The Fear Girls

Tag: The Hunger Games

October 16, 2012

Where Do We Go From Here?

 By: Sophia Rowland

I’ve spent the last few days in a 20 year-old boy’s apartment. Beer pong, 4 roommates, chili-lime burgers and the waft of not-quite-clean floors. I’m up in Santa Cruz and I’m having a lovely time with my boyfriend and his friends. There is a slight age gap between he and I, 3 years. It is the kind of gap that doesn’t mean much, but at times is noticeable. I’m 23 and I graduated college a year and a half ago, which means I’ve already lived beer pong, 4 roommates and not-so-clean-everything. It is always nice to visit here, but at the end of the day, it is not my college experience anymore. Lingering in the back of my mind is that remembrance of the anticipation, disappointment and emptiness that seems to be plaguing almost everyone post-college.


When The Hunger Games came out in theaters, I saw it a couple of times. On one occasion, I took my mother. Post-apocalyptic movies really bother her, I’ve noticed. I remember thinking it was weird how put-off both my parents were by Pixar’s Wall-E. Something about hit too close to home, they said. My mother liked The Hunger Games but she was quiet after the movie. Finally she said; “Is that how you feel?” I didn’t understand, so she pressed forward. “Is that how you kids feel? That my generation and the one before left this mess for you to deal with?”
She was talking about the social and economic state our country and world is in. And yes, I think she was right – The Hunger Games in some way does represent how our generation feels. From the take over of reality television, to fondness of brutal spectacle – it hits close to home. But I think mostly, now that I’m out of college, I’m really starting to understand what a mess the economy is.
Since graduating college I’ve worked as a sale associate, an assistant script writer, and an au pair for a special needs child. At least, that is what my resume says. Translation: I’ve worked as a minion for a department store, got some extra work from my dad, and was a glorified babysitter. Yikes. Twelve thousand dollars in student loans and a BA in creative writing sure don’t buy you much.

I don’t think I appreciated college much when I was in it. When I graduated, I declared to my parents I needed a “break” and a “reward” for graduating. Where was my all expense paid trip to Europe? My new car? They laughed. “We’re well off and wealthy in all the beautiful sense of the word – but we don’t have the money to buy you a car or send you on vacation. Wake up! You just had a 4 year vacation – it was called college. Welcome to the real world.”

Now I laugh when my friends who have just graduated make the same demands I did. Their parents laugh too and tell them the same thing my folks told me. College was a real privilege.

But what do we do now? Where do we go? What do we pursue? Internships that pay nothing for free labor? Sales associates and glorified babysitters? I wish I had some all knowing answer or something to make this reflection less bleak-sounding. But I don’t…

Well, maybe I do. My first goal out of college was to start a blog, and low and behold, you are looking at it. I also wanted to create a good group of friends and fellow artists back home in Los Angeles which I am proud to say can also check off my list. I may not be as far along in my ‘career’ as I expected to be by now, and I may not be any further in a year, but I’m certainly pecking away, and trying not to get too disheartened by the whole ordeal. After all, I’m only 23.

1 comment
April 23, 2012

Recommended Reading: The Girl Who Was On Fire

 By Caitlin Clarkson

I, like nearly everyone else it seems, has been caught up in the Hunger Games fever. While the film was finally knocked from first place at this weekend’s box office, it’s already grossed a more than respectable $365.9 million. I’ve been delighted to bond with several people over our mutual fondness for the series. But now that a month has passed since the film’s debut, and the release date of Catching Fire has yet to be announced, what is a fan to do? There are only so many times you can argue the sparse merits of Peeta vs. Gale, or philosophize over the fact that by being excited by the film, we are placed in the same position as the bloodthirsty Capitol citizens.

     For those of you craving a more thorough analysis of the world of The Hunger Games, here is my recommendation: the completely engrossing The Girl Who Was On Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy. The book is made up of 16* essays edited by Leah Wilson and focuses on a wide variety of topics, from stylist Cinna’s role in making the people of Panem notice and root for our heroine Katniss (in Terri Clark’s “Crime of Fashion”), to how modern science has already given us a world full of muttations (in Cara Lockwood’s “Not So Weird Science”).

