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[tenured_feminist]

First, a warning. The spoiler alert is dual. I will reveal plot details from all three books in this post, but I will also proceed with a critique that, if convincing to you, may diminish your enjoyment of the books.

The Hunger Games series has been hailed as feminist tween science fiction for a twenty-first century audience. The hero of the series, Katniss, is emotionally strong, independent, determined, and physically adept. Rather than revolving around men (although there is a minor theme of a love triangle), her life revolves around survival for her and her family. In a clever inversion of the Disney paradigm, author Suzanne Collins kills off the father rather than the mother before the action begins, leaving an all-female family of Katniss, younger sister Primrose, and their mother at the center of the plot.

What's not to like? Katniss is bold and assertive. She doesn't need rescuing by a man; in fact she is the rescuer. She puts herself and her family first rather than swooning over a man, and she cares far more about substance than appearances, judging by her reactions to the prep team and processes over the arc of the story.

All of this is of course good, and I'm happy that my daughter can imagine herself to be Katniss, where I was stuck either changing my gender in my daydreams or choosing between the beautiful but completely inert Arwen or the tough, mighty Eowyn, who falls in love with an unattainable man and ends up hanging up her sword and shield for diapers and hustling around in the kitchen for Mr. Adequate. However, a few things about the series give me pause.

First, there is the odd way in which Katniss does end up being a Disney princess. Here, Collins is quite clever. She doesn't have her Cinderella ask the fairy godmother for a ball dress and nice shoes. Rather, the ball dresses and shoes are provided for her (personally designed to make her exceptionally beautiful) in the face of her initial indifference. Katniss gets to be the princess, courtesy of the genius of the sympathetic Cinna, without bearing any responsibility at all for having chosen to comply with feminine beauty norms. Don't hate her because she's been made to be beautiful! Girls reading the books get all the cultural payoffs of imagining compliance with an extreme form of constructed feminine beauty without any of the accompanying feeling of tension that perhaps this is not a norm with which a "strong girl" should comply. (Notice too that she gets a gorgeous wedding dress that she gets to wear like a costume before a huge, admiring audience without any of the feminist problems that an actual wedding would pose.)

Then there is the love triangle. Katniss is torn between the cute, blond good boy Peeta and the cute, dark-haired bad boy Gale. Both of them are completely devoted to her and give her the "freedom" to make a choice between them. Despite their autonomy and independence in other areas of life, they passively sit around (with an occasional very mild complaint) worshipping Katniss and hoping that she will choose them. However, by the end of the series, Katniss does not have to make a choice, as the triangle is resolved for her by Gale's commitment of a war atrocity that kills off Katniss's own sister. She and Peeta live happily ever after. Again, notice the wish fulfillment without any of the responsibility or consequences.

Katniss (like the hero of Ender's game) does terrible things in the novels, killing several people, some of them in pretty awful ways (tracker jackers, anyone?). But like Ender, she kills in circumstances that relieve her of any moral responsibility or culpability for killing. And in the first novel, Collins goes as far to underline this point as to have Glimmer, one of Katniss's victims, come back from the dead as a mutt and try to kill her again! No need for any lingering doubts or soul-searching about what dies within oneself when one kills. Wish fulfillment, no responsibility.

In some ways, Katniss reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara (who also faced a love triangle between the good blond guy and the bad dark-haired guy). She waltzes through a world of political turmoil and destruction without being very aware of anything that's going on. Now granted, we are only aware of this because Collins lets us see. But if you're going to write a strong, capable female character, why not make her at least a little bit politically astute? Katniss only really gets it at the end, and of course reacts violently, killing the usurper (in a totally morally justified act), while the perpetrator of the ancien regime thoughtfully removes himself by laughing himself to death without the need for any action on Katniss's part.

I'm glad Collins put in some sympathetic people of color. I like Cinna (and think Lenny Kravitz was an inspired casting choice). But I think I shall pass very quickly over Rue, the little girl of color who knows everything about nature and likes to climb around in the trees, and the hulking, inarticulate bulk of her District compatriot who kills another tribute with a rock. 

Don't get me wrong. I read the books and I enjoyed them. However, I can't count myself as a completely uncritical admirer.

[bioteacher]

Wow! I feel like you and I read totally different books because this is not my take on it at ALL.

[slac_vap]

Do you really think that Katniss and Peeta live happily ever after?  On the contrary, I was struck by the how unjoyful their togetherness felt at the end.  I think Collins did a remarkable job of leaving her characters damaged by their experiences.  If I had felt "happily ever after," I would have been disappointed because I think it would have felt inauthentic.

Nor can I imagine a more normal and authentic way for Katniss to have responded to being dressed up like a doll.  What other reaction would you have expected from her?  I can't see another, more "feminist" reaction from her that would seem realistic.  And if you are arguing that she should never have been dolled up to begin with, then I would say the book would lose some of its message.

