{"id":55944,"date":"2012-04-14T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-14T19:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=55944"},"modified":"2012-04-14T15:53:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-14T19:53:32","slug":"love-lies-and-the-hunger-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/love-lies-and-the-hunger-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, Lies and The Hunger Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To me, there\u2019s no point in talking about what might have been… I still wouldn\u2019t have wanted to marry anyone. I only got engaged to save people\u2019s lives, and that completely backfired. — The Hunger Games: Catching Fire\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had to get eye surgery halfway through reading the Hunger Games<\/em> trilogy, and I\u2019m just now picking it up again — with one eye. Everything on the horizon is clear, but my close vision is kaput. Same thing will happen in two weeks to the other eye. So I suppose that means I can\u2019t see what\u2019s right in front of me anymore. I\u2019ll have to discover the implications there later.<\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My daughter and I also saw the movie, with Issac. I loved Jennifer Lawrence in Winter\u2019s Bone<\/em>, and I think she did pretty well in this one, too. But like everything and everybody else associated with Hunger Games<\/em>, she and her character have been analyzed from every angle. I\u2019m going to continue this madness, from the one direction I haven\u2019t seen too much about yet — relationships. In the plural. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m an old-school believer that our pop culture obsessions say interesting things about us, whether or not we\u2019re immediately engaged with them. So even if the last thing you\u2019d do is care what Mockingjay<\/a><\/em> means, you\u2019ll still be affected by a generation of primarily young people who are shaped by the phenomenon. Barbie dolls and YouTube shares are no lesser texts than Quality Works of High Art or the most avant-garde pieces. Seeing as how I practice the exalted art of poetry, which gets read by about five people nowadays, that\u2019s saying something. <\/p>\n

For those who don\u2019t know the story, it\u2019s not giving too much away to share the basics: In a dystopian future, in a country called Panem — North America before the waters climbed over the edges — the evil, trivial, rich and partying denizens of a Capitol district are supported in their debauchery by the dozen districts of serfs that ring the region. Some provide food, others textiles, others power. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

District 12, which has an Appalachian flavor, is full of near-starving coal-mining families. It\u2019s home to Katniss and her little sister and her mother, widowed in a mining accident. Katniss is an accomplished hunter, hiding her forbidden bow and arrows, sneaking past an electrified fence and spending every day she can in the woods, bringing in rabbits and squirrels and fowl mostly, to sell on the black market and feed her family. <\/p>\n

As intrepid as this Diana is, she can\u2019t escape the most cruel law imposed on the serfs: Each year, two children\u2019s names are drawn from each district, a girl and a boy. They are then sent off to star in a combination reality show \/ real-life video game created by the most talented virtual artists, in which the children from each of the serf districts fight to the death. The one who survives to the end wins quantities of food each year for the whole village and his or her family. When her little sister is chosen to fight, Katniss volunteers to go in her place. <\/p>\n

The rulers say they enact this ritual and performance to remind the districts not to rebel. The books are overtly political and are drawing many commentator comparisons to the Occupy movement and even global uprisings. I get a charge out of so many young girls, in particular, reading about this warrior-for-justice heroine. My daughter and I have had much to talk about, from drawing comparisons in history to going over hypothetical situations in which one would take a stand, and how much one would risk to rebel. It\u2019s an extraordinarily harsh and existential story to have caught on so powerfully in the larger culture. <\/p>\n

A few critics and commentators have pointed out that in the story, and more so in the movie, Katniss is yet another strong pop culture heroine cast into the role of She Who Must Choose Between Boys. The precedent most often referenced is the Twilight<\/em> series, which I haven\u2019t seen or read, but apparently involves a young woman choosing between a hot vampire and a sexy werewolf. I suppose there are worse situations, and I\u2019ve been in them. The Choice is a reliable device to keep interest up in a narrative, especially one aimed at girls and women; I have no complaint with a relationship-centered story, per se. Relationships are more interesting to me than most things in life. I don\u2019t think a heroine is a less-interesting character if she focuses on finding herself within relationships. It\u2019s not even necessarily a bad ‘role model’. <\/p>\n

There may be more to The Choice model than its compelling fairy-tale tug; it might be surfacing in our prominent narratives for a lot of reasons. Maybe young women don\u2019t feel they have, or are, enough in a traditional relationship. Maybe they feel they\u2019re living a second life, below the radar of superficial successes demanded of them. The most common interpretation is that one boy is ‘good’, and one ‘bad’ (a la Dr. Horrible\u2019s Blog<\/a>), and sometimes it\u2019s hard for the girl to tell the difference. This reduces the male characters to functional at best. In these stories, the girls are the stars. <\/p>\n

