tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/the-hunger-games-14607/articles
The Hunger Games – The Conversation
2020-04-29T12:11:14Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136908
2020-04-29T12:11:14Z
2020-04-29T12:11:14Z
Are we living in a dystopia?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330857/original/file-20200427-145503-so76k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">State police officers during a "Reopen Virginia" rally around Capitol Square in Richmond on April 22, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/state-police-officers-monitor-activity-during-a-reopen-news-photo/1210663121?adppopup=true">Getty/Ryan M. Kelly / AFP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dystopian fiction is hot. Sales of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell-with-a-foreword-by-thomas-pynchon/">George Orwell’s “1984”</a> and Margaret <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/">Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”</a> have <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dystopian-fiction-why-we-read/">skyrocketed</a> since 2016. Young adult dystopias – for example, <a href="https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/hunger-games-the-by-suzanne-collins/">Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,”</a> <a href="https://veronicarothbooks.com/books/divergent/">Veronica Roth’s “Divergent,”</a> <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/The-Giver/9780547345901">Lois Lowry’s classic, “The Giver”</a> – were best-sellers even before. </p>
<p>And with COVID-19, dystopias featuring diseases have taken on new life. Netflix reports <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/outbreak-movie-top-10-netflix-titles-movies-pandemic-tv-series-coronavirus/">a spike in popularity</a> for “Outbreak,” “12 Monkeys” and <a href="http://blog.dvd.netflix.com/new-dvd-releases/4-virus-related-films-to-watch-in-the-time-of-covid-19">others</a>. </p>
<p>Does this popularity signal that people think they live in a dystopia now? Haunting images of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/23/world/coronavirus-great-empty.html">empty city squares</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-wild-animals-wales-goats-barcelona-boars-brazil-turtles/2020/04/14/30057b2c-7a71-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html">wild animals roaming streets</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/economy/coronavirus-food-banks.html">miles-long food pantry lines</a> certainly suggest this. </p>
<p>We want to offer another view. “Dystopia” is a powerful but overused term. It is not a synonym for a terrible time. </p>
<p>The question for us as <a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jnBSYuwAAAAJ&hl=en">political</a> <a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LWLkiYMAAAAJ&hl=en">scientists</a> is not whether things are bad (they are), but how governments act. A government’s poor handling of a crisis, while maddening and sometimes disastrous, does not constitute dystopia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Today’s empty city streets capture the feeling of a dystopian time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/empty-city-coronavirus?agreements=pa:77130&family=editorial&locations=61907&phrase=empty%20city%20coronavirus&sort=newest#license">Getty/Roy Rochlin</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Legitimate coercion</h2>
<p>As we argue in our book, “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/survive-and-resist/9780231188913">Survive and Resist: the Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics</a>,” the definition of dystopia is political.</p>
<p>Dystopia is not a real place; it is a warning, usually about something bad the government is doing or something good it is failing to do. Actual dystopias are fictional, but real-life governments can be “dystopian” – as in, looking a lot like the fiction. </p>
<p>Defining a dystopia starts with establishing the characteristics of good governance. A good government protects its citizens in a noncoercive way. It is the body best positioned to prepare for and guard against <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17244978/lucy-jones-book-earthquake-flood">natural</a> and human-made horrors. </p>
<p>Good governments use what’s called “<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a228/d1aceec6ea2cadf1c41d2319793dd0ca9d30.pdf">legitimate coercion</a>,” legal force to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/">which citizens agree</a> to keep order and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174556/read-my-lips">provide services</a> like roads, schools and national security. Think of legitimate coercion as your willingness to stop at a red light, knowing it’s better for you and others in the long run. </p>
<p>No government is perfect, but there are ways of judging the imperfection. Good governments (those least imperfect) include a strong core of <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Methodology_Proof1.pdf">democratic elements</a> to check the powerful and create <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Development_as_Freedom/Qm8HtpFHYecC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=amartya%20sen%20development%20as%20freedom&pg=PR4&printsec=frontcover">accountability.</a> They also include constitutional and judicial measures to check the power of the majority. This setup acknowledges the need for government but evidences <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1495446697">healthy skepticism</a> of giving too much power to any one person or body. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EWbOLZcXugsC&lpg=PA1&ots=G0KJZqipPn&dq=federalism%20democracy%20devolution&lr&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false">Federalism</a>, the division of power between national and subnational governments, is a further check. It has proved useful lately, with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/states-band-together-reopening-plans/index.html">state governors and mayors</a> emerging as strong political players during COVID-19.</p>
<h2>Three kinds of dystopias</h2>
<p>Bad governments lack checks and balances, and rule in the interest of the rulers rather than the people. <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058%3Abook%3D3">Citizens</a> can’t participate in their own governance. But dystopian governments are a special kind of bad; they use illegitimate coercion like force, threats and the “disappearing” of dissidents to stay in power. </p>
<p>Our book catalogs three major dystopia types, based on the presence – or absence – of a functioning state and how much power it has. </p>
<p>There are, as in Orwell’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell-ebook/dp/B003JTHWKU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6FALM24842SX&dchild=1&keywords=orwell+1984&qid=1586894038&s=books&sprefix=orwell+%2Cstripbooks%2C142&sr=1-1">“1984,”</a> overly powerful governments that infringe on individual lives and liberties. These are authoritarian states, run by dictators or powerful groups, like a single party or corporate-governance entity. Examples of these governments abound, including <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/20/syria-torture-opposition-regime-defector/">Assad’s murderously repressive regime in Syria</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm5pE_BDtCc">silencing of dissent</a> and <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/europe/russia/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=RS&start_year=1992&end_year=2020&group_by=location">journalism</a> in Russia. </p>
<p>The great danger of these is, as our country’s Founding Fathers knew quite well, too much power on the part of any one person or group limits the options and autonomy of the masses. </p>
<p>Then there are dystopic states that seem nonauthoritarian but still take away basic human rights through market forces; we call these “capitocracies.” Individual workers and consumers are often exploited by the political-industrial complex, and the environment and other public goods suffer. A great fictional example is <a href="https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/walle">Wall-E</a> by Pixar (2008), in which the U.S. president is also CEO of “Buy ‘N Large,” a multinational corporation controlling the economy. </p>
<p>There are not perfect real-life examples of this, but elements are visible in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/republic-samsung">chaebol</a> – <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/south-koreas-chaebol-challenge">family business</a> – power in South Korea, and in various manifestations of corporate political power in the U.S, including <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/12/05/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/">deregulation</a>, corporate <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575125/corporations-are-not-people-by-jeffrey-d-clements/">personhood</a> status and big-company <a href="https://time.com/5814076/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-corporate-bailout/">bailouts</a>.</p>
<p>Lastly there are state-of-nature dystopias, usually resulting from the collapse of a failed government. The resulting territory reverts to a primitive feudalism, ungoverned except for small tribal-held fiefdoms where individual dictators rule with impunity. The Citadel versus Gastown in the stunning 2015 movie <a href="https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/mad-max-fury-road/">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</a> is a good fictional depiction. A real-life example was seen in the once barely governed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/23/somalia-no-longer-a-failed-state-just-a-fragile-one-says-un">Somalia</a>, where, for almost 20 years until 2012, as a U.N. official described it, “armed warlords (were) fighting each other on a clan basis.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fiction best describes dystopia – as in this reference to the landmark dystopian novel, ‘1984,’ by George Orwell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/graffiti-1984-is-now-titel-of-the-novel-1984-by-george-news-photo/545003371?adppopup=true">Getty/Schöning/ullstein bild</a></span>
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<h2>Fiction and real life</h2>
<p>Indeed, political dystopia is often easier to see using the lens of fiction, which exaggerates behaviors, trends and patterns to make them more visible. </p>
