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“I know one thing, though: The Capitol can never take Lenore Dove from me again. They never really did in the first place. Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping, and she is the most precious thing I’ve ever known. When I tell her that, she always says, “I love you like all-fire.” And I reply, “I love you like all-fire, too.”

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SUNRISE ON THE REAPING (2026)

In the book Sunrise on the Reaping, Panache Barker is a minor antagonist from District 1. Based on his spots in the new trailer, it looks like the film adaptation is going to keep the role pretty accurate. Which makes the fact that they cast Jhaleil Swaby, a young Black man to play the character, pretty damn problematic. I'm not saying Swaby won't be able to do a good job with the role - but I do think that this is a case where racebending a character is really out of touch with the character's role in the story, to the point of creating hugely racist connotations.

Panache in the book is hyper-violent, hotheaded, and unintelligent. He is first introduced as breaking the train window when he steps out of it. Later in the showers, he literally swings his dick around in peoples faces. During training sessions, he talks over the female instructors and bullies the other tributes. At his interview, the Capitol just laughs at him for being dumb.

There is not much sympathetic about Panache, because he chooses violence every time. He chooses to hype up the system while refusing to believe in the fact that he himself is suffering from that same system. He refuses to believe in the fact that he has more in common with the other tributes than he does with the Capitol people he eagers to impress.

All this is to say, Panache's character represents toxic masculinity. And while I'm definitely not going to claim that Black boys and men cannot fall into that hole like men of any other ethnic background, I will say that there is nothing about Panache that reads as Black in the book. If he was Black, I would think that his toxic masculinity would have been displayed a little differently; it would have included the context of his race within the threads of that type of violence. Instead, I personally read him as a big white guy abusing underfed brown kids, in attempt to appease the overlording Capitol.

But instead of critiquing toxic masculinity as the book does, the film instead chose to make the hyper-violent, hotheaded, and unintelligent antagonist a Black boy. This instead now presents horrible, dangerous, racist stereotypes for Black boys and men as if they are true.

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES

No, you can't catch me now.

"Then he climbs into bed to hold me until I fall back to sleep. After that, I refuse the pills. But every night I let him into my bed. We manage the darkness as we did in the arena, wrapped in each other’s arms, guarding against dangers that can descend at any moment."

This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.