[hegemony]

I think the point was that the author wanted to write appealing books in which the girl protagonist has it all -- the strength, the violence, the romance, and the clothes.  And without being to blame for anything negative.  We literary scholars like to "complicate the paradigm" and "call into question" and "teach the conflicts" and all.  And we prize literature that does that for us.  But that's not the only kind of literature people like to read.  So now we're happy because we get to call The Hunger Games into question.  So I guess The Hunger Games has succeeded on that level too.

[spectacle]

Do you really think that Katniss and Peeta live happily ever after?  On the contrary, I was struck by the how unjoyful their togetherness felt at the end.  I think Collins did a remarkable job of leaving her characters damaged by their experiences.  If I had felt "happily ever after," I would have been disappointed because I think it would have felt inauthentic.

I had written an EPIC post in which I basically said this less articulately (my browser crashed, alas).

But yes - I think I read somewhere that Collins was partly inspired by her father's experience as a Vietnam vet - someone who loved his family and was grateful for his life, but was massively emotionally damaged by his experiences and the atrocities he felt forced to commit.  And I thought that Katniss reflected that pretty well.

[bioteacher]

I think the point was that the author wanted to write appealing books in which the girl protagonist has it all -- the strength, the violence, the romance, and the clothes.

And this is where I disagree. I think the writer wrote a story about what happens when a strong gal is face with this awful circumstance given the fact she values her family so very much? How far will she go to protect what she loves? How do the consequenes of that initial choice alter her personally as well as socially.

I don't see the romance and the clothes as being part of this princess package the author wanted/needed to complete. The "romance" was part of helping Katniss (and the readers) figure out what Katniss valued more. What lines she was never okay with crossing. Gale's military actions at the end crossed that line, which is something she could recognize as "okay for him in his mindset" but never condone or live with. And the clothes were part of the peeling away of what "matters" and what really matters in different cultures. Katniss recognized the excesses that the capital embraced and was disturbed by them. Only later does she (and we) learn that those in the capital were suffering in other ways. One reason she agreed to become the Mockingjay was, I think, a way of squeezin something good out of the entire situation. It helped justify the atrocities she had suffered because it wasn't all for nothing. Unfortunatley, doing so ended up leading to the distruction of the  sister who she tried to protect above all else. At the end of the series, we're left with a Katniss living a bleak life, but still trying to make some good come out of it all.

This princess paintbrush applied to everything is one big beef I had with the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter. I don't see that brush as an appropriate starting point to understand as many aspects of the media as the Cinderella Ate My Daughter author and Tenured Feminist seem to use it for. I would never, ever have applied the Disney Princess Archetype to the Hunger Games. And having seen it, I still don't see how it "works." Rather, I'm puzzled by that interpretation. It doesn't mean they are wrong. It just doesn't resonate at all with me.

[hipgeek]

I have not thought as deeply about this book as TF or perhaps any of the previous posters and it has been a little while since I've finished the books and I've had a lot on my mind since then.  I also didn't read them critically.  But, like TF, I felt the hype of these books didn't quite match up to my actual experience.  

For one, I found some it a bit derivative.  It was like the Running Man except with children--we are pawns in the hands of mighty government, players in a cruel life or death game we cannot truly understand.  Okay.  

As for the feminist angle (which I hadn't really considered), the dressing up didn't bother me but the love triangle did.  I felt like Katniss used Peeta but ended up with him in the end because he was safe and convenient, at least compared to the other guy.  He nurtured her, not challenged her (he feeds her, literally; he is the more conventional of the two romantic interests, the good guy to the other's bad guy).  I don't think love triangles are a completely unrealistic scenario  but I do find them a bit trite sometimes and not exactly "feminist."  

Anyway, I did think they were a fun read and I wonder what my male friends who read sci-fi would think.  There were times when I felt like they might get a bit bored by what one character derisively called Katniss's "boy troubles."  

[rebelgirl]

This thread is fascinating.  I devoured all three books in December, followed by The Girl Who Was On Fire essays, thanks to Bioteacher - this thread's argument is even more interesting than those essays.   

I think I see why tenured_feminist identifies a Disney Princess motif in the books -  there *are* moments when the dolling-up Katniss never sought leaves her stunned in a who-me kind of way, as her own beauty is showcased for the cameras.  But what I liked about the books, as I think others on this thread do as well, is that Katniss doesn't see herself in "that girl." Collins portrays Katniss as vehemently at odds with herself: she often feels confused about what/who she might really want, and she only acts without self-doubt in moments when survival demands action. Because the action demanded is almost invariably violent, Katniss sees violence as her true identity and doubts her own worth in consequence, valuing Prim, Peeta, and others more than herself.  Her strength also puts her at odds with her mother, who collapsed psychologically after Katiniss's father's death, and so her strength is in its way a barrier between real intimacy in that foundational relationship (and though she and her mother do make some amends, there's never a real bond there). Katniss in many ways constructed her self in opposition to her mother, but that isn't quite the same thing as a healthy sense of self-worth. Though she's a strong survivor, she lacks strong self-esteem, and each survivor's act makes her feel less worthy.  This is one point where I'd disagree with T_F's analysis, and it's something that really drew me to the books.