<p>But behind the fiction there is always a real-world correlate. Orwell had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/books/review/dorian-lynskey-ministry-of-truth-1984.html">Stalin, Franco and Hitler</a> very much in mind when writing “1984.” </p>
<p>Atwood, whom literary critics call the “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/margaret-atwood-the-prophet-of-dystopia">prophet of dystopia</a>,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize">recently defined dystopia</a> as when “[W]arlords and demagogues take over, some people forget that all people are people, enemies are created, vilified and dehumanized, minorities are persecuted, and human rights as such are shoved to the wall.” </p>
<p>Some of this may be, as Atwood <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize">added</a>, the “cusp of where we are living now.” </p>
<p>But the U.S. is not a dystopia. It still has functioning democratic institutions. Many in the U.S. fight against dehumanization and persecution of minorities. Courts are adjudicating cases. Legislatures are passing bills. Congress has not <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-nominations/trump-threatens-to-adjourn-u-s-congress-idUSKCN21X3GI">adjourned</a>, nor has the fundamental right of habeas corpus – the protection against illegal detention by the state – (yet) been <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/21/doj-coronavirus-emergency-powers-140023">suspended</a>. </p>
<h2>Crisis as opportunity</h2>
<p>And still. One frequent warning is that a major crisis can cover for the rolling back of democracy and curtailing of freedoms. In Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a medical crisis is the pretext for suspending the Constitution. </p>
<p>In real life, too, crises facilitate authoritarian backsliding. In Hungary the pandemic has sped democracy’s unraveling. The legislature gave strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-hungarys-authoritarian-response-pandemic">rule by sole decree indefinitely</a>, the lower courts are suspended and free speech is restricted. </p>
<p>Similar dangers exist in any number of countries where democratic institutions are frayed or fragile; leaders with authoritarian tendencies may be tempted to leverage the crisis to consolidate power.</p>
<p>But there are also positive signs for democracy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sign ‘We are in this together’ is written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of NYU Langone Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic on April 22, 2020 in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-we-are-in-this-together-is-written-in-chalk-on-the-news-photo/1220487757?adppopup=true">Getty/John Lamparski</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/30/21199785/homemade-coronavirus-masks-n95-ppe">People are coming together</a> in ways that didn’t seem possible just a few months ago. This <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-vu-face-shields-st-0416-20200413-zyreuxfwqfajhirqlql2khhpj4-story.html">social capital</a> is an <a href="http://robertdputnam.com/bowling-alone/social-capital-primer/">important element</a> in a democracy. </p>
<p>Ordinary people are performing incredible acts of kindness and generosity – from <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/us/coronavirus-student-volunteers-grocery-shop-elderly-iyw-trnd/index.html">shopping for neighbors</a> to <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2020/03/17/son-serenades-mom-during-coronavirus-lockdown-harmony-brentwood-tennessee-nursing-home/5065211002/">serenading residents at a nursing home</a> to a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/30/21199785/homemade-coronavirus-masks-n95-ppe">mass movement to sew facemasks</a>. </p>
<p>In politics, Wisconsin primary voters risked their lives to exercise their right to vote during the height of the pandemic. <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/brief/voters-sue-legislature-leaders-and-wec-demanding-april-7-revote/">Citizens</a> and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/14/time-essence-after-wisconsin-fiasco-150-civil-rights-groups-urge-congress-protect">civil society</a> are pushing federal and state governments to ensure election safety and integrity in the remaining primaries and the November election.</p>
<p>Despite the eerie silence in public spaces, despite the preventable deaths that should weigh heavily on the consciences of public officials, even despite the authoritarian tendencies of too many leaders, the U.S. is not a dystopia – yet. </p>
<p>Overuse clouds the word’s meaning. Fictional dystopias warn of preventable futures; those warnings can help avert the actual demise of democracy.</p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
‘Dystopia’ is a term that’s gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s not a synonym for ‘a bad time,’ and a government’s poor handling of a crisis does not constitute dystopia.
Shauna Shames, Associate Professor, Rutgers University
Amy Atchison, Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations, Valparaiso University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82900
2017-08-29T20:10:22Z
2017-08-29T20:10:22Z
Beyond Atomic Blonde: cinema’s long, proud history of violent women
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183574/original/file-20170828-17108-w2r8fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> 87Eleven, Closed on Mondays Entertainment, Denver and Delilah Productions.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whenever a film like Wonder Woman or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2406566/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Atomic Blonde</a> is released, one thing is certain: critics will take notice of the violent heroines who lead the story. It happened with <a href="http://www.dailylife.com.au/dl-people/dl-entertainment/the-rise-of-the-young-feminist-action-hero-20131227-2zys0.html">Katniss Everdeen</a> in The Hunger Games, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/meet-the-new-action-heroines-1980491.html">Evelyn Salt</a> in Salt and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/style/cultural-studies-i-am-woman-now-prepare-to-die.html?pagewanted=all">Beatrix Kiddo</a> in Kill Bill. Whenever a heroine appears, some critics will argue that she is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/05/why-wonder-woman-is-a-masterpiece-of-subversive-feminism">landmark</a>, as in the case of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. </p>
<p>Some will <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/movies/blog/2016/05/06/what-lies-beyond-bad-ass-heroine-hollywood">complain</a> that she is simply “acting like a man”, whereas others will celebrate her, as in the case of Theron’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/07/wonder-woman-opened-floodgates-for-female-action-heroes">“smart, combat-ready action spy”</a>. And there will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/07/wonder-woman-opened-floodgates-for-female-action-heroes">inevitably be talk of a new era</a> of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/27/why-hunger-games-katniss-everdeen-role-model-jennifer-lawrence">female empowerment</a>) and “butt-kicking” heroines.</p>
<p>But there is nothing special or unusual about women kicking butt in film. Murder and violence are ever popular subjects in cinema, and women have taken part in the bloodshed from the beginning.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-the-amazons-the-real-wonder-women-78248">The truth about the Amazons – the real Wonder Women</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>An early heroine</h2>
<p>One of the earliest heroines who aspired to violence can be found in a silent film from 1923, La Souriante Madame Beudet. The titular character is a bored housewife who despises her boorish husband. So great is her dislike, in fact, that she fills a handgun with bullets in the hope he will accidentally shoot himself. </p>
<p>Monsieur Beudet discovers the bullets, but it never occurs to him that his wife had ill intent toward him. Instead, he stupidly concludes that she must have meant to kill herself rather than him. </p>
<p>Nearly 100 years after the film’s release, the joke appears to be on us. Monsieur Beudet’s reluctance to think that his wife is capable of murder mirrors our own surprise whenever violent women appear onscreen. </p>
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<p>In this early film, Madame Beudet’s near act of violence is a form of feminist commentary. It is a cry of frustration and a desperate act caused by an unsatisfying marriage.</p>
<h2>Film noir</h2>
<p>Women’s desire to escape their circumstances also appears as a motivating factor in film noir. Translating as “black film”, film noir is a genre made up of crime dramas and detective thrillers. They were first made in the USA in the 1940s and 50s – well-known examples include <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033870/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Maltese Falcon</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Big Sleep</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040525/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Lady from Shanghai</a>. </p>
<p>Noir films are diverse, but their hallmarks include male protagonists, violent crimes and the femme fatale (“fatal woman”), a beauty who sexually manipulates men for personal gain. Femmes fatales don’t always conspire to kill people, but some do go to such lengths. Phyllis Dietrichson of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Double Indemnity</a>, Cora Smith of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038854/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Postman Always Rings Twice</a> and Kathie Moffat in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Out of the Past</a> all spring to mind.</p>
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<p>These femmes fatales are not violent simply because they’re “bad”. Phyllis, Cora and Kathie all kill for money, which would help them achieve independence. Indeed, Cora repeatedly says she wants to “make something” of the business that she runs with her husband. The grim reality is that she can only accomplish this by murdering the dolt.</p>
<h2>Highbrow and lowbrow</h2>
<p>In other films, the purpose of women’s violence can be quite different. Some filmmakers use deadly women to shock audiences and challenge our values. Interestingly, this strategy appears in films at opposing ends of the cinema spectrum: “highbrow” art films as well as “lowbrow” exploitation cinema. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-reduce-sexism-in-screenplays-80142">How to reduce sexism in screenplays</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>“Exploitation” cinema is a genre named for the way these films “exploit” taboo topics to lure audiences. Themes include drug use, vigilantism, gratuitous sex and, in many cases, homicidal women. </p>
