Highly-paid actor Jennifer Lawrence, currently the highest-paid actress in the world, notice not highest-paid actor, since male actors get paid more than female ones for some odd reason, was on the “Graham Norton Show” (BBC), and talked about filming Catching Fire, the second “Hunger Games” movie.
When you get to dress yourself, you can pick an outfit that doesn’t itch.
They gave her a glass of wine. She wanted to tell a funny story about the shoot (which was in 2012). She did tell the story, and everyone on the show seemed to find it hilarious. However, there were problems detected by people not on the show.
The story was about how they when were filming on Oahu, in the Waimea Valley area, Lawrence had to wear a wetsuit.
“So good for butt-scratching.”
It was itchy, and it was driving her crazy. The cast was at a site of great historical and cultural significance. The cast had been given a briefing about the site by Hawaiian cultural expert Kahokule’a Haiku. Lawrence summarized: “There were sacred rocks, I don’t know, they were ancestors, who knows. They were sacred. You’re not supposed to sit on them, because you’re not supposed to expose your genitalia to them.”
A portakar is an Armenian sacred stone to which it IS appropriate to juxtapose your genitalia. Assuming you wish to get pregnant.
So she didn’t. But not thinking deeply about what it means to respect someone’s sacred rocks/ancestors, Lawrence began scraping her itchy self on the rocks. “Oh my God, they were so good for butt itching!” Eventually, “one rock that I was butt-scratching on ended up going loose. It was a giant boulder and it rolled down the mountain and almost killed the sound guy.” Possibly there was a landslide of some sort. Other reports have the rock being a little bigger than a basketball. The sound guy survives in all versions I’ve heard.
“A giant boulder.”
Lawrence said the Hawaiians “were like, ‘Oh my God, it’s the curse!’” But she saw it differently. “I’m your curse! I wedged it loose with my ass.”
She had also told this story back in 2013 on the show “Live with Kelly and Michael.” Then she said she didn’t know the stones were sacred – the briefing happened before she got there. (Haiku says differently.)
This time people heard about it and got mad. They tweeted that she was saying she ‘wiped her ass with the sacred symbols of Hawaii.’ They said “it doesn’t get more white and evil.” They called it “the whitest story ever told.” One tweet pointed out “she’s kind of implying why the rocks were sacred was some silly/dumb ‘savage’ thing.”
No word of how the sound guy felt about all this.
What if the sacred stone itself is itchy? Notice how the sound guys are staying well back.
Lawrence apologized, tweeting:
I meant absolutely no disrespect to the Hawaiian people. I really thought that I was being self deprecating about the fact that I was “the curse”, but I understand the way it was perceived was not funny and I apologize if I offended anyone.
She’s right to apologize, but that’s a bad apology. It is never good to say the problem isn’t what you did or said but how it was perceived. ‘I’M SORRY YOU TOOK IT WRONG.’ She was self-deprecating, but that doesn’t help when it she was portraying it as a silly mistake that caused people to ignorantly flip out about “the curse.” When she knew better.
Stonehenge, 1885. Long a boon to the itchy, especially those who are itchy at solstice.
And “if.” If. Another thing that’s not good in an apology. She knows she offended people.
Plus, can we talk about that sound guy? In addition to a cultural briefing, people filming on a rocky slope need to be told to shout “Heads!” if a rock comes loose. Or “Look out below!” Or “Rock!” Because “I am so sick of this itchy wetsuit!” really isn’t explicit enough.
