noreliefinwaking:

aimmyarrowshigh:

angel-gidget:aimmyarrowshigh:city-night-lights:

Take a look at the marketing campaigns. Everything seems to be done to make us feel as if we belong to the Capitol. Yes, the Capitol. Not District 12. Not District 8. Not District 11. Take a look at the bigger picture. There’s the nail polish line. The water. Now the Capitol Couture. And who knows what will come next. The Capitol trying to lure its own citizens.

How many of us almost couldn’t stop reading the books, anxious for whatever  perplexing and perverse twist would occur? We’re eagerly looking forward to watch a movie focused on terrifying events. As if we’re Capitol citizens waiting to be entertained. Panem et circenses. Bread and circus. Food and entertainment. We need to be pleased, satisfied. Give us something to numb our minds.

Gleeful TV channels, newspapers and magazines that gossip and obsess over other people’s lives and indulge in more news of horrifying, shocking and frightening events. People who distort their bodies to the point of losing their soul and mind in the process. Societies ruled by apathy that see atrocities going unpunished.

Sounding familiar? To what extent are we just another piece in their games?

Yup, that would be the entire point of the series.  It’s an intentional comment on our own culture (and the author has said so fairly often).  That’s part of why I’m not interested or impressed by anything that the movie is doing and why it detracts from, and not adds to, the significance of The Hunger Games as a cultural reflection.

Okedoke..

Unpopular opinion time which may lose me lots and lots of followers, but….

I really don’t get who people get so DEFENSIVE about this. That is, I GET it, but I don’t FEEL it.

Yes, we’re like the Capitol. From the moment most people picked up the book and opened it to the first page of the first chapter, they were acting like the Capitol.

You knew when you bought your copy that there were kids killing kids in it.

You knew.

It was in the summary, told in the trailer, and is now the talk of the lit scene all over.

You knew.

But you picked it up anyway.

The gladiatorial nature clearly didn’t turn you off.

Bam! Capitol behavior.

So for the first two books, I just got to stew in the idea. For all throughout Hunger Games and Catching Fire,  just accepted my own hypocrisy and hated the Capitol who was hurting my beloved characters, even while knowing THAT was the group I most resembled.

And then we have Mockingjay. Mockingjay in which Katniss DEFENDS Octavia to Gale. Because Gale is like us throughout the first two books, hating the Capitol with fervor and wanting them all dead. But Katniss realizes by now that it’s a mixed bag.

Octavia is part of the Capitol. Octavia exaggerates, fangirls, goes out and buys the Hunger Games nail-polish, writes smutty fanfic about the starcrossed lovers of District 12 (Don’t look at me like that, you know she did.), and carries on about her favorite celebrities having FEELS about them, all while obliviously not comprehending their real problems, and generally being blind to a lot of the things that are so wrong with the world she’s in.

But Octavia is no heartless bitch. Octavia’s eyes can be opened once everything is made personal. When it is her victor, her FRIEND, who’s life is going back under the chopping block, she cries. And maybe hates the Capitol (herself) too.  And Gale treating her like she isn’t human is WRONG.

It’s not our fascinations, but our actions that really determine whether we’re monsters or not.

We are the Capitol. But the Capitol is a mixed bag. Easy to forget, since it’s the antagonist, but it’s true.

And by drawing our attention to the darkness in ourselves, perhaps we can better learn how to control it. Not be dominated by it, but also realize that isn’t the same as denying it.

So I’m gonna extend kudos to the thinking kid who buys that nail polish.

Heck yeah.

Because it’s okay to have shallow desires. It’s okay to like a little bit of glittering pretty, and to want something tangible in your hand that associates with a story you love.

And with my eyes open, I know that no one’s gonna suffer for the purchase of that polish.  No kid’s gonna get killed. No oppressive government is going to prosper. ‘Cause who gets the money ultimately? Merchants. Producers. Investors. People who worked or risked to make the story real.