<p>Violent heroines correspond with the forbidden pleasures of exploitation cinema. As the “nurturing” sex, women “shouldn’t” kill people and it is scandalous to see them do so. Female killers thus appear aplenty in exploitation genres: in rape-revenge films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082776/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Ms .45</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077713/?ref_=nv_sr_2">I Spit on Your Grave</a>, in blaxploitations <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071517/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Foxy Brown</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069890/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Cleopatra Jones</a>, and in prison films <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066830/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Big Doll House</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068273/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Big Bird Cage</a>. </p>
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<p>Violent women’s subversive power also explains their appearance in some art films: thematically and aesthetically ambitious works that challenge established film norms. Violent women provide a means of pushing the boundaries. Feminist art film classic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073198/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles</a> famously ends with a housewife committing an act of murder. Extreme French film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204700/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Trouble Every Day</a> concerns cannibalistic Parisians plagued by sexual longing. Provocative art-horror film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Antichrist</a> is a story of spousal conflict that ends in violence.</p>
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<p>In each of these films, the female characters’ aggression expresses their alienation and angst. Each film is concerned with the extremes of human experience: oppressive domesticity, taboo desire and marital strife. Through their violence, women in these art films “speak” their unspeakable emotions, making them spectacular and bloody onscreen.</p>
<h2>Violent women today</h2>
<p>Violent women have been around for decades. So why are we still so surprised by them? </p>
<p>One reason is that we are in two minds about women’s aggression. On one hand, thinkers from <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/history/">Aristotle</a> to Sigmund Freud have characterised women as the passive sex. On the other, our narrative tradition is filled with tales that portray women as the nastier gender. The Gorgons, Euripides’s Medea, and the duplicitous femme fatale all suggest that, however tough a man might be, women are “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poems/the_female_of_the_species.shtml">more deadly than the male</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183575/original/file-20170828-17129-hqxco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Medea by Ernest Legouvé (1807-1903).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The incompatibility of these two ideas dooms us to endless surprise. We fall into the habit of thinking that women aren’t as violent as men, and so are impressed anew whenever another deadly woman appears.</p>
<p>One explanation for the enduring appeal of violent women in film is that cinema provides a space where we can realise our fantasies. Whether they are good or bad, deadly women offer enjoyable images of empowerment. Talking about her love of film noir, <a href="http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780851706665">Angela Martin</a> calls this “the treat of seeing women giving as good, if not better, than they got”. Physical vulnerability is an everyday reality for women, so the idea of fighting back is appealing. </p>
<p>And as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul.html?id=U6lMnx8AQsYC">Carl Jung</a> has written, cinema “makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and desirousness which must be repressed in a humanitarian ordering of life”. </p>
<p>Another explanation is simply that violent heroines provide product differentiation in a marketplace saturated with male action heroes. For example, when the first <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Alien</a> film appeared in 1979, the film’s heroine, Ellen Ripley, helped distinguish her franchise from masculine competitors. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451279/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wonder Woman</a> has a similar function today, standing out from the numerous male-led Marvel franchises. </p>
<h2>A new feminist era?</h2>
<p>Whenever a new “butt-kicking” heroine appears onscreen, some will be tempted to see her as evidence of a new feminist era. Certainly, there does seem to be some correlation between violent women and past feminist movements. Film noir emerged when women found new freedoms in wartime America, and many female-led vigilante films of the 1970s coincided with second-wave feminism. </p>
<p>Such links are compelling. However, it is more accurate to say that violent women appear consistently throughout cinema history. Sometimes they facilitate discussions of feminist issues, but they also offer remarkably consistent pleasures across the decades. They are fantasy figures, subversive mavericks, and an enduring part of our narrative tradition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janice Loreck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From Kill Bill to The Hunger Games, women have been kicking butt in films (and in real life) forever. But we still act surprised when they do, because deep down we still see women as the passive sex.
Janice Loreck, Adjunct Research Fellow in Communication and Cultural Studies, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/71733
2017-01-23T16:23:00Z
2017-01-23T16:23:00Z
How Donald Trump turned the presidency into greatest reality TV show on Earth
<p>Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president will go down as one of the great spectacles of our age. While <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lefts-response-to-trump-and-alt-right-must-be-international-71647">protesters</a> have been venting their anger, his supporters <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/20/donald-trump-supporters-inauguration-interview">have been</a> cheering his victory. Almost half of Americans <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/14/us-election-2016-voter-turnout-fell-to-58-per-cent-this-year-est/">may not have</a> bothered to vote on November 8, but, oh boy, will most of them be watching the show now. </p>
<p>If you are among those trying to make sense of the rise of Donald Trump, you <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268210904_Puppets_of_Necessity_Celebritisation_in_Structured_Reality_Television">have to</a> first understand reality television. The new president’s bewildering journey from The Apprentice to the Oval Office has been made possible by what he learned behind the cameras about the voting public and their relationship with modern televised entertainment. The media widely refers to Trump as a reality TV star. In fact, Trump and his advisers have turned the election and the presidency into the greatest reality TV show on Earth. </p>
<p>The Apprentice is a lesser example of a genre known as “structured reality TV”. Epitomised by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1086761/">Keeping Up With the Kardashians</a>, other classics would include <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306370/">The Osbournes</a>, <a href="http://www.itv.com/hub/the-only-way-is-essex/1a9310">The Only Way is Essex</a> and <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/made-in-chelsea">Made in Chelsea</a>. The genre is an intriguing hybrid of dramatisation and real life. </p>
<p>We all know the scenes are scripted or at least “directed” to maximise the drama, but the events are also based to some extent on the stars’ real lives. We buy in to a paradox, since it’s less entertaining if you have to wait for the action to happen, like on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/channel5bbuk">Big Brother</a>, or if stories are completely fictional, like in soap operas. </p>
<p>Trump has used exactly the same style to win power. Millions of people enjoy consuming news of his latest activities, sharing the latest and speculating about what will happen next. It doesn’t matter that we broadly acknowledge that Trump’s rhetoric is often false or unfounded – <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-chaotic-use-of-metaphor-is-a-crucial-part-of-his-appeal-61383">as does</a> the man himself <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/08/05/donald-trump-admits-doesnt-understand-sees-television/">on occasions</a>. He has manufactured a parallel structured reality, real enough to be compelling but fantastical enough to be entertaining. </p>
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<h2>Trump’s best bits</h2>
<p>When we <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268210904_Puppets_of_Necessity_Celebritisation_in_Structured_Reality_Television">looked at</a> what engages people with this kind of structured reality, we identified three key factors that could be applied to <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0267257X.2014.988282">existing academic theories</a>: a competition between different characters, a spectacle that exaggerates or stylises reality; and cultural hallmarks that help us to understand the environment. </p>
<p>This applies equally to Trump: he made the campaign a <a href="http://www.thehungergames.co.uk">Hunger Games</a>-style fight to the death between him and Hillary Clinton, turning on a clash of personalities. He took his political positions to their extremes during public rallies, such as <a href="http://www.reuters.com/video/2017/01/21/mexicans-build-makeshift-wall-around-us?videoId=370967850">proposing</a> a wall with Mexico; and he painted a picture of his America by drawing caricatures in crayon for the electorate, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/05/pence-yes-trump-called-mexicans-rapists-and-criminals-but-you-keep-forgetting-about-the-other-part/?utm_term=.379493e43521">such as</a> calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. </p>
