, actually before that. What’s the difference between the new video game shops and arcades of the 80s. Some kids spent all of their time in arcades trying to beat the high score, other kids – or adults – spend copious amounts of time playing dungeons and dragons or LARPing. This is nothing new, and people can always find a fantasy world to escape into if they really want to. You shouldn’t blame media for being abused by humans. You should blame people: parents, marketers and other business people, the kids themselves for accountabilities sake. Media can be good or bad.

I just felt like the overall mood of this film was negative, and I didn’t like that. I loved Henry Jenkin’s little speech, but he got nearly no airtime. That made me frustrated. The guy who was one of the narrators (the one that had a necklace when they showed a clip from a few decades ago) showed us an Asian country, Japan?, that sang songs and taught their students how to have good etiquette on the internet, but then he said that it wouldn’t work in the United States. Why? He never explained, which seemed odd to me. Technology is never going to go away. We are not all going to turn off texting or Facebook. Instead of complaining, we should learn how to use them better.

 Then at the very end he said, don’t worry I still have hope for digital media in the future. It felt like a band-aid to wrap up the film. I think he has grown up into one of the old fuddy-duddies that he used to make fun of. Do we all become that someday? I guess I’ll just be Bubbie and make Jewish foods.

Dead-On vs Neon

The relationships between media, self, and society are deep and varied. They give and take, affecting each other for good or for ill. One especially complex relationship is between society and film re-makes. Media is often a good indicator of what society finds important at the time of the media’s creation. Re-makes this idea a step further because there is an earlier document to use as a comparison; this comparison reveals which elements have been diminished and which have been brought into the limelight, showing the current priorities.

In Media Literacy Education, a class I’m attending at BYU, we watched Hairspray (1988). I hadn’t seen it before, but I had seen Hairspray (2007) once, a few years back. The two, with nearly twenty years separating them, are quite different. One of the biggest distinctions, that I noticed, is their portrayal of the romantic development between Tracy Turnblad and her dashing counter-part Link Larkin. In the ’88 version, the two start dating almost immediately after Tracy joins the show. There is not much fuss about it, and the story turns its focus onto racial inequality instead. In ’07, the romance takes much longer to develop; the story focuses more on this relationship than anything else. Audiences love a good love story. The ’07 film panders to this by making the story about a chubby girl wooing Zac Efron. It’s a shallow cop-out.

What it also shows is that media, in this vein at least, cares more about money than anything else. The Hairspray from ’88 was made for about $2 million, and it made back over $6 million on that investment. Compare that to the one filmed in 2007: its budget was $75 million and it made $200 million worldwide. They got big names, made it a musical, added in sleek, colorful art design, and lost all the deep meaning that Hairspray had going for it in the first place. Yeah, it still had much of the same storyline, Penny Pingleton still fell in love with Seaweed, but it lost its bite, its power.

One of my favorite scenes in Hairspray ’88 was when Mrs. Pingleton wandered around the ‘bad side of town’ looking for her daughter. Her fear was over the top and ridiculous. She screamed and freaked out at nearly every turn, and it was easy to laugh at her and the fantastical way she acted. The reason I loved it, though, is because it spoke of a sad, true reality. I’m from a city in Georgia, and yeah, there are parts of town that white people rarely go. Twenty-five years hasn’t changed that. Race relations is a hugely important topic in society still, though some people believe that racism is done and gone. I think those people are crazy, and I’m so sad that films like Hairspray are being re-made with dulled messages and pure spectacle. Hairspray ’88 may have been silly and over the top, but it kept its eye on the prize and never forgot what it was about.