The Hunger Games

[osprey_archer]

At last I have watched the first Hunger Games movie! After a year of trying to get together a slightly larger group for a (re)watch, Julie and I have bowed to fate, admitted that this will never happen, and started in on the movies ourselves.

A few scattered thoughts! Behind the spoiler cut I guess, just in case.



1. There is a scene in this movie where President Snow tries to explain to Seneca Crane about how the Hunger Games are about giving the people the perfectly calibrated level of hope to keep them compliant, which totally blows my entire "How to Be a Better Dictator" section about hope out of the water. Dammit, movie!Snow! Why you gotta upstage me like that?

The worst part is that Suzanne Collins co-wrote the screenplay for the movie, so this is not even really a difference between movie!Snow and book!Snow - it's just that we don't get a behind-the-scenes look at Snow in the book like we do in the movie so he never has a chance to give this speech.

On the other hand, I guess it's shows that I was picking up on something that's actually in the books, so that's good I guess? My high school English teacher would be proud.

2. These behind-the-scenes glimpses are one area where the movie really improves on the books, to my mind. It gives us a much bigger view of what goes into creating the games and also really sharpens the critique of sensationalized violent entertainment. There's a moment at the very beginning, for instance, where Crane is going on about how the Games have become something that "brings us together," which encapsulates everything wrong with Panem in a way that packages it palatably - which is just perfect.

I don't think the books could have incorporated this in the same way: it's a very cinematic story and I think it needed a visual medium to make certain aspects of it pop.

3. On the other hand, the books gave us a much clearer sense of District 12 as a place, partly because we spend a bit more time there, but also partly because the shaky-cam makes it hard to get a good view of anything during Katniss's run through the district at the beginning. We could get a lot more out of this if we could see it clearly!

I actually thought the shaky cam was used to wonderful effect in the Games portion of the story (and I'm usually not big on shaky cam), because it gives a real visual understanding of Katniss's disorientation - but that effect would have been stronger if the movie hadn't started using shaky-cam earlier, when Katniss is in her own district and presumably pretty well oriented.

4. The movie super strengthened my belief that every single district would have a training program, no matter how rudimentary, and all of them would be sending eighteen-year-old volunteers. The twelve-year-old tributes are just too tiny to have much of a chance, and the rewards for a win are too substantial for every district not to give its all to sending a tribute who might win.

And even without a training program, there would be volunteers. There would probably be volunteers fighting each other for the opportunity to be tribute, just because it is the only opportunity many of them will ever get to live anything but hard and miserable lives.

But it would be a completely different story and Katniss a completely different character if she volunteered for the honor of her district and the possibility of personal advancement.

5. I really like the way that the Katniss/Peeta partnership switches the gender roles around. Katniss is the emotionally stunted violent one, while Peeta smiles, bakes, has people skills, and generally tries to keep their ratings high enough that people will root for them. If Peeta hadn't laid the groundwork, Haymitch could never have convinced Crane to make that rule change for the sake of the star-crossed lovers.

6. Crane, dude, you signed your death warrant the moment you changed the rules like that. Snow made it perfectly clear he wanted Katniss dead and you should have ensured that it happened early on. Don't give her an escape route from that forest fire! This is a dictatorship, you don't have to play fair!

Comments

[sovay]

The twelve-year-old tributes are just too tiny to have much of a chance, and the rewards for a win are too substantial for every district not to give its all to sending a tribute who might win.

What is the in-world rationale for having twelve-year-old tributes at all?

[osprey_archer]

The in-world rationale is that the original point of the Games was to remind the Districts that they are firmly under the Capitol's thumb by forcing them to send a yearly tribute of two children, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12-18. I'm not sure why they selected 12 specifically but you gotta have a cut off somewhere, I guess.

If all the tributes were chosen by lottery and volunteers weren't allowed, then it wouldn't cause a world-building problem. But because volunteers are allowed - and winning the Hunger Games has enormous benefits not only for the victor but for their entire district - yeah. Every district would try to train the kids up to be tributes.

[sovay]

Every district would try to train the kids up to be tributes.

Agreed. What an odd hole to leave in the worldbuilding.

[osprey_archer]

I think Collins backfilled a lot of her worldbuilding from her story rather than growing the story out of the setting. Katniss volunteers for tribute after her little sister is chosen by lottery, which is a wonderfully dramatic scene and heroic as all get-out - but it does create this worldbuilding problem.

[sovay]

Katniss volunteers for tribute after her little sister is chosen by lottery, which is a wonderfully dramatic scene and heroic as all get-out - but it does create this worldbuilding problem.

