A Hungry Audience
Apr. 9th, 2012 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilThis is a bit of a deviation from my feminist analyses of children's movies, but since The Hunger Games has been getting an awful lot of attention lately, I though I'd give my own take on the series. First off, I'm definitely a fan. I tore through the books in a matter of days, and I've seen the movie twice already. The interesting thing is, I've loved other books just as well, but none of them have garnered as much wide-spread attention and popularity. Are the Hunger Games books any more deserving? Maybe so, maybe not. But here they are.
In large part, things become popular because they're already popular. Fame feeds itself. You see an article saying "Everyone's talking about these books!" and you pick them up just to find out what the big deal is. Then you're one more person talking about them. Still, there usually has to be something behind all the hype. Myself, I'm prone to reverse-peer pressure - if everyone's doing it, I avoid it like the plague just try to maintain a little individuality. Yes, I know, that means I'm just as much controlled by these trends as everyone running in the opposite direction. That's why, after hearing enough about the books that I thought I'd like them, I did go ahead and read them.
They're set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future, yet they are very timely. They address the dangers of overindulgence and greed, the vapidity of reality television becoming something far more sinister, and injustice of pampered and wealthy classes building their luxurious lives on the backs of the poor and severely deprived classes - with zero mobility permitted between classes. That's part of their widespread appeal. Also, they tell a darn good story - fast-paced, intense, tightly-plotted.
Then there's a strong female protagonist. Katniss is a complex, sympathetic and engaging character, not because she's a girl and not in spite of being a girl, but just because she is. A character liked that is all too rare in movies - a little more common in books, but too many people, male and female alike, avoid any book with a cover that looks too girly, or a plot description with any intimation of female-ness. The Hunger Games avoids some of that stigma with a dark, non-feminine cover and plenty of action and pragmatic situations so picky boys can overlook the horror of reading a story from a cootie-infected girl's point of view.
And. I hate to say it, but I suspect these books owe much of their success to the Twilight franchise. For some readers, they hear there's another set of books with a girl caught in a love triangle between two gorgeous guys, and that's all they need. But I think most readers who latched onto the Hunger Games were sick and tired of the insane popularity of Twilight, when the lead was a spineless piece of cardboard whose only instance of being proactive was clinging to a fanatical devotion to a border-line abusive boyfriend. For them, the Hunger Games is the anti-Twilight. The love triangle is a side plot, not the focus. (I would have liked to see it pushed even further to the side, myself, but I despise triangles as a rule. Contrived melodrama.) The protagonist's greatest peril is not choosing whom to get kissy-faced with, but how to stay alive and save the lives of those she loves. She becomes the symbol of a nation-wide rebellion. She's everything Bella is not. So of course when people hear about young adult books with a character like that, they grab hold of it for dear life.
Myself, I think it's ludicrous to even compare the two series(es?). They have nothing in common beyond being speculative fiction with a teenage female lead and some dealings with romances. I could name dozens of speculative fiction books that have a teenage female lead and some dealings with romances. Most of my books, for one. But it all goes back to that fame feeding itself thing. As long as people keep comparing the two, everyone will assume there's something significant to be compared. Because they're both insanely popular YA novels. When they say "It's the next__________", that's all it really means. It's the next popular thing. No other connection beyond that.
As with anything garnering this much attention, some of it is negative. Apparently the author plagiarized Battle Royale, because it's impossible for two separate stories to both have the idea of children forced to fight to the death. Or it's obviously just a cold, calculated attempt to please all the right target audiences - gushy romance for girls (because that's all girls ever want), action for boys (because boys are too full of testosterone to tolerate anything without blood and fire and death and stuff), political stuff for, uh, award-giver-outers? I just didn't get that vibe from the author. It didn't feel calculated. It felt like it was a story she very strongly wanted to tell, with characters she cared deeply about. Maybe she's fooled us all. But I've read fiction that's clearly calculated to manipulate all the right audiences. This wasn't it.
Sure, I have a few complaints of my own besides not liking the love triangle. It's written in first-person present tense, which always irks me. Feels gimmicky. Don't get me wrong - she writes it very well, much better than other examples of first person present I've read. (And I must confess to writing a short story in first person present....so, yes, I'm a hypocrite, though I'd argue that in the right context, it can work - but mostly in short form. Over three novels, eh, not as much.) Also, the third book, while excellent, began to have a very predictable pattern of Katniss going somewhere dangerous, getting hurt, waking in a hospital bed, and recovering just in time to go on to the next danger. Over and over and over again. The books aren't perfect - they're just held to a high standard because of all the attention being showered on them. Well, that's the price of fame.