     As someone who has a tendency to read too quickly, I encourage any of you planning on picking up The Girl Who Was On Fire to read only an essay or two a day. Nearly each one has enough content for you to mull over for quite a while. My favorite essay in the book, “Your Heart is a Weapon the Size of your Fist” by Mary Borsellino, has been present in the back of my mind for the past week.

     In her essay, Borsellino discusses how the villain of The Hunger Games trilogy, President Snow, sees Katniss as a girl who either is in love, or is a rebel. What President Snow fails to realize is that in the post-apocalyptic world of Panem, loving someone and showing that love is literally revolutionary. “With every interview and appearance,” explains Borsellino, “[Katniss] declares herself loyal to something other than the Capitol. And love has already proved to be more powerful than the Capitol, because both of District 12’s tributes have survived the Games.”

     Borsellino goes on to compare The Hunger Games to other stories where to love is to rebel: V for Vendetta, and more interestingly (and one of my personal favorites), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. While the love between Winston and Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four failed, the love Katniss felt for Peeta and Prim drove her onwards and is eventually what made her triumph in the end.

The piece of graffiti Borsellino’s essay is named after.

     Not every essay is an absolute gem. Some are perhaps a bit shallow; one or two failed to  wholly capture my attention. But there is more than enough substance in this slim book to keep a fan satisfied for quite a while. Personally, I think Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ breakdown of how the Peeta vs. Gale debate may actually be about which side of Katniss the reader prefers (a girl who loves and cares for others vs. a revolutionary) is worth the price of the book alone. Her throwaway line about how we should really be Team Buttercup is just icing on the cake.

*Be sure to buy the newer “movie edition,” as the first edition has only 13 essays. I bought the first edition, and am genuinely upset about not being able to read Brent Hartinger’s delightfully titled essay “Did the Third Book Suck?”.

2 comments
March 26, 2012

The Hunger Games – Because we really needed another heroine with boy troubles.

By Sophia Rowland

  The Hunger Games. I get it. The young adult fantasy genre is sort of our generation’s current fad, the big thing that everyone is diggin’. As a young adult fantasy writer, I can get on board with that. As a feminist writer, I can always get on board with a female lead, especially one like Katniss. Or so I thought at first.

Before The Hunger Games, we had Harry Potter and Twilight. Before Katniss, we had Hermione and Bella. Two very different heroines. Hermione is arguably a pretty rad role model for young girls. She does well in school and assists our hero, Harry, in defeating a powerful and evil wizard. Hermione was certainly encouraging to read about when I was eleven and felt insecure about my frizzy hair and glasses. Knowing Hermione was a nerd made me feel okay about being one too. The author of the series, J.K. Rowling, gives Hermione a lot of room to grow in the course of her seven-book series, and what I like most is that Hermione is not entirely defined by her boy troubles.

Bella has boy troubles, too, except her boy troubles are the focus of all four Twilight books. Bella is sad in New Moon (the second book in the Twilight series) when Edward the vampire peaces out. She’s so sad she cries about it and nearly kills herself by jumping off a cliff. My opinion: not compelling, author of Twilight series Stephanie Meyer! But seriously, this is a popular heroine who is COMPLETELY defined by her relationship with men. We hardly know her in any other way, and that is outright ridiculous.

Honestly, I think romantic troubles are important aspects to include in young adult novels, whether the main character is male or female, because when you’re going through puberty, that is kinda what you focus on… the preferred sex. However, it isn’t the only thing going on. Puberty, or even just growing up, has a lot to do with personal growth—growth beyond being in love. And I believe Rowling does a pretty decent job with Hermione on that front. Meyer, as I mentioned before, does not do such a great job. For me, neither Bella or Hermione really hit the nail on the head. What the young adult genre has been needing is a heroine readers (both male and female) can admire. A heroine who is strong and who isn’t defined by boy issues, or love triangles…

That’s why I was excited when I first met Katniss.

In the beginning, it was love at first sight with Katniss. She comes from a tougher, less privileged universe than Hermione and Bella, and she has real survival issues to deal with. That’s another issue with Hermione and Bella: they are both in school. So with Katniss, you get away from that “checking out the dudes over lunch” scene. Not to say that the school setting isn’t effective, but it’s a little played out when you return to it book after book in a series.