And I see how we get there, because Theseus volunteers to take the place of one of the seven youths sent to Crete—it's a major scene in Mary Renault's The King Must Die (1958), which Collins may have read—but then Collins should have worked out some device whereby this option is plausibly unusual or loophole-y but not the norm, or you'd get the system you describe. At the very least, you should have eighteen-year-olds stepping in all the time when twelve-year-olds are drawn, because they have a better chance.

[asakiyume]

Your comment to Crane makes me think it's not only dictators, but henchmen, lackeys, and minions who need a guidebook.

And agreed about the young tributes and about training programs. The districts would send the strongest, fittest, killingest eighteen-year-olds they could.

[osprey_archer]

It's hard out there for a minions. Dictators have books like Machiavelli's The Prince to guide them, but what's a poor lackey to do? It's hard to know exactly how to interpret one's boss's ambiguously worded suggestion-orders to "take care of" a problem!

In a way I feel that I'm being unfair by criticizing this aspect of Collins' worldbuilding, because the story sort of hinges on it. Katniss would be a less appealing heroine - or rather the heroine of a completely different kind of story - if she were a trained killer who volunteered for the Games for honor and glory. And having her chosen by lottery rather than volunteering to save her sister would have undermined her agency, which I think also would have made her less appealing - it might not have fundamentally changed the books the same way, but I don't think they would have had that blockbuster appeal.

[sovay]

Katniss would be a less appealing heroine - or rather the heroine of a completely different kind of story - if she were a trained killer who volunteered for the Games for honor and glory.

It would be interesting, though, to track a heroine who volunteered for the sake of her district and the betterment of her family—she could still have those protective instincts, because if she wins her sister's taken care of ad so are the people she knows and what does she care about kids from other districts—and only over the course of the Games themselves begins to rethink how heavily she's bought into the system; she thought the way out was to play the game better than anyone else, but what if really it's to break the game? I'd find that appealing.

[osprey_archer]

My feeling is that it could very easily become a story where the heroine spends the entire book catching up to the audience, which knew that the Games were evil from page one. This sort of plot comes up a lot in historical fiction (the heroine learns that slavery or racism or whatever is bad) and it has to be very well done to be worthwhile.

Or there has to be a lot of other stuff going on in the book, so the heroine's forced march to enlightenment isn't the only thing the story's got going for it. The Hunger Games definitely could have done with more worldbuilding: I was so disappointed when the second book skims over Katniss's victory tour of all the districts. I wanted to tour them too!

[sovay]

This sort of plot comes up a lot in historical fiction (the heroine learns that slavery or racism or whatever is bad) and it has to be very well done to be worthwhile.

I understand your reservations. I just have a thing for seeing what people who are implicated in systems do about them.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, definitely. I'd be interested in reading it if it was well done. It would just end up being a very different story than The Hunger Games, I think, and probably one without the same blockbuster appeal.

[missroserose]

I completely agree re: use of shaky cam. It worked well in the arena for practical and storytelling purposes (it kept enough of the violence offscreen to preserve the PG-13 rating while creating an even bigger sense of dread and disorientation than having it on screen would have), but was frustratingly overused in other parts. Also, point of note - the first time I saw the film, I was in the neckbreaker section of the theater, and I actually felt nauseous in the scene after the starting gun. It looked like the cinematographer was trying for a record number of somersaults, haha.

I came across an interesting article some time ago, using Peeta/Katniss/Gale as an example, about how gender roles are far more fluid than we often credit them. Because of how their personalities fit, Katniss is far more "masculine" with Peeta and far more "feminine" with Gale. This being written from a poly perspective, they then extended that argument to imply that a person in a monogamous relationship wasn't living up to the full potential of their personality; I'm not so certain I buy that argument (can't you be protective and aggressive or nurturing and caring towards your friends as well?), but I really liked the initial concept.

[osprey_archer]

That's one of the sillier polyvangelistic arguments I've heard. As you say, people can express different aspects of their personalities in their non-romantic relationships, and beyond that, I don't believe a personality is something one needs to "live up to" in any case - or, if it is, that "living up to it" means expressing as many facets of one's personality as one can.

One could use this "living up to the full potential of one's personality" line to argue, for instance, "Everyone ought to have kids! Parenthood creates a myriad of new facets to our identities, new roles for us to explore, and anyone who doesn't experience that isn't living up to the full potential of their personality!" But not everyone wants to, and why should they?

[missroserose]

Oh yeah, that part was ridiculous. I was just sort of sorry they tried to make the argument, because I thought the initial point was quite interesting and not often examined.

[sovay]

This being written from a poly perspective, they then extended that argument to imply that a person in a monogamous relationship wasn't living up to the full potential of their personality

I'm sorry, that hits the same stupid button for me as people who claim that bisexuality doesn't count unless you always have partners of different genders at the same time.

[missroserose]

No need to apologize! I completely agree on both fronts, haha.