<p>He also shared another important feature of structured reality TV, which is that people’s consumption is not restricted to watching the shows. We intensify the viewing experience by engaging with these people on social media and seeing them discussed in the media outside the limitations of the actual show. </p>
<p>Shows like Big Brother and <a href="http://www.itv.com/xfactor">The X Factor</a> hinge on the audience’s ability to influence participants’ outcomes through voting. Structured reality TV goes one stage further by embedding the sensation of voting in the normal rhythms of viewers’ social activity through mechanisms like social media. Donald Trump gave viewers the best of both: furious Twitter activity and an actual vote at the end, and something no other reality TV show can match – the prospect of influencing real life in a major way. </p>
<p>Trump played a similar trick on viewers as when we see someone like Kim Kardashian on the screen. Kardashian’s apparently stylised, exaggerated and idealistic world is dragged into reality by her seeming accessibility to viewers through social media. This bridges the gap between viewers’ desire to be like her and being able to fulfil that aspiration. Since we know what we’re seeing isn’t real but we persuade ourselves it’s a reality we can aspire to, we’re in on the delusion. </p>
<p>So too with Trump’s run for president – the man who became a billionaire property tycoon and then a household name as host of The Apprentice. This American dream fairytale has been undermined by ambiguity over his <a href="http://time.com/4521851/donald-trumps-wealth/">true wealth</a> and <a href="http://ijr.com/opinion/2015/09/247749-donald-trump-is-a-mediocre-businessman-and-his-record-proves-it/">business success</a>, yet his supporters use it as proof of his eligibility for office all the same. </p>
<p>They also use his inflammatory and divisive rhetoric as an excuse to display extreme views and normalise them. It echoes the way that after The Only Way is Essex appeared on British screens, many people from Essex became “more like” the stereotypical view of people from the county as they aspired to live like the stars of the show. </p>
<h2>There to serve</h2>
<p>The really neat trick from producers of the best structured reality TV is using our audience participation to know which way to steer the “drama” next. Do this and, hey presto, we feel like we are getting exactly what we want. </p>
<p>Trump’s supporters and opponents must have come away with a similar feeling from his “America first” <a href="https://theconversation.com/death-and-rebirth-reading-between-the-lines-of-trumps-inauguration-speech-71667">inauguration speech</a> and the subsequent spat over the number of people who attended the ceremony. Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2017/01/trumps-press-secretary-just-told-4-whoppers-in-5-minutes-233984">delivering</a> inauguration facts widely seen as false is a beautiful metaphor for people’s fears that Trump will worry more about appearances than getting on with the job – and potentially use it as a smokescreen for policy vacuums. </p>
<p>Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, meanwhile, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38712182">accused</a> the media of “talking about delegitimising the election” from day one, saying the administration would fight press coverage “tooth and nail every day”. Clearly The Hunger Games analogy continues, with the team now fighting the press. Over the next few weeks, Hillary Clinton is also likely to be replaced by <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/22/theresa-may-donald-trump-hold-talks-trade-deal-cuts-tariffs/">Theresa May</a>, the UK prime minister, and the <a href="http://www.voanews.com/a/trump-to-meet-with-mexican-president-nieto-pena/3687690.html">Mexican</a> and <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/us-president-trump-and-prime-minister-trudeau-plan-to-meet/article33699643/">Canadian</a> premiers as the next round of supporting actors in the Trump show to take to the stage. </p>
<p>Like the Kardashians, don’t be surprised if the Trump family become more prominent, too, or if this show runs for multiple seasons. When it’s worked this well until now, after all, why on earth would Donald Trump change direction?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Kim Kardashian et al taught Trump everything he knows.
Kevin O'Gorman, Professor of Management and Business History, Heriot-Watt University
Andrew MacLaren, Lecturer in Marketing. I research team and field dynamics within cultural and business contexts, Heriot-Watt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/51202
2015-11-25T02:37:46Z
2015-11-25T02:37:46Z
Blessed are the Hunger Games? Katniss Everdeen lives the Beatitudes
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102977/original/image-20151124-18230-11nee55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen represents the strength of living the Beatitudes against injustice. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Murray Close/Lionsgate</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>This article contains plot spoilers for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“I am done being a piece in his game.” So says Katniss Everdeen, the Mockingjay, in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ending-with-a-bang-or-a-whimper-the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-ii-51031">last instalment</a> of The Hunger Games movie franchise. She is done with corruption, with manipulations, and with being a pawn.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1330&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103116/original/image-20151125-18264-qg12ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1330&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Augustine of Hippo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simone Martini via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Done, too, with reactionary violence, undertaken to stay alive or in retaliation to the violence of others. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951266/">Mockingjay Part II</a> (2015) draws The Hunger Games film series to a conclusion. Throughout, Katniss (played by Jennifer Lawrence) has been an unpredictable heroine, who refuses to be typecast. </p>
<p>Over the course of her journey through violence, rebellion and political power, she serves as an example of the Beatitudes in today’s society. </p>
<p>The Beatitudes, from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A3-12&version=NRSVCE">Matthew 5:3-12 </a>), have historically been seen as the essential moral theology of Christianity. In the 5th century Augustine wrote of the Beatitudes as <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-%0ANicene_Fathers:_Series_I/Volume_VI/Our_Lord%27s_Sermon_on_the_Mount/Book_I/Chapter_1">tools for living perfectly</a>, embodying Christian ethics: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If anyone will piously and soberly consider the sermon […] on the mount […] I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The 14th Dalai Lama has <a href="http://www.dalailama.com/news/post/1233-his-holiness-the-dalai-lama-addresses-the-international-luncheon-held-in-conjunction-with-the-national-prayer-breakfast">drawn parallels between the Beatitudes and Buddhism</a>, emphasising concepts of compassion and respect for human life.</p>
<p>But are these relevant for us today, in a society where it seems that religion and beliefs are either used as weapons, or powerless in the face of oppression and violence? </p>
<p>I think they are. Katniss Everdeen represents the strength of living the Beatitudes against injustice. Through Katniss we gain a glimpse of how to live well, in the face of oppression, violence and corruption. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103101/original/image-20151125-18255-1ks547l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beatitudes on the steps of MEEI church.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Emery/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Blessed are the poor in spirit, those that mourn</h2>
<p>Katniss signals hope for the oppressed, those “poor in spirit”. She mourns and represents grief that channels action. Her shock at seeing rebels harm fellow citizens, in seeing citizen against citizen, galvanises her. </p>
<p>Katniss grieves for the loss of solidarity among the Districts and for the lack of respect for human lives. She steps forward, and rallies others to action. She symbolises hope: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We all have one enemy! He corrupts everyone, and everything! He turns the best of us against each other. Tonight, turn your weapons, to the Capital! Turn your weapons, to Snow!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The poor in spirit lack hope. We need leaders in our community to have empathy in grief, in the face of global violence, and to move beyond grief to action. </p>
<h2>Blessed are the meek</h2>
<p>Gone is the Katniss that lashes out, whose primary concern is for her family. In Mockingjay Part II we see Katniss’ strength in control, her identification with, and concern for, the marginalised. </p>
<p>It’s in this film that Katniss names an armed rebel as one of President Snow’s workers. He angrily retorts, “I’m not a slave.” Katniss quietly and simply acknowledges the truth in reply: “I am.” </p>
<p>It is this strength under control that makes the most powerful statement. It is recognition of our chains in connection with others who suffer that builds our communities, through strength and solidarity.</p>
<h2>Blessed are the peacemakers, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103104/original/image-20151125-18233-mpuxqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An active peacemaker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Lionsgate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Katniss “hungers and thirsts for righteousness” and is a “peacemaker”, albeit an active peacemaker in refusing to support yet another corrupt government. When we hunger and thirst for what is right, we care less for our own material gain and care more for the good of others. </p>
<p>Katniss’ thirsts for what is right. She refuses to be bullied and made into a victim, even under the new government of the rebels under President Coin. She opts for that which is good, giving freedom a chance, and makes her own choice against injustice and for righteousness. She defines a new future for herself, for her family, and community.</p>