In an odd way, what the book glorifies is less beauty than creature comforts like food and a soft warm place of shelter.  There's a New Yorker analysis online that notes how "every goody" that Katniss gets is "lovingly" described, especially the food.  Even when Katniss finds the rebels in Mockingjay, it's a pretty spartan life, and only "the one per cent" have abundance in the world of The Hunger Games.  I realize this is a stretch, but when some of the "Occupy" groups were violently suppressed, around the time I was reading the books, I couldn't help feeling a degree of resonance between the world of the books and where this culture may be heading. 

Has anyone taught this series?  I'm thinking about ways I might work it into a comp course. 

[bibliothecula]

I'm much in agreement with TF. When I read the books, I kept getting frustrated because of what I saw as Katniss's complete lack of interest or understanding of the political situations she was getting mixed up in. I felt like she was a little stupid, and even in the end, at the epilogue, it seemed like she hadn't really grasped all of the implications of what she had done/served as.

The romance aspects didn't work for me much either--she didn't seem to have any chemistry with either guy, and marrying Peeta in the end was just convenient.

She seemed more a tool being used than a self-aware hero.

[rebelgirl]

@bibliotheca . . . I see what you mean, though I think your analysis is a bit harsh.  Katniss is, what, 16?  She doesn't get a great deal of time for reflection in the books - the action keeps moving faster than I suspect a lot of us could process, let alone a teenager.  And I thought that she seemed very well aware in Catching Fire that she was being used by President Snow to try to stem the coming rebellion, and that she was allowing herself to be thus used because he was effectively holding her family, and her district, hostage. In fact, her innate decency keeps bursting out and thwarting her handlers, as when she thanks the District 11 people for giving her the bread and honors the memories of Rue and Thresh, only to evoke a response from them that leads to violent suppression - she realizes too late that her spontaneous outburst of respect has done harm, but it seemed believable to me, and tragic. 

As far as the romantic triangle, what worked for me about it was that Katniss is drawn to Peeta because of his decency - and she becomes repelled by Gale because he is hardened into expediency (this ties in with Katniss's own self-loathing, as noted in my prior post).  I thought she was pretty sharp to see the clues that linked Beetee and Gale to the balloon-bombing of the children and aid workers toward the end of Mockingjay, and to see when no one else did that the rebellion's leaders had become as ruthless as the regime they hoped to replace.  And if Katniss doesn't end the series as a political activist, I think that's realistic, as other posters upthread noted, to her portrayal as a victim of PTSD, much as some Vietnam vets are.

[spectacle]

And I thought that she seemed very well aware in Catching Fire that she was being used by President Snow to try to stem the coming rebellion, and that she was allowing herself to be thus used because he was effectively holding her family, and her district, hostage.

Right - I might be giving Collins too much credit, but that's what I thought - that the point was that Katniss understood that she was being used as a tool/weapon, that she was relatively self-aware in terms of her inability to fully grasp the politics behind her circumstances, and that all of her decisions are based on "how can I best protect and provide for my family/community." Then, her failure on these two fronts fuels her self-loathing and depression (mirrored in her rejection of Gale).  She's never really political - her fixation on assassinating whats-his-name (I don't have the books on me and Wikipedia is dark, alas) is entirely motivated by revenge. 

I'm not saying Collins is the best-ever at conveying all these things, but they're pretty complex themes for YA fiction, and I was impressed by Katniss as an imperfect heroine.  Smart but not brilliant, attractive but not gorgeous (wouldn't any of us look spectacular after getting a makeover by Lenny Kravitz then being set on fire? Wooo!).  Really, her only remarkable feature is that she's a badass hunter/fighter, and I like that.  I don't think it would ring true for her to become an activist or a politician.  She's just trying to take care of her family and district and she can't really see beyond that. 

(Ugh, sorry if that was rambling.)

[ranganathan]

 
Has anyone taught this series?  I'm thinking about ways I might work it into a comp course. 

I'm using it for the first time this semester.  Classes just started so I don't have a lot to report yet, but I do have some hard-core HG fans in the class. What's fascinating to me is that they obviously love the books and are so excited to talk about them- and yet have never given much thought _about_ the book.  They swallowed the story, hook, line and sinker, and are shocked when I broaden the discussion beyond, "Wasn't it cool when..."  I threw out the idea that perhaps the Capitol had rigged the reaping lottery, and one fan kept repeating, "But the book said it was random!"  She was able to get beyond it eventually but the emotional connection she had to the book was an obstacle (and opportunity) I'll have to consider.

