on the hunger games

Music: Little Barrie: King of the Waves (2011)

Yesterday afternoon I screened a matinee of The Hunger Games, having become another victim of a sale endcap at Tar-jay. Last week I had only targeted the store for sugar free gum and Topo Chico (they didn't carry TC, by the way, which is a shame), but found myself carrying home the cheap hardcover and reading it that evening. My reasoning here was, first and foremost, wanting to remain "plugged" into mainstream popular culture, since that's what I teach about for a living, and it behooves me to teach to where my students are at. (I found the whole Harry Potter thing a snore, and after reading a couple of Collins' chapters I was delighted in comparison; Collins is a much better, if forgettable, writer.) Second, someone suggested the books are "science fiction" and might possibly work in the science fiction seminar I'm planning (I don't think so, however). Finally, someone asked if I wanted to see the film, and I declined because I said I'd like to "read the book first," thereby locking myself into the labor of the entertained. I read the book, but by the time I was done my friend had lost interest in the film.

So I've labored and I've watched. I enjoyed the novel; less so the film. What follows is just some meandering thoughts about both, but assumes knowledge of the series (that is to say, there are spoilers below).

As for the novel, while it still does nothing to compete with my favorite young adult writers (Madeleine L'engle and C.S. Lewis), Collins writes well and cleanly which makes reading enjoyable if a bit breezy. J.K. Rowling is a poor writer, but that poor writing coupled with made-up-words forced the reader to read and reread passages, driving the story into one's memory. Collins seemingly effortless prose lends itself well to, say, reading half-asleep, but I found myself repeatedly re-reading what I read the day before because I had forgotten it. Still, I'm thankful that a popular culture "young adult" author can actually write a sentence, which means the reader is focused on the story and "message."

I appreciate the politics of the novel, which Collins very cleverly submerges in the story (no lengthy, preachy monologues). If the genre is science fiction, then politics are par for the putt in general. In a sense, this is a post-feminist novel because the protagonist "gives in" to those who would demean her as a woman for survival---but she does, nevertheless, carry all the other characters. Katniss lets herself function as an "object of desire" (a point Haymitch makes during the pageant) so that she can focus on saving her family and her life. Katniss is a strong female character who proclaims frequently in the novel she has no interest in the institution of marriage (although I do wince at her apparent lack of sexual desire), and her love interest---Gale---is presented in the book as her equal and companion, not a "soul mate." Indeed, the thing I most love about this novel written specifically for the Great Teen Age is that it puts serious holes into the Dream of Disney, of a rescuing Other that will make the drudgeries of life go away. That is to say, the politics of the novel is really about our contemporary fantasy of romance, masquerading as a critique of fascist state. That fantasy is shot-through with holes (or, er, arrows) with a prolonged and rather biting critique of class. All that is evil in the world of The Hunger Games is embodied in the elite, wealthy class that orchestrates deadly spectacle. In this sense, the class critique of the novel is as much about the logics of mainstream media as it is the class that controls the continent's natural resources. The dystopia Collins paints is equal parts classic Marxism and Baudrillard, because the means of production concern both "natural" resources and mediated spectacle.

I found Collins' navigation of the logics of "reality television" particularly intriguing. The Hunger Games represent the ultimate version of CBS' Survivor legacy, but tied to a very Agamben-like conception of the sovereign whereby the State is the Mainstream Media is the State---an Orwellian/Huxley theme, but cleverly rewritten in terms of the enjoyment (in the Lacanian sense) of surveillance and control. Throughout the novel, Katniss struggles with how she represents herself to the "outside" (the presumption is that there is a camera following her at every moment) and her internal affective states; as she tries to affix meaning to how she is feeling, she frequently admits to confusion. For example, are her feelings for Peeta real or manufactured? Only after the games are over does Katniss start to realize that her staged romance did inspire feelings for Peeta, but that these feelings, while real, were forged into a meaning she doesn't really cotton to (namely, the soul mate or "star crossed lovers" fantasy). Cue my friend Dana's conception of the "irony bribe" in her savvy critique of The Bachelor.

The novel also has a number of moving moments, framed in the trappings of popular sentimentality but, nevertheless, effective. I think my favorite is the point when Katniss describes how she secured the goat for her sister, a love that is set in the immediate context of a manufactured romance with Peeta (they're exchanging stories, cowering in a cave).