<p>Katniss highlights the role of peacemakers in society. She takes risks in the name of peace. She seeks resolution. She effects change by changing her narrative, and the narrative of her District. </p>
<p>And she makes sure, in that plaintive final scene, that atrocities against human freedom will not be forgotten. Can we do the same, in contemporary society? </p>
<h2>Blessed are the pure of heart</h2>
<p>In the final scene of the movie, Katniss comforts her child after she wakes from a nightmare:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Did you have a nightmare? I have nightmares too. Someday I’ll explain it to you. Why they came. Why they won’t ever go away. But I’ll tell you how I survive it. </p>
<p>I make a list in my head. Of all the good things I’ve seen someone do. Every little thing I could remember. It’s like a game, I do it over and over. It gets a little tedious after all these years. But there are much worse games to play.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this exchange, we see the another Beatitude personified: blessed are the pure in heart. Katniss is “pure in heart” in her actions and desire in wanting to overthrow President Snow, and in her final act of defiance in the removal of power hungry President Coin. </p>
<p>She seeks justice and freedom from oppression for the community, rather than political power for herself. We see in the real world that the motive for action often determines the outcome; not much good comes from “help” that ravages the helpless. </p>
<p>Katniss is acting out of pure and selfless motives. </p>
<p>The relevance of belief, of ethical and moral choices for the good of self and others, of the Beatitudes, in our contemporary lives is signified. They have meaning, in a society that should seek to overturn injustices.</p>
<p><br>
<em>The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II is in cinemas now</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Westenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Hunger Games movie franchise has ended. What can we learn from Katniss Everdeen about living a just life? This article contains spoilers for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II.
Leonie Westenberg, Associate Lecturer in Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/51031
2015-11-22T21:46:52Z
2015-11-22T21:46:52Z
Ending with a bang or a whimper? The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102585/original/image-20151120-4379-mtedho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cressida (Natalie Dormer) and Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Lionsgate</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article contains plot spoilers.</em></p>
<p>There’s always a great deal of anticipation regarding the final film in a series as successful, and embedded in such an extensive fan network, as The Hunger Games. </p>
<p>The final film needs to develop a discrete story so that is still comprehensible to an audience of non-initiates, while at the same time referring back to and tying together the narrative, themes, and character relationships of the films that preceded it. </p>
<p>It needs to satisfy fans of the series by clearly wrapping everything up, but it needs to do more than that. </p>
<p>Series become, for fans, a kind of environment. The films become the backgrounds of lives, and there can be comfort in the knowledge that, at a certain time of the year (or every couple of years), another film in the series will be released. Think about what the end of the year meant to Harry Potter fans. </p>
<p>Final films, therefore, need to leave viewers with a sense of completion, but also with satisfaction regarding the future world for the characters they have come to know and love. The final scene in which we see our heroes will be the scene they inhabit for the rest of time. </p>
<p>The new Hunger Games film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951266/">The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II</a>, effectively fulfils the first two requirements, but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its ultimate presentation of its characters. </p>
<p>The narrative follows an “impossible mission” type structure (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061578/">The Dirty Dozen</a>, 1967, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062886/">The Devil’s Brigade </a>, 1968, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320253/">The Expendables</a>, 2010) with a band of rebel heroes up against the odds on a mission through hostile territory, dodging myriad pitfalls along the way. </p>
<p><a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Katniss_Everdeen">Katniss Everdeen</a> (Jennifer Lawrence) leads a small rebel unit, including the apices of the series’ love triangle, <a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Peeta_Mellark">Peeta Mellark</a> (Josh Hutcherson) and <a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Gale_Hawthorne">Gale Hawthorne</a> (Liam Hemsworth), into the Capital in order to assassinate dictator <a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Coriolanus_Snow">Snow</a> (Donald Sutherland).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102587/original/image-20151120-10452-dt5xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From left to right: Finnick Odair, Gale Hawthorne, Messalla and Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Lionsgate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A series that began with such a razor-sharp first film was at risk, in the third film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951265/">Mockingjay Part I</a> (2014), of devolving into the kind of tedious epic spectacle that characterised the later films of the Twilight series. </p>
<p>But Part II redeems the series through its spare approach to both design and story. One of the strengths of the films in the series has, indeed, been the simplicity of their narrative architecture. </p>
<p>The rendering of the world, in this film, as a kind of “game” – “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 76th Hunger Games,” <a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Finnick_Odair">Finnick</a> (Sam Claflin) says as they embark on their mission – beautifully ties together the first and fourth films. </p>
<p>The world becomes a kind of literalisation of the “gamespace” described by cultural theorist McKenzie Wark in <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104755.Gamer_Theory">Gamer Theory</a> (2007) – a gridded world of positive and negative choices, with ruthless competition and clearly attainable booty as the reward. </p>
<p>Various plot twists and turns occur as they edge closer to the Capitol. But the ending – the victory of the revolution against the Capital – is noticeably anticlimactic. </p>
<p>“Victory” in war, the film indicates, is little more than a spectacular sham – perhaps less brutal than the circus spectacles orchestrated by Snow - and yet hardly more ethically sound. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102595/original/image-20151120-10424-1qtzog2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Lionsgate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is problematic, in that it indicates that the political struggle – literally political, a struggle for the control of the polis at the centre of Panem – has been, virtually, for nought. </p>
<p>Thus the final words of <a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Plutarch_Heavensbee">Plutarch</a> (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000450/">Phillip Seymour Hoffman</a> appearing from beyond the grave, proving once again the miraculous nature of media) in a letter to Katniss that basically bemoan the state of idiotic humans and their political woes. </p>
<p>This, of course, begs the question, what was the point? </p>
<p>If political struggle is pointless, and power is inevitably filled by beings-to-be-corrupted, then why have we bothered following Katniss and her band of the disenfranchised through four films for a total of ten-plus hours?</p>
<p>In a sense, this kind of nullification of the political – “Burbanking” – is to be expected in Hollywood cinema, but the final scene is problematic for more reasons than this. </p>
<p>There is a new ruler, and Katniss, Peeta and <a href="http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Haymitch_Abernathy">Haymitch</a> (Woody Harrelson) return to Panem. It is all rather desolate, anticlimactic. There is no victory in victory. </p>
<p>The film then skips forward a few years. What do we see? </p>
<p>Katniss sits in an idyllic field, watching Peeta play with their son, while rocking a newborn in her arms. The hair blows through her hair, and she seems genuinely happy. </p>
<p>She should be: she is occupying the most satisfying role a woman can have, “mother” – or so the film seems to tell us. She’s a warrior, a freedom fighter, a hero for the exploited and abused … but really she just needed to pick the right man.</p>
<p>Katniss, it appears, is finally in her place; all of her fierce (and inspirational) action has led to her being saddled with a couple of kids, under the care of a good, rustic man. </p>
<p>Futuristic narratives are always worth thinking about, as they often offer critiques of the present off limits to films constrained by the requirements of social and physical verisimilitude. Some of the best social and political critiques in recent years have come from science-fiction films – Neil Blomkamp’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/">District 9</a> (2009) and Neveldine/ Taylor’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034032/">Gamer</a> (2009) come to mind. </p>
<p>Which is what makes the astonishing conservatism of the ending of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II so disappointing. </p>
<p>It’s a tough, solid film. Like the first two Hunger Games films, it is defined through its spare action and design, low-key for such a big-budget production relative to other Hollywood blockbusters. </p>
<p>But the reduction of Katniss, as it is played out in the final sequence, marks a genuine betrayal of the ideals of the rest of the series. One can’t help feeling that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II has turned its back on the revolution.</p>
<p><br>
<em>The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II opened in cinemas around Australia on November 20.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Hunger Game series has drawn to a close - so what conclusions does the final instalment leave us with? This article contains plot spoilers.
Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36695
2015-03-20T10:07:08Z
2015-03-20T10:07:08Z
Girls on fire: political empowerment in young adult dystopia
<p>Young Adult (YA) dystopia stories have never been more popular, and today’s release of Insurgent – the second film in the Divergent series – is only the most recent example.</p>
<p>This series has inspired popular trends like Divergent-themed personality tests, self-defense training and even <a href="http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Divergent+Faction+Symbol+Temporary+Tattoo+Pack-10132669.jsp">tattoos</a> (out of stock!).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, books like Legend, Under the Never Sky, Matched and Blood Red Road have all spawned trilogies and been <a href="http://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/14-ya-film-adaptations-sparked-by-hunger-games-success.html/?a=viewall">optioned for movies</a>. And beyond the traditional fare of toys, dolls and costumes, The Hunger Games series – especially Katniss, the “girl on fire” protagonist – has inspired <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/11/27/247379498/more-girls-target-archery-inspired-by-the-hunger-games">archery lessons</a>, <a href="http://www.fashiongonerogue.com/covergirl-hunger-games-makeup-collection/">make up campaigns</a>, <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/momkorn/hunger-games-cakes/">birthday cakes</a> and <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/hunger-games-fashion">fashion spreads</a>.</p>
<p>Clearly, YA dystopia is having an effect on consumerism and pop culture. Media coverage, however, will still often center on romantic elements of the genre’s books and movies: the <a href="http://www.popsugar.com/love/Peeta-Gale-Hunger-Games-22310148">relationships</a> and crushes among various characters. It also tends to <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/ya-dystopian-films-have-become-what-they-hate.html">discount the genre</a> as a whole because of the film adaptations. </p>
<p>But it’s the political potential of this literary phenomenon – especially for empowering girls – that could ultimately be the genre’s most profound and lasting influence. And though its staying power has yet to be tested, YA dystopia has spurred legions of readers towards promoting social justice.</p>
<h2>Dystopian girl power</h2>
<p>Unlike past young adult series geared towards teen girls – The Babysitter’s Club, Clueless, Twilight – these books are about more than love triangles, hairstyles or popularity. </p>
<p>Instead, the YA dystopia genre, as a whole, does what all great science fiction – from Brave New World to Mad Max – sets out to do: it holds up a mirror to our world, acting as a tool for social critique.</p>
<p>As many have noted, these dystopian futures <a href="http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/02/dystopian-fiction-matches-reality/">are not so distant</a>. Today, we face many of the same problems contained in these fictional worlds: violence against women, climate-related catastrophes, extreme inequalities in wealth and impenetrable power structures.</p>
<p>Many YA dystopia books feature girls who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/movies/katniss-everdeen-a-new-type-of-woman-warrior.html?pagewanted=all">buck the conventions</a> of our world as much as theirs, challenging gender roles and expectations. For example, their female protagonists often take on <a href="http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-rebel-warrior-and-the-boy-with-the-bread-gale-peeta-and-masculinity-in-the-hunger-games">traditionally masculine roles</a>. Instead of acting as bystanders or caretakers, they fight, investigate, infiltrate, rescue, protect, journey and lead. </p>
<p><a href="http://filmschoolrejects.com/opinions/why-the-hunger-games-isnt-twilight-kerbl.php">This isn’t the case</a> in the popular vampire-themed Twilight series, where protagonist Bella Swan is often a passive player. But in YA dystopia novels, female characters like Cassia (in Matched) and Eve (from the Eve series) refuse to obediently accept the hand that’s been dealt to them.</p>
<p>Most of these books begin with a girl protagonist experiencing and discovering the corruption and injustice of society. From there, she has to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/11/katniss-everdeen_n_5481087.html">navigate just to survive</a>. These girls are beaten and bruised, shot and burned, starved and oppressed, manipulated and used. But they do more than simply survive. </p>
<p>In Birthmarked, Gaia’s facial scar keeps her from being adopted into the Enclave, a society separated from her community by a wall. Gaia’s parents are arrested, which leads Gaia to discover that life inside the wall is not as ideal as she imagined it to be. Rather than accept the status quo, like all “girls on fire” she fights back: first by going inside the wall to try to find her parents, and then by protecting her baby sister from the Enclave.</p>
<p>The Summer Prince’s June is an artist competing for a prestigious prize. But when she discovers that the price she will have to pay to win includes not only her integrity, but also the continued subjugation of the lower class, she turns her art into a political weapon. </p>
<p>Both Gaia and June become leaders in ways that real girls and women in the U.S. <a href="http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1102/female_pols_and_miss_representation.html">rarely do</a>. Possessing agency and power, characters like Gaia and June act as voices for the the oppressed masses.</p>
<h2>Diversity tackled head on</h2>
<p>Like other areas of pop culture, children’s literature continues to be <a href="http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/answer-implicit-racism-might-childrens-literature-95094">dominated</a> by white, male characters. In response, Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon created <a href="http://www.diversityinya.com/">Diversity in YA</a> in 2011. Last year, a number of bloggers, authors and academics launched the campaign <a href="http://weneeddiversebooks.tumblr.com/post/83943947418/we-need-diverse-books-campaign">#WeNeedDiverseBooks</a>.</p>
<p>They’re concerned because a lack of diversity fails to accurately represent a changing world – a travesty in the realm of dystopian fiction where a whitewashed future <a href="http://www.cultureandmovement.com/blog/octavia-e-butler-racing-the-future">is illogical</a>, at best.</p>
<p>While the most well known works in YA dystopia – The Hunger Games, Divergent, Uglies – feature white or racially ambiguous girls as their protagonists, many science fiction and dystopian YA novels <a href="http://nkjemisin.com/2010/01/why-i-think-racefail-was-the-bestest-thing-evar-for-sff/">complicate the ways</a> in which race is imagined, or, rather, ignored. </p>
<p>Victoria Law’s column for Bitch Magazine has also brought attention to <a href="http://bitchmagazine.org/blogs/girls-of-color-in-dystopia">girls of color in dystopia</a>, books that continue to be marginalized in the mainstream.</p>
<p>Trilogies like Partials, Legend and The Immortal Rules explicitly mention non-white racial features and ethnic heritage, though these aspects are of little thematic importance. But other books – the <a href="http://bitchmagazine.org/post/looking-at-class-caste-skin-color-karen-sandler-tankborn-review-book">Tankborn series</a>, <a href="http://bitchmagazine.org/post/review-shadows-cast-by-stars-race-identity-ya">Shadows Cast By Stars</a>, <a href="http://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/teen-book-fest/ask-author-almost-anything-sherri-l-smith-author-orleans">Orleans</a>, The Summer Prince – center on characters whose experiences are shaped by their racial and ethnic heritages in new, dystopian contexts. </p>
<p>Ultimately, these characters give voice and agency to girls of color in fiction and reality, providing an outlet that’s sorely lacking in other corners of YA literature.</p>
<h2>Literature-inspired activism</h2>
<p>The radical politics of YA dystopia have even seeped off the page. For example, adults and young adults alike are finding value in the ideas and symbols provided by The Hunger Games, many of which have been co-opted for real-life protests and social movements. </p>
<p>The AFL-CIO brings attention to poverty and the need for social justice through its <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/The-Hunger-Games-Are-Real">“We Are the Districts” campaign</a> – a reference to districts that revolt against the Capitol of Panem in The Hunger Games. And in Korea, a young woman and her friends <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/world/asia/thailand-protesters-hunger-games-salute.html?_r=0">were detained</a> after holding up the Hunger Games’ three-finger salute to protest their authoritarian government. </p>