But in Hunger Games<\/em>, it is refreshing how played-down the romantic relationships are — to the point where I was really hoping Katniss would turn out to be a lesbian. Of course I\u2019m used to scifi, where a lot of the greatest writing is by, for, and about lesbians. Katniss is adamant that she never wants to marry, both because she doesn\u2019t have time after caring for her family, and because she refuses to have children who will only starve or, each year, face the chance of getting called for the Games. But instead, Katniss has a situation with two boys. Her best friend, Gale, is the buddy with whom she has long hunted in the woods. He\u2019s her counterpart, the kind of friend you can say anything to or nothing at all as you skin squirrels, side-by-side. <\/p>\n

Her male counterpart in the Games, Peeta, upsets this relationship and sets another storyline in motion. He tells the interviewer, on the round of vicious talk show nonsense the competitors must undergo before the Games, that he has always been in love with Katniss, back at their home village, and that he doesn\u2019t know if he can bear to kill her. <\/p>\n

It creates a situation that can both save her and sets her teeth on edge. The avid viewers of the reality show now have someone to root for, a romance to cheer, star-crossed lovers to moon over. His feelings are real, but he\u2019s also using them calculatedly. She has little feeling for him, but if she pretends a romance, it will benefit them both. And she does feel friendship for him.<\/p>\n

If the competitors are well liked by the rich viewers, they can be ‘sponsored’ — meaning viewers who favor them might send food, water and weapons into the arena for them. Playing a bubble-headed bimbo in love could keep her alive.<\/p>\n

This leaves the ordinary Who Will She Choose issue behind. The male characters get dimensions beyond Bad Boy and Socially Acceptable Boy. They\u2019re just as much chewed up by the image machine as the girl character is. It turns into a story of someone deliberately alienated from herself by an oppressive political structure.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s striking to me is the importance of the concept of surveillance in the books and movie. The eyes of the world are always upon her, and her survival depends on her pretending to the deepest, most autonomous and individual emotion — love. Most of her interior monologues in the narrative are caught up with her trying to stay alive and keep her family safe. Fewer involve whether she will hurt the feelings of either of the boys. Fewer still are about her trying to understand and discover her own feelings. It\u2019s a story of how trauma and constant dissembling rob us of being in touch with our own emotions and motivations, and of the breakthrough moments that can come despite this constant barrage of stress. <\/p>\n

No, we aren\u2019t starving and being firebombed; we aren\u2019t even, usually, under the gaze of the reality-show cameras. But many of us — even voluntarily — live as if we have them on us. Even without cameras, we\u2019ve internalized a set of ‘audience expectations’ we play to in our relationships. Technology just makes it more obvious.<\/p>\n

I actually find liberation in self-creation, using whatever tools are around me to keep adding and subtracting a little here and there about my identity, and trying out several if I choose. But I know it\u2019s not for everyone, and you can end up simply fooling yourself if you aren\u2019t careful. I might be.<\/p>\n

On another level, I wonder what has made it so immediately acceptable and understandable for so many young fans of the books that surveillance is a given and real love must be hidden while its camera-ready version is played out. Are they intuiting the future world of drones, sensors, GPS positions and learning how to live in it? Are they trying to keep one simple segment of their own will safe from hovering helicopter parents? <\/p>\n

We are becoming more free to love who we want in ways we want, to be anywhere on the spectrum, and we\u2019re being protected by new laws and understanding alike. So why are so many of them clicking in to a future scenario in which the only way to have real love is to speak in codes and move very carefully under the eyes of the censors? Why are they so attuned to the need to create a sort of Potemkin village of romance that the audience will go for if they ever hope to have a life of their own?<\/p>\n

In some ways, the themes echo those in the wonderful film about East Germany, The Lives of Others<\/a><\/em>. The more we must lie to the eyes in the sky — and those under the bed — the more the chances increase that we lie to each other. This is the process by which oppression can wipe out even that most anarchic emotion, love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila To me, there\u2019s no point in talking about what might have been… I still wouldn\u2019t have wanted to marry anyone. I only got engaged to save people\u2019s lives, and that completely backfired. — The Hunger Games: Catching Fire I had to get eye surgery halfway through reading the Hunger Games trilogy, and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}