Go see The Hunger Games--like, seriously

Went to see the buzzy The Hunger Games last weekend and was pleased with the faithful adaptation, good casting, and overall look of the film. The English teacher in me would prefer that you would read the book first, but I think you can still enjoy the film w/out having read the YA Lit book.

If you haven’t read the book, it is Young Adult Literature (not to be confused with children’s lit), meaning it has a young protagonist who is dealing with issues that a reader of her age might also be dealing with. It borrows from familiar texts but isn’t derivative, creating its own world and characters with their own particular problems. One of the sub-genres that usually goes over well with young readers is the dystopian novel (one of my favorite short stories is “Harrison Bergeron” by Vonnegut and my fav YA Lit book is The Giver). Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is an obvious parallel with HG’s “reaping,” held every year where one male, one female between 12-18 is selected to represent his and her own district. Thus, you have 24 young people fighting to the death for the entertainment of the home viewers as well as part of a political calculus to remind the citizens of their past transgressions during the Uprisings of some 74 years past (think Survivor meets Running Man meets ancient Rome’s Bread and Circuses???).

In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is our protagonist (btw, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for an Oscar in Winter’s Bone two years ago for her portrayal of a daughter trying to keep her family together b/c of an absent father in a “dirt poor rural town”; a role, where according to IMDB, Ms. Lawrence had to learn how to fight, skin squirrels, and chop wood--don’t you just love intertextuality!); she is one tough cookie and very easy to root for (you’ll want to see how she catches the attention of the Gamemakers). She lives w/ her sister Prim and mother in District 12, which sure looks a lot like SE Ohio or other coal-mining regions of Appalachia. The film doesn’t spend much time there (just enough to establish some back story for Katniss), but it does evoke the overcast drabness we might associate with coal-mining towns of yore. It’s a bleak place. We get the sense, reading the book and viewing the film, that the 12 districts are a constructed hierarchy, thus District 1 and its implied relative wealth can select its Tributes early and train them throughout their childhood; whereas, District 12 kids are needed for the hand-to-mouth existence that most know there, and District 11, comprised mostly of an African American population, is the scene of an uprising w/in the film (interesting parallels w/ what is going on w/ the Trayvon Martin shooting).

Some critics, including Roger Ebert, felt that the film passes up opportunities to make a statement or to offer commentary on the political realities of today. Yes, the main character’s district is impoverished and could have been shot in Depression-era Appalachia (interestingly contrasted with the futuristic Capital city where the actual Games will take place), and the quick cuts to scenes of civil unrest have echoes to the 60s and to the current Occupy Movement, but many viewers will appreciate the more discreet approach taken by the film (Suzanne Collins, the author, also co-wrote the screenplay). I think, however, to suggest that the film lacks a point-of-view or fails to establish a position misses the intentionality of the film and the story itself.  In addition to the poverty and misery depicted in District 12, a vapid, grotesque elite class and an oppressive and manipulative centralized government are satirized throughout, revealing the political pov of the director/writer.  A powerful scene in a later portion of the film captures the pain and confusion we—through our governments—inflict on our young people when we send them to kill other human beings, if not for our entertainment, at least for our comfort and convenience and for the profits of the military industrial complex.  Katniss doesn’t need to make the speech that makes explicit the commentary on these characteristics of contemporary America (Rambo’s monologue at the end of First Blood comes to mind), but the film makes clear what it thinks of the direction we’re going—politically, culturally, and maybe, implicitly, intellectually.

Along with savvy use of intertextuality (Winter’s Bone; Donald Sutherland as a cold and calculating President—a long way from his Oddball days; Lenny freakin’ Kravitz! etc) and some smart literary allusions (Panem, the name of the new U.S.A.; Seneca, the Gamemaker; Cato, a Tribute from District 1; Bread and Circuses; etc), the topics of poverty/race/class, oligarchy vs democracy, freedom vs security, violence as means of control and pleasure, and the effects of living in a panopticon are just some of the directions a class could take in reading, writing, researching, and talking about this rich text. Like other good literature, HG provides a template that allows folks to connect to their lives today yet the text contains universalities that are relevant even to the more mature reader/viewer (yours truly incl).  It’s better than watching teenage vampires brood or the insular world that is Harry Potter—HG is something like futuristic realism and portrays a world that is not as far away as we would like to believe.