In large part, things become popular because they're already popular. Fame feeds itself. You see an article saying "Everyone's talking about these books!" and you pick them up just to find out what the big deal is. Then you're one more person talking about them. Still, there usually has to be something behind all the hype. Myself, I'm prone to reverse-peer pressure - if everyone's doing it, I avoid it like the plague just try to maintain a little individuality. Yes, I know, that means I'm just as much controlled by these trends as everyone running in the opposite direction. That's why, after hearing enough about the books that I thought I'd like them, I did go ahead and read them.
They're set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future, yet they are very timely. They address the dangers of overindulgence and greed, the vapidity of reality television becoming something far more sinister, and injustice of pampered and wealthy classes building their luxurious lives on the backs of the poor and severely deprived classes - with zero mobility permitted between classes. That's part of their widespread appeal. Also, they tell a darn good story - fast-paced, intense, tightly-plotted.
Then there's a strong female protagonist. Katniss is a complex, sympathetic and engaging character, not because she's a girl and not in spite of being a girl, but just because she is. A character liked that is all too rare in movies - a little more common in books, but too many people, male and female alike, avoid any book with a cover that looks too girly, or a plot description with any intimation of female-ness. The Hunger Games avoids some of that stigma with a dark, non-feminine cover and plenty of action and pragmatic situations so picky boys can overlook the horror of reading a story from a cootie-infected girl's point of view.
And. I hate to say it, but I suspect these books owe much of their success to the Twilight franchise. For some readers, they hear there's another set of books with a girl caught in a love triangle between two gorgeous guys, and that's all they need. But I think most readers who latched onto the Hunger Games were sick and tired of the insane popularity of Twilight, when the lead was a spineless piece of cardboard whose only instance of being proactive was clinging to a fanatical devotion to a border-line abusive boyfriend. For them, the Hunger Games is the anti-Twilight. The love triangle is a side plot, not the focus. (I would have liked to see it pushed even further to the side, myself, but I despise triangles as a rule. Contrived melodrama.) The protagonist's greatest peril is not choosing whom to get kissy-faced with, but how to stay alive and save the lives of those she loves. She becomes the symbol of a nation-wide rebellion. She's everything Bella is not. So of course when people hear about young adult books with a character like that, they grab hold of it for dear life.
Myself, I think it's ludicrous to even compare the two series(es?). They have nothing in common beyond being speculative fiction with a teenage female lead and some dealings with romances. I could name dozens of speculative fiction books that have a teenage female lead and some dealings with romances. Most of my books, for one. But it all goes back to that fame feeding itself thing. As long as people keep comparing the two, everyone will assume there's something significant to be compared. Because they're both insanely popular YA novels. When they say "It's the next__________", that's all it really means. It's the next popular thing. No other connection beyond that.
As with anything garnering this much attention, some of it is negative. Apparently the author plagiarized Battle Royale, because it's impossible for two separate stories to both have the idea of children forced to fight to the death. Or it's obviously just a cold, calculated attempt to please all the right target audiences - gushy romance for girls (because that's all girls ever want), action for boys (because boys are too full of testosterone to tolerate anything without blood and fire and death and stuff), political stuff for, uh, award-giver-outers? I just didn't get that vibe from the author. It didn't feel calculated. It felt like it was a story she very strongly wanted to tell, with characters she cared deeply about. Maybe she's fooled us all. But I've read fiction that's clearly calculated to manipulate all the right audiences. This wasn't it.
Sure, I have a few complaints of my own besides not liking the love triangle. It's written in first-person present tense, which always irks me. Feels gimmicky. Don't get me wrong - she writes it very well, much better than other examples of first person present I've read. (And I must confess to writing a short story in first person present....so, yes, I'm a hypocrite, though I'd argue that in the right context, it can work - but mostly in short form. Over three novels, eh, not as much.) Also, the third book, while excellent, began to have a very predictable pattern of Katniss going somewhere dangerous, getting hurt, waking in a hospital bed, and recovering just in time to go on to the next danger. Over and over and over again. The books aren't perfect - they're just held to a high standard because of all the attention being showered on them. Well, that's the price of fame.