That said, I must also say I'm not real fond of Katniss as a protagonist. Perhaps this is the double bind of writing a strong female lead (do I want it both ways?). I'm reminded here of Karlyn Campbell and Kathleen Jamieson's work on the impossible position of strong female politicians in the press. Anyhoo, the film does a better job of making her sympathetic; she's much more affectionate toward Peeta, Cinna, and Haymitch in the film. (As an aside, I envisioned Jim Broadbent's character in Moulin Rouge as Haymitch; I was more than surprised to see Woody Harrelson pop on screen).

As with most movie-versions of novels, the film was not as evocative or good as the novel. What the film does well is pattern itself after the book---very well, in fact, and Collins' screenplay did about as good as any that I could imagine (they were smart to have her do it; she started her writing career this way in the first place). I was impressed with the economy of the film, which did a good job setting-up the franchise; the "action" was sacrificed for development, but I think that was necessary. Effie is marvelous. Lenny Kravitz, by all accounts a beautiful man, wasn't queer enough. All the actors cast as the Tributes were, in my view, perfect.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the controversy surrounding the character of Rue, who is described in the novel as a nimble sprite. Collins seems to deliberately avoid racial identity in the novel---that is, race is just not an issue, she hammers on class---but Rue is described as black. Apparently a number of teen viewers expressed racist desires to see Rue as a blonde white girl (which baffles me; I did read the novel and Collins provides plenty of cues that the Tributes are racially diverse). The novel and film are very obviously secured by a logic of Whiteness (as is much of science fiction, with notable exceptions), which is problematic. But that young people would express such hostility at the deliberate attempt of the filmmakers to emphasize racial dynamics is surprising, even though as academics we're not supposed to be surprised by such reactions.

If I do have a quibble with the attempts of the filmmakers to feature race more prominently in the film, it's the brief scene and plot innovation evoking Watts: after Rue is killed, crowds in her home district 11 begin to riot. Police or "Peace Keepers" are brought out in formation and are show to be hosing down the crowd to disperse them. In the novel gender is certainly at the fore. But, each district is described in classed terms and united by common interests that way and racial and sexual identification is only incidental. In the film, the districts are subtly discordant with respect to racial identifications (district 11 is clearly cast as a black district, while Cato from district 2 is a blond haired, blue-eyed hulk). I'm somewhat ambivalent by this decision. On the one hand, I can appreciate the attempt to portray how folks might react "realistically" to a situation (and certainly folks seeing the film are caused to think of the plight of Trayvon Martin shooting, an event the filmmakers could not have predicted, of course, but an event rooted in a well-known, cultural condition). On the other hand, MSM portrayals of race riots are almost always cast in a degrading, primitivism frame from a centering Whiteness of reasoned control (recall, for example, the overblown looting frames of Katrina coverage). That is to say, "the road to hell is paved . . . . "

Ultimately, however, both the film and novel versions of The Hunger Games are an intriguing and, I think, rewarding cultural phenomenon that is sparking discussion beyond "it's so good" and "I love it." I harbor no hopes about how the franchise will inspire discussions of gender, class, and race; that there is a frank discussion about racist reactions to the film is good, but I'm not so sure those discussions will go beyond the familiar finger pointing: "they're racist; I'm not." A better interrogation of racism will require folks to interrogate their own projective tendencies, brown and white alike, the racism that we all carry with us as members of this so-called American culture. The same goes, too, for sexism and homophobia. And there's a lot to critique in the novel and in the film, such as its post-feminist stance, the heterosexism that underwrites the whole narrative, and so on. Even so, unlike Harry Potter, which reasserts traditional Oedipal dynamics over and over and over and over (not to mention ports the impossible Cinderella fantasy onto boys), The Hunger Games does provide an entry for discussing issues of class in the classroom. The story does provide a number of ways to discuss the contemporary logics of publicity and how the advent of "reality television" has domesticated surveillance. Empirical research has shown, for example, that the majority of the current generation in college expects to be "famous" in one way or another---which is a startling expectation. The film and novel issue warnings about such desires (and its hero grounds her life in the mundane and the people around her, not her life on the screen). And The Hunger Games's clever critique of the soul mate fantasy---at least in the first film and movie---are also good references for teaching college students about the ways in which ideology works, and how the motor of that labor is contradiction. It's easy to be cynical about every mass mediated phenomenon that comes down the pike and explodes on the mediated scene; here's one, however, that gives us something to talk about and a place exercise our critical thinking.