The lines were long, the theaters packed, and the total earnings were $248.5 million. In opening weekend sales, "The Hunger Games" has surpassed the staid love triangle of Bella, Edward and Jacob (sorry, Twihards), although "Harry Potter" and "Batman" remain at the head of the pack.
For all of its ostensible popularity with Justin Bieber's fan base, "The Hunger Games" has managed to transcend age and gender boundaries to become a commercial and critical powerhouse.
One month after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the film's depiction of—and the audience's reaction to—race in the not-too-distant future is perhaps the most interesting part of the film's popularity.
In the first volume of Suzanne Collins' trilogy, 24 teenage "tributes" are selected from 12 districts, and each must battle in an arena of life and death challenges until one teenager remains.
Collins identifies two of the children explicitly as black in the story; Katniss, the story's heroine, says that Rue and Tresh have dark skin and dark eyes. The two hail from the agricultural regions of Panem (as North America is called in the future), and in the film, Katniss's compassion towards Rue sets in motion an uprising against the tyrannical government that resembles the race riots of the 1960s.
For all those who have yet to see the movie or read the book: you may wish to stop reading here, although the events I'm about to describe are hardly surprising.
Rue's death at the hands of a vicious, well-trained tribute is pivotal and heartbreaking, juxtaposing Katniss—a compassionate, emotional figure—against the win-at-all-costs attitude of her opponents. Rue, who never harms another competitor, is more innocent than our protagonist.
None of this seemed to matter to a certain cadre of viewers (who are, ostensibly, firmly in the minority). A "Hunger Games" fan named Peter Vidani started a Tumblr blog dedicated to collecting racist Tweets concerning the casting of two African-American actors to portray Rue and Thresh.
And there are a surprising number of them. While hardly the most racist example on the site (those are categorically unprintable), one viewer named Aiana Paui tweeted that she imagined a "little blonde girl" as Rue, despite Collins' blatant characterizations to the contrary. According Paui, because the actress playing Rue is black, she is less "innocent" than the Aryan caricature Paui held in her narrow mind.
Amandla Stenberg, the actress who portrays Rue, looks like an angel, mind you. There's hardly a better example of "innocent" in contemporary film.
The attitude espoused by Paui and her ilk is tragically connected to the attitude that allegedly led to Trayvon's death. It is represented by Geraldo Rivera's asinine assumption that because Trayvon was black, and because he was wearing a hoodie, his killer is to be excused for presuming guilt and asking questions later—or the baffling statement that because Rue was black, her death wasn't tragic.
This mindset clearly exists beyond the confines of the Internet, and it's dangerous.
Paui, Rivera, and those with similar viewpoints insist upon condemnation based on the color of one's skin, and not the truth of one's actions.
Caitlin Hurwit is a member of the Class of 2012.