On "The Hunger Games"

Ho-kay, so here we are. Another teenager-aimed book franchise really blowing up. Everyone and their fucking grandmother is off to see The Hunger Games this weekend. An alarming number of my friends went to see it last night at midnight.

Edit: I found this and it's awesome.

From what I can tell, they took off as books about a year ago. I think it's around the same time the movie was announced. (Why doesn't Blogger spellcheck recognise "movie" as a word? Okay, off topic, but it's weird.) Anyhoo, I remember seeing/hearing a lot of people reading them, and I confess to having no idea what they were about, and also not being terribly interested. I was reading War and Peace, there were more pressing things going on. (Pretentious douchebag title drop? Yes, please!) They weren't really on my radar too much, but I didn't worry about them. As far as popular series were concerned, I was more worried about reading the Song of Fire and Ice books because they're awesome. They're bloody and gory and violent and visceral and have an intricately woven world surrounding them. I like that. I confess to being a nerd.

I finally got around to reading these Hunger Game books at the beginning of this year. I read all three of them (even though I was warned that the second two are kind of stupid) and was more or less "meh" on them. They aren't terrible. I mean, they definitely aren't Twilight, which I think at this point we've all come to collectively agree is objectively terrible. The Hunger Games is not terrible. The books' themes and moral are solid, albeit expounded in a somewhat overly-simplistic manner. The writing is tolerable- indeed, the descriptions are vivid, which is part of why I think this book (though arguably not its successors) will translate into a movie fairly well. Katniss is a terrible protagonist; she isn't aware of the world around her in the slightest, has no curiosity about how her world came to be, and is generally shallow and self-obsessed. Yet, she's so bland this almost doesn't matter, and the loss of her first person view of the world (as is bound to happen in the movie- we'll have to see some of the stuff from other people's point of view, if only for clarity's sake) will probably enrich the film rather than make it suffer. I do at some point want to see it.

However, after last night's premier, my newsfeed started blowing the fuck up about it, and so I'm starting to resent it. Everyone seems to want to jump on the Hunger Games bandwagon. As I said, a bunch of people went to go see it, and quite a few others are either planning to see it or are frantically reading the books that they may be prepared for when it comes out. And frankly I just don't get it.

Most of my friends are over the age of 23. These books are aimed at teenagers. One friend of mine in particular was dragged along with his girlfriend, and complained the theatre was overrun with middle schoolers- der. The protagonist is 100% teenager- self-absorbed, ignorant, only cares about herself and her friends. Really, as far as Katniss is concerned, she actually manages to get worse throughout the series- at the beginning she's arguably self-absorbed just because she's concerned about being the sole caretaker of her family, since her mom went a little crazy; by the end of the series, she gives up all control of her life and acts like a martyr for a cause that she doesn't even seem to understand. Which of course means that we as the audience don't understand it very much, either.

Anyway, the first book came out in 2008, so none of the people I know were any younger than 18 or 19 when it came out. And I would be willing to bet my very paltry life savings that many of them didn't read it until the past year or so, when ther series' popularity grew. That's fine and I understand that- I basically confessed to not even knowing about SoFaI until last year when the HBO show came out, which would make me a poser in many people's eyes.

What I don't understand is why so many people who are well beyond the target audience would get so wrapped up in this book. Katniss isn't a strong character. If by some bizarre mistake I make babby (internet thing), and it was a girl, I would not want her to turn out like Katniss at all. The girl basically lets other people decide what she should do with her life for her- I understand the Games themselves were out of her control, but in the third book, when she becomes the "mockingbird," i.e. the symbol of the resistance (note: she is just a symbol; they never actually intend for her to do anything productive for the cause, nor does she seem particularly inclined to), it's because she was basically bullied into it by all the men in her life. Furthermore, her "mission" to reach President Snow is the dumbest thing possible, because 1) she wasn't even supposed to do it (again demonstrating that she has no control over the events in her life) and 2) it fails so miserably and gets everyone killed, so she would've been better off listening to "those who know best" in the first place. Maybe secretly the moral of these books was supposed to be "shut up and listen to your elders, especially the menfolk around you, because they know best." Somehow though I don't think it was.

So this book came out after any of my friends were in the target audience. What does that say about my friends who love it? That they have no literary taste? Possibly, though as I said, the books aren't terrible, they're just written for a simpler, younger audience. Most of the substance- how this dystopia came to be, the psychological impact of the Games, the thoughts and feelings of anyone besides Katniss- is glossed over at best. So are they immature? Again, possibly.

Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe at this point I've read so many other books written for adults that I simply can't take enjoyment any longer in stories written for teenagers. I re-read the Harry Potter books last year, staples of my youth that they are, in anticipation of the final instalment of the films. I confess to crying during Snape's scene in the movie (full disclosure: I was drunk) and feeling genuinely emotional while re-reading them. But those books make me feel nostalgic. I started reading them in '90s (holy shit is that true? It has to be. Oh god, why?) and grew up alongside the characters. But that's the thing- I was always the same age as they were. I started a tad younger and ended a bit older, but in general I would always have been peers with the Hogwarts crew. I know some people don't like HP (fools!), and I admit now when I read them my emotions come chiefly from nostalgia rather than true emotional connection. I mean, honestly, Harry in book 5? Get over yourself, boy.

JK's writing isn't always stellar, but she tells a good story and creates a whole world around it- Suzanne Collins let the world around Katniss suffer in order to focus on her "emotional plight," whatever that was. (What it was was that she was too self-obsessed to stop for five seconds and think of someone besides herself.) Collins' form is best when she's actually describing the Games- the setting and obstacles they confront are vivid and real and compelling- but as soon as the Games are over, she quits with the describing and focuses instead on whether or not Katniss likes Peeta (spoiler: she doesn't, but he likes her through and through so they end up together anyway) or Gale (spoiler: she does, but Collins turns him into a doucher by the end so that we're supposed to be happy she gets Peeta instead.)

I get that shitty books get popular sometimes. Twilight is an obvious example, but I don't think many people would argue that those books have a higher objective, they're just shitty romance novels. I honestly have no idea what makes Twilight so much more unique than any other trashy romance serial, but whatever, romance novels aren't my thing, and the Twilight hatred has been played out, so I'm through even bothering with that. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books had terrible writing and plot structure, but the core mysteries were intriguing, so I guess I see why people liked them. Again, on that front, I've never been into mysteries or thrillers, so they aren't my forte.

You know what is my forte? Dystopian future. I eat that shit for breakfast. There's a reason 1984 has been my favourite book since I was 16. Because I love me some bleak outlooks and some apocalypses. The Hunger Games fall into this category, so I feel qualified to actually judge them. And they have been judged. And they have been found wanting.