The Hunger Games

The always-awesome Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency has a new video up today comparing the book and movie versions of The Hunger Games. She makes some great points about the humanizing (or lack thereof) of the tributes, the irony of watching people watch people kill one another for entertainment, and the whitewashing of Katniss and Hollywood in general.

What would happen if the Capitol sent 24 characters from Mad Men to the arena to kill or be killed? Would Betty’s ennui be enough to take on Don’s powers of manipulation? Does Sally have what it takes to compete against Joan? Can Roger convince his sponsors to keep the booze coming? Which Mad Men tribute truly has the odds ever in their favor?

We imagined said SCDP Hunger Games in the infographic after the jump. Take a look at our arena, and vote in our poll to determine which tribute would be the victor!

So far we've looked at fictional female politicians who hold office in what is supposed to be our modern reality. Some of the problematic aspects of these characters have included oversexualization, a tendency toward irrationality or emotional response, and being driven by petty politics. We've also seen these characters depicted as needing to have enough energy to do the job of governing while fending off sexism in the workplace. Today I'd like to take a look at female politicians who serve in very different worlds than ours, and ask if these limitations persist in those narratives. SPOILERS for The Hunger Games, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica.

Yes, I will look at Laura Roslin, I promise. But first...

Here's what we've been reading this week:

• Live in the Bay Area? You probably should mark your calendar for this feminist, Native American art show by artist Geri Montano running April 7th through May 12th.  
• Check out this Kickstarter for reproducitve justice- and gender rights-themed art. 
• Queen Latifah will star in the all-black cast remake of Steel Magnolias. 
• Colorlines covers the statistic nobody is talking about during March Madness: the shockingly low graduation rates for college athletes. 
• Mad Men fans, with the excitement of the upcoming season premier, you might have missed these two remix videos byPop Culture Pirate: Queer Men: Don Loves Roger and "Set Me Free," a mix of all the female characters set to the Supremes song. 
• Colorlines covers why Native Women are battling for Plan B.
• Sparkplug Books, publisher of Gay Genius, is fundraising and needs help.
• The latest in Julianne Escobedo Shepherd's essays at Stereogum is on Santigold after her performance at SXSW.
• Zerlina Maxwell interviews Melissa Harris-Perry and she talks about #Nerdland, the War on Women, and Beyonce.  
• WAM! Boston Film Festival is today!
• In the Guardian's interview of Rosario Dawson, she addresses what is like to be a woman in Hollywood and her activism to end violence against women. 
• South Africa’s Electronic Media Network and the African Film Library recently launched an online destination for African Films. Via Clutch magazine. 
• At the Feminist Wire, Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "Can Black feminism be quantified?" (No).
• Jos at Feministing and Mallika Dutt weigh in on how the War on Women is leaving out trans people and immigrants, respectively. 
• At Salon, Laurie Penny weighs in on the sexual politics of The Hunger Games.

Tell us what you're reading in the comments!   

Did any of you stay up past your bedtimes to see The Hunger Games last night? We did! To hear thoughts on the film from teens dressed up in homemade "Peeta bread" t-shirts, parents accompanying minors, disgruntled fans, and more—and to hear me profess my undying love for Stanley Tucci (the shining star of the film, in my opinion)—tune in to our Bitch Radio review (embedded after the jump). Spoilers ahead, naturally.

Happy Hunger Games! Do you have your ticket to see a midnight showing of the movie tonight? A bunch of us at Bitch do, and I for one am beyond psyched. (Check back tomorrow for our review!) I've watched the trailers, listened to the soundtrack, and even have my outfit planned—based on the Ironing Board Collective's End of Days style predictions, of course. I have to wonder though, is it wrong to want so badly to see the Games?

Considering that the book series—and presumably the film—is about a not-so-distant dystopian future where the government controls its citizens and makes mandatory the watching of a game where kids battle one another to the death, at what point does this must-see movie mania get just a little too ironic?

Just as Gale and Peeta give Katniss two very different boyfriend options, they give us as readers two very different ideas of what it means to be a man in Panem.


See what I mean about the two totally different masculinities happening here?

Harry and Katniss are very different heroes because they live in very different worlds.  But if I had to guess whether most people felt their world more closely resembled the private boarding school with clear-cut lines between good and evil, or the dystopic district with frustrated and struggling neighbors, I’d say there’s a real reason Katniss’s mythology has captured audiences as thoroughly as Harry did in his more prosperous heyday.

In Harry Potter, then, social class is a way of telling us something about the characters more than the actual lived reality or a source of conflict that it becomes in The Hunger Games.  This is because in the wizarding world, power doesn’t come just come from money and other forms of social privilege, power comes from magic—and it seems that magic is quite an equalizer.