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Review: Shock Value by Jason Zinoman

I’m a huge fan of horror movies and I love seeing behind the scenes of how movies are made, so it’s no surprise that I would totally dig Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, by Jason Zinoman. The book presents a history of how filmmakers, such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, George Romero and others, took the old schlocky stories (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.) to the next level, with stories that push the boundaries of politics and social commentary, as well as gore.

Zinoman didn’t go into deep analysis of the film (I’m sure there are plenty of other books that do), but explored the lives of the directors and writers that became known as auteurs in the industry (whether or not it was truth), revealing how they came to develop the movie that are now classics of horror. Keeping in mind that I did not live in the era and have not seen several of these movies (though I have heard and know about all of them), I can’t judge whether the author’s point of view accurately reflects the movies or the time in which they were made, but I can say that it worked for me. I was thoroughly fascinated and entertained, so much so that I plowed through the book in under two days. It was a great, fun read, and I now need to do a marathon and see all the movies that I have not seen.

The one flaw, for me at least as I have a deep love (read: obsession) of lists, is that the author did note compile of filmography of movies mentioned in the book. How else am I supposed to easily quantify which movies I have and have not seen?

So lacking a proper filmography, I skimmed through the book and made my own list of all the movies discussed or mentioned, and posted it on my blog.

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The Hunger Games and Racism

So, I didn’t mention much about the other characters in The Hunger Games movies, but Amandla Stenberg as Rue was beautiful and charming (and exactly how I imagined the character to the letter) and Lenny Kravitz was fantastic at bringing depth to Cinna, Katniss’ stylist. They were wonderful, and as a whole the cast was great.

However, racist fans have come out of the wood work complaining about how deeply disappointed that Rue and Cinna are black. Not only that, and far more disturbing, the feel the movie was worse for it and that they cared less about Rue’s death because she wasn’t a little white girl.

I want to hurl things.

I can understand that everyone imagines characters differently, so that even though Suzanne Collins described Rue as having “dark brown skin and eyes,” maybe they imagined her as Asian or Latino or some other nationality, and yeah, maybe they read with a “white default” and saw her as just really tan. Either way, you’d thing that if someone read phrase “dark brown skin,” they could at the very leas understand that other people would imagine her as being black (which is what the author confirmed she intended anyway).

But, no, they are very disappointed, claiming that “Rue wasn’t black!” Never mind, all the white washing that occurs in movies ALL THE TIME (i.e. Airbender and Prince of Persia to name just two), which I’m sure these same people would be happy to excuse away as being “best for the movie” or the “best actor”. Gah!

Another good post: “Why is everyone so surprised that some of Collins’s fans are having indisputably racist reactions to her books?”

Which ties into a recent discovery (for me) that producers allowed only white actresses to even audition for the part of Katniss. While I loved Jennifer Lawrance in the role, it makes me kinda sick that women of color weren’t even given a chance. (I wish I was surprised, but I’m sadly not.)

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin murder (which is still not resolved and in which people are tryng to blame Trayvon for being murdered in the same way rapists blame women for “asking for it”), this just reiterates shows again that there is prevalent racism still in the world. It’s a serious problem and it needs to be addressed — and not just by people of color, but all us white people (and that includes myself) who have ignored it, or let it slide in the past, because we were afraid or because we let ourselves pretend there wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t happening to us. Racism needs to be addressed and acknowledged, or it won’t ever go away.

Also, a rather amusing comic about Hollywood’s love of whitewashing and racebending.

Comments are welcome, but keep in mind that if you have to start your comment with “I’m not a racist, but…” then what you are about to say is probably going to be racist. (Think before you speak.)
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In other news…
There’s a rather awesome project going on at kickstarter for Scherhezade’s Facade: Fantastical Tales of Gender Bending, Cross-Dressing, and Transformation, an anthology that includes some rather great authors. It was originally going to be published by a traditional publisher, but that fell out, so the editor is planning to publish it anyway he can. (I had planned to submit a story to this anthology, but it grew out of proportion to the length of a novella and besides, I missed the deadline, but I LOVE the idea.) At any rate, it’s a good way to preorder the book, while helping make it come about.