Last updated on December 8, 2013
I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about this Hunger Games thing over the weekend. The buzz on “positive portrayals” of women center around this series, and it confuses me.
The Hunger Games turned into all the rage lately, a sort of post-Twilight fiction we all deserve that somehow masks our own narcissistic impulses. How does literature about a revolution look so much like the status quo, and “empowerment” look like a woman reliant on men for meaning and purpose? I’d call myself a rather conservative guy. I believe in gender roles and, I suppose, things that would label me with the “anti-feminist” label. I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with is women who lack agency in fiction being called paragons of modern legends when they are, in fact, fairy tales. Perfectly entertaining fairy-tales, of course, but look deeper and you can see the deceptive notions contained within it.
Katniss is a strong female? The Hunger Games series appears as a fairy tale where everything magically works out for the heroine through various deus ex machina and men helping her than her own personal agency. And she never really makes that many tough decisions, even if the books are constructed in a way that makes them seem like she’s making them. It magically takes the tough decisions out of her hands.
Does she actually kill anyone on purpose? She never murders anyone, far as I know, in a GAME DEVOTED TO MURDERING OTHER KIDS. She kills on reflex the first time, and second time out of mercy, but neither of these were of her own agency; circumstances conspire to MAKE her act that way. She is continually robbed of agency throughout the first book/movie. Even when there’s two contestants left, there’s the appearance of agency but (as this book/series is wont to do) the rules change so that she doesn’t have to make a tough decision, only the appearance as such.
So if I were to make any kind of judgment, I’d say she has just as much of a positive portrayal of women making their own decisions (in the vein of modern feminism) as Cinderella, Snow White, or Princess Aurora; that is to say, none. Not to mention the enormous amount of time that the book takes describing how Katniss should look attractive to the audiences of Panem and the Capitol (for God’s sake, the first hour of the whole movie is borderline DEDICATED to this).
I just don’t like how it’s deceptive in being a “feminist” portrayal of women, rather than really just the same old story told as it has been told for centuries. Most young people’s fiction does the same stuff. Twilight, Harry Potter, et al, are no different. We just happened to learn the wrong lesson: you are special and everyone will hand things to you merely because you are special – the ravings of a narcissist. Fairy tales provoke narcissism, but legends require agency.
We can see this in doesn’t challenge the status quo of her circumstances, yet this is considered “revolutionary”. She is the symbol of the revolution, but not necessarily the leader as such. All she wants to do is protect her family and the people she cares about, and her decisions revolve around that idea. Any normal human being in that situation would do that. That doesn’t make her empowering, that just makes her normal.
When she volunteers as a tribute in the first one, that much is obvious. It’s an act of free will, to be sure, but motivated by family rather than injustice. Even when she (SPOILER) finally kills someone in a supposed act of agency, and not just strange reflex and/or magic bees, it’s more as a forced choice between killing one president or another. She was scheduled to execute one anyway, and so it’s still not an actual choice, or agency of any kind. And they don’t even win, really! (SPOILER).
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that she does actually NOT do things in a form of civil disobedience, or challenging the status quo. Even if that were the case, to NOT play the game or the rigmarole of the entire situation surrounding The Games, she hasn’t even made that much of a choice in that regard. She plays along, she doesn’t even bother to oppose the system in subtle ways entirely possible in the format given (such as in interviews or personal statements). The story magically saves her from making any tough decisions because she’s IS, without demonstrating it, a symbol of revolutionary fervor. That is the problem.
She is still playing the game; she is not subverting it. She is participating. She keeps going back to the Capitol, plays along in the silly Katniss/Peeta couple thing, keeps up appearances. The game is not just The Hunger Games themselves, but the whole system on which it’s based, including the government. The one time she is not “playing the game” (i.e., the archery display) , she’s showing off – to men – that they can’t underestimate her. Her worth is dictated by men. Men determine her own personal agency throughout the books.
Importantly, she does not choose NOT to kill. She does not choose a pacifist position, she explicitly states twice in the book how much she wants to kill. But she never does it. That, I think, constitutes a lack of action on her part, either to action or inaction. The plot prods her along like cattle at a slaughterhouse to its inevitable conclusion (Katniss saves the day, for the plot dictates it so). The book goes out of its way to make sure the situations are framed so that she cannot make irreversible decisions on her own terms. She is important not because of her decisions, but because she is Katniss. She is special in and of herself, so that’s why she is important. This is not a message we want to give people, men or women.
And this seems to me to look exactly like the opposite of a woman making her own decisions. The story frames it so that it LOOKS like she’s making tough decisions, but the circumstance dictate her actions, and ties to family, lovers, and friends seem to trump all else. Her personal inclinations absorb everything, and she magically saves the world by being selfish. I would add that every other female in the entire book is an insane wicked stepmother or a shrew, but I can probably stop there.
Look, I’m fine with the books and related media existing, really. I thought the first movie worked great, purely as a bit of fluff entertainment. The problem isn’t that; the problem is that this resonates with women as an empowerment tale for strong female role models. Young women love her, old women love her, everyone thinks Katniss Everdeen represents a pop culture icon for women’s rights. She merely seems, to me, like women placing other women back into a lack of agency disguised AS agency. Suzanne Collins stereotypes women because she believes in that stereotype without knowing she believes it. She put it there.
Maybe this is a problem with modern fiction in general, especially women’s fiction? I think we could say the same for Twilight, and even Fifty Shades of Grey – women dependent on the affections and whims of men. It’s strange that fifteen year-old girls and older all resonate so much with these various series, and that women call these particular stories empowering. Perhaps something to be investigated.
My answer to all of this seems obvious enough. Read 1984 instead, and you’ll see true male and female agency. The Hunger Games is pulp fiction in the worst way, not in the good way.