<p>Finally, the symbol of the “girl on fire” has empowered girls in the US – and even around the world. In Kenya, the <a href="http://www.girlsonfireleaders.com/">Girls on Fire Leadership Camp</a> draws inspiration from singer Alicia Keys, giving at-risk girls an opportunity to “experience their country for the first time” and to “view themselves as part of the solution and unlock their full potential as young leaders and change makers.”</p>
<p>When it comes to the ideas, practices and possibilities that stem from <a href="http://www.cultureandmovement.com/ya-dystopia.html">YA dystopia</a>, it doesn’t matter that they originate in fictional works. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/mockingjay-discussion-12-real-or-not-real/">Real or not real</a>, these characters, stories and settings ask to us to think about the past, present and future, to imagine new possibilities and opportunities for the marginalized and oppressed – and to even take to the streets.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Hentges does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
By featuring girls who buck the conventions of their world – and ours – films like Insurgent inspire fans to enact real change.
Sarah Hentges, Assistant Professor of American Studies, University of Maine at Augusta
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36594
2015-02-02T19:06:44Z
2015-02-02T19:06:44Z
The princess is not quite dead, but it’s time to let her go
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70099/original/image-20150127-24505-id2pzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women – and little girls even more so – are desperate to see images and stories that don’t actively oppress them onscreen</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nadia Meli</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some time ago my then five-year-old goddaughter began insistently and, it must be said, somewhat repetitively humming a few bars that would quickly become one of the world’s most ubiquitous earworms. As it turned out, when she opined in tiny soprano about a “kingdom of isolation” in which there was “not a footprint to be seen” she was quoting not Robinson Crusoe, but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MK7qz13bU">Let It Go</a>, the international smash-hit theme song from the international smash-hit Disney film, Frozen.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294629/">Frozen</a> (2013) is an extremely loose adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/hans_christian_andersen/972/">The Snow Queen</a>. One of its producers <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/09/25/inside-the-research-design-and-animation-of-walt-disneys-frozen-with-producer-peter-del-vecho/">has said</a>, “There is snow and there is ice and there is a queen” but that’s about the extent of the film’s fidelity to its 19th-century source. </p>
<p>The film has been celebrated both for its extraordinary commercial success and for its departure from typical Disney-fied fairy-tale conventions. Unlike almost every successful feature-length animation from Disney since 1937 – the majority of which have had for protagonists human or anthropomorphised princesses – Frozen does not end with a wedding. This is even despite the presence of two bona fide princesses – Elsa and Anna – as central characters. </p>
<p>The film has been welcomed by many parents who view its climactic celebration of sororal rather than romantic love as a relief from the otherwise relentless heteronormative marriage-plots of other major Disney works. </p>
<p>Now, as you can imagine, the film’s significant departure from historic Disney conventions came as a disturbing shock to certain conservative viewers, including one American commentator <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-26759342">who described</a> the film as “evil, just evil”, claiming that it indoctrinates girls into lesbianism while promoting the anti-family and anti-Christian values of feminism and (I guess) ice sculpture. </p>
<p>Naturally I felt obliged to investigate. </p>
<p>I watched Frozen, along with seven other recent films aimed at or starring children and young women which have been similarly celebrated for their unconventional heroines. The most critically discussed of these films are the first three instalments of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/">The Hunger Games</a> (2012-), live-action adaptations of Suzanne Collins’s novelistic trilogy, with the final film due this year. </p>
<p>I noticed some surprising commonalities between Frozen, Joe Wright’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993842/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Hanna</a> (2011), the Sundance favourite <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125435/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Beasts of the Southern Wild</a> (2012), last year’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587310/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Maleficent</a> (a retelling of Sleeping Beauty starring Angelina Jolie), and The Hunger Games. </p>
<h2>Brave</h2>
<p>It is a scene from the Disney-Pixar collaboration <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1217209/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Brave</a> (2012), however, that I think best encapsulates the most provocative and significant motif of all these films. </p>
<p>In the scene below, the princess Merida foils her parents’ attempts to choose her a husband by defeating all her suitors at an archery contest. “Curse this dress!” she cries as she bursts her seams and splits an unlucky swain’s arrow cleanly in two. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TEHWDA_6e3M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In each of these films, the heroines both metaphorically and literally resist the role of princess, at least so far as that role constrains girls and young women into a pattern of perfection, prettiness and victimhood (not to mention uncomfortable clothing). </p>
<p>As one reviewer of The Hunger Games <a href="http://www.vnews.com/lifetimes/9543718-95/heroine-creates-a-hunger">wrote of its protagonist</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Imperfect but authentic, Katniss is a heroine, and young women aren’t used to seeing that in Hollywood movies where a parade of stereotypes – mean girls, vixens, sluts, victims, fat girls, uptight corporate types, anxious brides and scheming bridesmaids – sashay down the cinematic runway. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“That perfect girl is gone,” sings Elsa in Let it Go, and in each of these films the perfect girl – the princess – has been replaced with something much more powerful, and apparently much more compelling to a 21st-century audience: the Roman goddess <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Diana_%28Roman_goddess%29.aspx">Diana</a>. </p>
<p>The imagery used in each of these films draws heavily on motifs associated with the Ancient Greek Goddess <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/36796/Artemis">Artemis</a>, her Roman counterpart Diana and, to a lesser extent, goddesses from other ancient religious traditions the colonising Romans identified with their goddess of the hunt. </p>
<p>A handful of the proliferating critical accounts of The Hunger Games franchise have recognised this classical connection. Classical allusions abound in the original trilogy of novels on which the film is based – the author, Suzanne Collins, has <a href="http://www.gradesaver.com/the-hunger-games/study-guide/the-story-of-theseus-and-the-minotaur">spoken at length</a> about the genesis of the novels in her meditation on the legend of the Cretan labyrinth, in which a “tribute” of young men and women from conquered states were annually sacrificed to the appetites of the Minotaur.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70102/original/image-20150127-24515-1n2xe4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liam Hemsworth, Jennifer Lawrence and Sam Claflin pose during a photocall for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 in Cannes last year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Julien Warnand</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Collins’ self-conscious use of Latin names and phrases to round out her dystopia draw further attention to its classical inspiration. </p>