I'll be happy to report on how this class progresses either on this thread or through PM for anyone interested.

PS My course focuses on ethical dilemmas, and I look forward to talking with the students about how the book makes Katniss into a killer in the nicest, most excusable way possible.  Agree 100% with T_F in that regards. 

[bibliothecula]

Maybe I'm being harsh. I don't know. Katniss seems to realize what's going on after the fact, or doesn't fully comprehend the ways she's used. Yes, she's 16, but before the reaping it's made very clear that she's been an adult for a while, in terms of taking care of her family and herself.

Good point, rebelgirl, on the PTSD. I hadn't thought of it that way.

[bioteacher]

PS My course focuses on ethical dilemmas, and I look forward to talking with the students about how the book makes Katniss into a killer in the nicest, most excusable way possible.  Agree 100% with T_F in that regards. 

It starts that way, yes, but she doesn't stop there. Katniss kills a lot in later books... and not always for nice, clean, clear-cut reasons. Look at what she did to Coin. It was the right thing to do... but it was also very coldly calculated on Katniss's part. No wonder Katniss ends up with PTSD.

Katniss was very mature in terms of taking care of her family in terms of sustenance. But she is young and lived a very sheltered life fed only the information the Capital approves of. She is not equipped to play complex political games. And after all she suffers, too broken to ever do so in the future.

[aandsdean]

I am back from the trip on which I read all three books, and am finding this thread really interesting.

I do have to disagree somewhat (and always respectfully) with TF on Katniss and the princess issue.  I would read Katniss's "transformation" at the front end of her experience (prior to the first games) as a feminist parable of the force of the male gaze to transform and objectify young women against their will.  

She doesn't want to be a princess at all:  she wants to hang out in the woods, getting dirty, providing for her family by shooting small animals with her profoundly phallic arrows (a very neat and complete inversion of traditional gender roles, of course), but the system of the male gaze literally abducts her and forces a transformation on her into the most traditional possible role (minus the killing game, of course, but this emphasizes the overall perversion of Panem).  This imposition of the "male narrative" is redoubled by Peeta's sudden implication of Katniss in a traditional romance narrative as well, and so she's bound doubly by males who force her into gendered narratives that run directly counter to her actual desires, a struggle that carries through the entire series.

(I just thought of the possibility that there's an arrows/eros pun running through the books as well, which wouldn't surprise me given Collins's constant reliance on Greco-Roman pun names.  There is certainly a conspicuous eros/thanatos link running through the story.  And of course Katniss shoots President [Other Side of the Same] Coin at the end, interestingly reasserting her "phallic agency" and, in the process, killing the bad mother.)

Her endless lucubrations about Peeta show that, while she certainly realizes his (considerable and undeniable) good qualities, she perennially resents being made by him into a character in his narrative, rather than an independent actor in her own.

Her relationship with President Snow adumbrates this reading nicely.  He's the perverse, abusive father.  His white roses are a symbol of both purity (white) and danger (thorns), a pretty common image in Renaissance poetry, and the smell of blood he carries with him clearly symbolizes "deflowering," the "loss of purity."  Katniss's focus on his swollen lips symbolizes the twisted erotics of her relationship with him.  His repeated insistence on how he "needs" her to contain the forces of rebellion is straight out of the textbook of abusive relationships.

As for the question of Katniss's knowledge of how she's being manipulated, I believe she well knows she's being manipulated, but her problem is that she's not in possession of anything like adequate knowledge to understand how the game is being played outside of her immediate surroundings.  Panem and the Capitol function in the typical dystopian way of limiting information distribution (consider their incredibly efficient propaganda machine, effectively and brilliantly emulated by District 13 and turned against them by internal subversives like Cinna), a pretty direct echo of 1984, which similarly functions by perverting natural, positive relationships among people.  There's also the Caligulan life of the upper classes in the Capitol (anyone else think of Colorado Springs?), an echo of how privileged classes across dystopian literature always seem to function.

So Katniss doesn't have much to go on as she navigates through her predicaments.  Even during her trial, she knows nothing whatever until it's over and Haymitch comes to tell her she's been acquitted.  (I secretly suspect that everyone is glad Coin is dead, knowing that she's going to be exactly the same as the old boss, as evidenced by her transparently stupid or sinister idea to have that "one last" Hunger Games as a kind of catharsis that clearly, no one needs.)  I am still puzzling over Snow's last laugh when Katniss shoots Coin, but I am convinced that he's telling a significant version of the truth in a lot of what he says/implies about what's going on, verified by the final Hunger Games plan.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed these books.  I was in several wonderful international places, and I occasionally found myself struggling against the urge to go back to the hotel to keep reading.  This doesn't happen to me much anymore.