It’s a paradox designed to make us THINK, but we don’t have to wallow in guilt or decry the people who seem to play along a little more than others.

We just have to remember that we’re all human in the end.

I don’t necessarily think that it’s something anyone should feel bad or ashamed about — fuck, I write about pop culture for money; I can’t say that I don’t feed the machine, because I do, and without the machine, I’d be bankrupt most likely — but I DO think it’s something that we all need to acknowledge in ourselves, and if The Hunger Games can be (and is) a vehicle for new forms of self-management and cultural examination, then THAT is what I think SC’s goal most likely was with the series.

(And my favorite character in the whole series works in, and technically for, the Capitol.  So I don’t really get why you’re yelling at me personally, but I accept it, so whatever.)

But no, I agree with you that the series should not make anyone suddenly stop purchasing media — The Hunger Games itself was published by one of the biggest publishing houses in the world; it never had any pretensions of being anything OTHER THAN mainstream mass media, and anyone who pretends otherwise is silly — or stop enjoying the media that they enjoy. 

But if it does make you go, “Oh, shit, maybe I should stop watching this show that offends all of my morals and beliefs and then eventually that will cause it to stop being on the air, causing networks to reconsider what’s appropriate for our viewing,” then that’s part of the point. 

If it makes you go, “Oh, shit, this book has fully-developed characters who are not of my race or socioeconomic class… why don’t I see more of those?!?” then that’s the point.

If it makes you go, “Oh, shit, I’m objectifying young over-sexualized teen stars like Finnick AND OH GOD I FEEL SO GUILTY,” then you know?  That’s the point.  Because at least the hypocrisy there is being acknowledged.

We’re not fully the Capitol, but we’re definitely not-NOT the Capitol.  Stripping the series of its virtues just to point out how it absolves our own vices, or the reverse, is not the way to honor Suzanne’s work, IMO, but I don’t think that we can — or SHOULD — be Gale or Coin as a result of being informed or revealed of our behavior, either.  I think that the reason why Katniss is such an effective narrator for *us* by the end of the series is because she DOES defend Octavia to Gale, and sees the individuals of both the Capitol AND those who rebel against the Capitol *as individuals of their own merit.* 

Katniss has learned, by the end of Mockingjay, to acknowledge and address her own ingrained prejudices, and THAT is what the point of the series is.  It’s not to reject society.  It’s to acknowledge how society has affected each of us and do what we can, as people, to view ourselves and everyone else as individual, changing, improvable parts of that sum-total society in an effort to make it better.

I do not, and have said many times that I do not, think that any fans of The Hunger Games comport themselves wrongly.  The only people who I think DO are the people who are responsible for looking at the books, seeing the messages there, and choosing for financial reasons to remove or play down certain/some/all of them because it’s easier to disrespect a young fanbase by producing an easier-to-digest work than it is to make something that is self-reflective and provocative while still maintaining box office palatability… which is, IMO, only irresponsible BECAUSE the popularity of the books themselves *in mainstream (Capitolesque) culture* proves that it can be done and is WANTED by the demographic now being courted by the nail polishes, video games, “Sexiest Man of the Year,” etc.  And if they hadn’t been so flippant about the “hair dye,” I probably wouldn’t even have as much issue with that.  My issue has NOTHING to do with the fans of the series and how anyone fangirls or interacts personally with the text, because ALL fannish interpretations are of merit.  What is NOT of merit to me is dismissing the intellectual capability and depth of The Hunger Games’ audience and caring more about box office dollars than making a faithful film and/or marketing in a way that doesn’t seem to be tongue-in-cheek when it does, in some ways step-by-step, follow along the antagonist’s plans in the series.

It’d be like if they marketed Harry Potter ONLY with Dark Marks and Death Eater masks and made the entire marketing campaign pro-Voldemort.  It’s valid within fandom!  …Weird in a cultural context.

 

And this fandom.