<p>Several critics have sought to point out Katniss’s resemblance to the goddess Diana. The film critic Manohla Dargis, for example, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/movies/the-hunger-games-movie-adapts-the-suzanne-collins-novel.html?_r=0">calls her</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A brilliant, possibly historic creation – stripped of sentimentality and psychosexual ornamentation, armed with Diana’s bow and a ferocious will – Katniss is a new female warrior. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their heroine is a “Diana-like huntress” writes James Verniere in the Boston Herald, or “a teenage Diana, bowstring ever-taut against flushed cheek”, as Rafer Gúzman <a href="http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/review-the-hunger-games-darker-than-harry-potter-more-sophisticated-than-twilight-1.3613919">more pruriently</a> has it. </p>
<p>Nicola Smith, celebrating Katniss’s access to a wild landscape that is typically seen in film as “the province of boys”, <a href="http://www.vnews.com/lifetimes/9543718-95/heroine-creates-a-hunger">writes that</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>she’s Artemis, the archer with unerring aim who, in Greek myth, is also called on to protect both young girls and the wilderness. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the first hint, in any review I have seen, of Diana/ Artemis’ wider associations. The films themselves, however, make their connection to the myths of the goddess much more transparent and extensive. Smith’s characterisation of Artemis being called on to “protect the wilderness” is somewhat misleading — accounts of classical belief rather identify Diana with wild places and wild animals – for instance as Homer’s <a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potnia_Theron">Potnia Theron</a>, “mistress of animals”
– or more broadly with wildness itself.</p>
<p>In each of these films, then, the heroine is seen to be at home in the wild: Merida in the pre-Christian Scottish highlands; Elsa among snow-covered Norwegian mountains; Katniss in a kind of neo-pioneerable American forest; Hanna somewhere so high above the arctic circle she can’t get WiFi; Maleficent in a more deliberately fairytale wilderness; and Hushpuppy in the derelict Louisiana swamp known to its few human residents as “The Bathtub”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70101/original/image-20150127-24546-5xzthi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from Beasts of the Southern Wild, winner of the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Jess Pinkham</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Artemis is, of course, an archer, and along with Katniss, Merida and Hanna, another expert with a bow. The goddess’ relationship with wild animals – particularly bears, stags and other game animals – finds echoes in the films’ bears (Brave), stags (Hunger Games III, Hanna) and the aurochs from Beasts of the Southern Wild, which for unexplained reasons are not wild oxen but a kind of pig. </p>
<p>Like the trained assassin Hanna, the less well-trained assassin Katniss Everdeen, Frozen’s ice-bolt throwing Elsa and, most significantly, Maleficent – who both curses and, in Angelina Jolie’s version of events, also cares for and eventually rescues the dopey Princess Aurora – Artemis was the goddess associated both with the care and protection of girls, but also their sudden death. </p>
<p>And then, of course, there’s Diana’s association with torches, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX4e__W3W9k">with fire</a>. </p>
<h2>What does this mean for our girls?</h2>
<p>I could go on and on, about the various connections to be made between Diana imagery and these films, and one of the reasons is that the world under Diana’s or Artemis’ protection is a wide one. But what does this mean for our girls? </p>
<p>Regardless of the place they might once have been accorded in the ancient world, the versions of Diana and Artemis we have inherited are greatly fallen from the original grandeur and power attributed to them by the pre-classical worshipper. This fall begins early – Artemis is already a pouting, contemptible figure in Homer’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad">Iliad</a>. </p>
<p>In the earliest Greek proto-novels of the 1st century AD, the writer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariton">Chariton</a> imagines the goddess:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>with her dress tucked up to her knees and her arms bared, with flushed face and heaving bosom. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In artistic representations of Artemis and Diana from the Renaissance onward, imagery of the Virgin goddess is intensely sexualised. She’s usually depicted as a nude or provocatively scantily-clad girl, lounging about a kind of Edenic sylvan porno set. </p>
<p>We can compare her fate to that of Frozen’s Elsa, throwing off her crown and her kingdom in Let It Go. In the moment of her triumph and liberation, Elsa, the fictional character with whom my own, beloved goddaughter most closely identifies, resembles no one so much as a cut-rate Las Vegas entertainer, sashaying around her crystalline ice palace like the worst kind of post-feminist cliché. </p>
<p>It turns out that very little is gained in the movement from princess to Artemis. What these filmmakers have done is nothing more enlightened than the classic bed-trick – a not-very-magical switcheroo, which has displaced one hypersexualised, confining archetype for another. </p>
<p>In doing so, these various filmmakers have been true, perhaps, to a later incarnation of the goddess. In the 19th- and 20th-centuries Diana/Artemis became the symbol of commerce - that’s one reason for her conspicuous place in the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park, in Sydney’s CBD. The goddess of the hunt became the figurehead of laissez-faire capitalism, so maybe it’s only appropriate that – as well as being highly praised and much written about and discussed – these films have been tremendously lucrative. </p>
<p>The first Hunger Games movie topped that year’s box office; Frozen made US$1 billion in revenue for Disney in the last 12 months. As one of the finance journalists in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/magazine/how-disney-turned-frozen-into-a-cash-cow.html">the New York Times noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Disney said earlier this month that it had already sold three million “Frozen” dresses in North America, which, as it happens, is roughly the number of 4-year-old girls in North America. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70104/original/image-20150127-24552-18olg1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artemis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That little girls, older girls, and women have thrown themselves into their role as new acolytes of Artemis is no reflection on their intelligence. </p>
<p>I think it reflects something much worse – the absolute dearth of cinema featuring heroines with any heroism to speak of. To paraphrase The Hunger Games, when it comes to girls on film, the odds have never been in their favour. </p>
<p>The only reason Manohla Dargis can <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/movies/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-1.html">call Katniss</a> a “boundary-smashing butch goddess of dystopian cinema” is that, as she also notes, “85% of the top-grossing movies from 2013 have male leads. </p>
<p>As we know all too well from applying <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-bechdel-test-doesnt-tell-us-about-women-on-film-20062">the Bechdel test</a>, of course, having a female lead doesn’t mean there are likely to be any other female characters. </p>
<p>The only films worse, more dispiriting, or less feminist than these films, unfortunately, are all the other films that girls and women might like to watch. They are not the answer, but they do at least help us to recognise just how dismal the question is. </p>
<p>Women – and little girls even more so – are desperate to see images and stories that don’t actively oppress them onscreen. So desperate, in fact, that they will listen, and sing along to Elsa’s theme song, over and over and over and over, despite its perfect horribleness. </p>
<p>The princess is not quite dead, and her successor Artemis is – as with most regime changes – really no improvement. It’s time to let her go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some time ago my then five-year-old goddaughter began insistently and, it must be said, somewhat repetitively humming a few bars that would quickly become one of the world’s most ubiquitous earworms. As…
Olivia Murphy, Postdoctoral research fellow in English, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.