Katniss is also a hard-ass—which, believe it or not, is really refreshing. Although Hermione is powerful, it sure seems like she spends a lot of time crying and nagging the two other heroes. Still, that is pretty good compared to Bella, who has no personality at all.

Anyway! So I’m reading The Hunger Games and I’m like, “Yeah, you tell ‘em Katniss. You go! I hope you don’t die.” She handles situations well and logically. And I dig that Peeta, the male lead, encompasses more stereotypically female attributes—he’s sensitive, arguably more sensitive than Katniss. And a sensitive hero with a grumpy butt-kicking heroine is a fantastic dynamic to be sharing with kids. Seriously, boys need to know it’s okay to be sensitive. One example of this in the story is that Peeta clearly harbors romantic feelings towards Katniss, and when she learns about them she brushes them off. This is in part due to the novel’s dystopian setting, which makes Katniss pretty suspicious of everyone and everything, but it’s also because she has more important things to worry about…like staying alive.

There are political themes in The Hunger Games that are genuinely different from other books in the young-adult genre and I feel like Collins is doing a great thing by commenting on how awful and powerful reality TV has become. I mean, although we don’t have shows where teens are forced to kill each other, The Hunger Games makes you think about the TV shows we do have. Isn’t there something a little Survivor/Fear Factor-esque about the Hunger Games? And when the tributes are picked and given stylists to give them make-overs, doesn’t that just scream America’s Next Top Model or Bridalplasty? One of the most popular shows on TLC is Toddlers in Tiaras, which encourages mothers to spray tan their four-year-old daughters and parade them around like dolls…when are we going to realize that something is wrong here? The Hunger Games is a little bit like Pixar’s Wall-E where even though the future portrayed in the story is just fictional, there is a degree of warning in the message. Something that doesn’t settle right in our stomachs as we leave the theater or close the book. I mean, isn’t this why Fahrenheit 451 is still popping up in high school English classes across the country?

The Hunger Games offers young readers a lot to think about: questioning aspects of government and social economics, and the relationship between power and greed, to name to a few. The Games are a way to keep people oppressed, and this is an interesting aspect of the story that Katniss considers. The social oppression of the games and then her winning seems to cause an identity crisis within her. Now she has the means and money to survive and provide for her family—but this means now she has time to think about who she is and what she wants. And what she wants is…

Hold on. Wait a second…did this book just end with a love triangle? That guy Gale, who was in the book for like the first 15 pages is now a possible contender for Katniss’ heart? But wait, maybe she likes Peeta after all! Oh, this is so confusing… who will she pick? Oh, I have a question—

WHO CARES?! Katniss, did you not just murder a bunch of teenagers? Are you seriously concerned about which boy you like more? Do you NOT have more serious issues going on in your life? What happened to all that identity issue stuff? Questioning the government? Wanting a better life? I liked that! That was about you! Not about boys.

It’s funny. In Twilight one of the key ingredients to the story was Bella’s love triangle—who does she like more? Edward the Vampire or Jacob the Werewolf? In Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, Harry doesn’t even want to talk to Hermione because all she’s worried about is her love triangle with Ron and Lavender. And this battle of ‘does Ron like me?’ seems to take up a lot of the plot. Love triangles aren’t always bad things, but haven’t we had enough of them?

Everything in The Hunger Games is written pretty decently, and the plot compelling EXCEPT for the love triangle. Had Katniss’ initial worry in the series been that she loved Peeta for the wrong reasons, or that their connection was based solely on survivor’s guilt—I could have gone along with that. But I didn’t see where the Gale connection was coming from. Katniss never seemed very concerned about love, and the turn was very unnatural.

And in some ways this isn’t even Katniss or author Suzanne Collin’s fault. What is the most disturbing is the desire to spin the Twilight phenomena of ‘picking teams’ onto The Hunger Games. “I’m Team Peeta” a.k.a. “I’m Team Edward.” I think Twilight established early on there was no Team Bella. So what does that say about Katniss?

Like I said before, I think it can be a good thing for young adult novels to have romantic aspects. And romance always has its bumps, it doesn’t need to be sugar-coated. But this was a book about survival, identity, and politics; I think we could have been spared another love triangle and another heroine with the same old boy troubles.

4 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 565 other followers