This fascinating article on racebending.com has me thinking more seriously about the role of race in The Hunger Games (current YA lit obsession for me and a lot of other people). Author Marissa Lee raises interesting points in response to the casting of Jennifer Lawrence (left) as Katniss, and most importantly, calls out Lionsgate — the studio behind the forthcoming film version of the first book — for restricting their search for Katniss to caucasian women.
When I initially read the books, I’ll admit that I always envisioned Katniss as a kind of post-racial person; that is, I never saw a particular racial or ethnic group when I thought about her. I pictured a teenage girl who probably had a variety of racial and ethnic identities, none of which particularly defined her. One of the beautiful aspects of The Hunger Games is how race and gender are not too important in the stratification of society. There are the “haves” in the Capitol and the “have nots” in the districts; their shared poverty and oppression unites the people beyond the boundaries of racial or ethnic identity. Yes, the segregation within district 12 between people from the Seam and the Town is described as something one can observe by appearances, but I don’t recall Collins portraying that line as oppressive to the society.
To me, Katniss’ world always seemed post-racial, but maybe it isn’t that simple. The film will certainly add another dimension to this debate.
This is Marissa (hi!) and thank you for the shout-out to my article. What I’ve been mulling over the past few days is The Hunger Games and it’s post-apocalyptic world. Does it have verisimilitude? Is it believable? Or does it invalidate real world realities, does it lack self awareness?
Understandably, a story about an evil tyrannical Capitol that runs reality television deathmatches for sport to teach its oppressed population a Very Important Lesson (yet expects no rebellions or retaliation) isn’t going to be the most “realistic.” And clearly it is important to separate the ideals and beliefs of the evil Capitol from the ideas and beliefs of the author who created this far-from-ideal, oppressive entity. But again, just thinking about The Hunger Games, a couple of things come to mind.
1. Readers view Katniss as not being defined by her gender (?) She’s competent, athletic, resourceful, intelligent, and inspiring. And as OP points out, the book is interpreted as presenting “race and gender” as “not too important in the stratification of society.” Yet, the wording used to describe her external from the book often betrays this belief (“strong female character,” “action movie staring a woman” etc.)
The book doesn’t deviate from this either. From the presentation of the Seam miners as primarily men, to the clear and distinct gender roles as depicted in the Games themselves (one boy and one girl, presumably cisgender, decked out in tuxes and prom dresses.) The driving sentiment behind the PeeNiss dynamic during the Games is their heteronormative love story—first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.
This could simply be read as “the Capitol” reinforcing gender norms, but at the same time, if that is the case, the narrative displays a lack of insight on this dimension of oppression. Was that the author’s goal—for the narrative to lack this insight? Where do people who are LGBTQ or violate rigid gender norms exist in this world? Are they rendered invisible? Is it possible for the world of The Hunger Games to be post-gender when the world it exists in clearly is not?
2. Katniss is viewed as post-racial and not defined by ethnicity (?) This is perplexing to me for a number of reasons…one of which is that Katniss in the film clearly is defined by a race or ethnicity. Perhaps not “in-universe” but certainly as a fictional character in our world—she is depicted on screen by an actress who has a real-world ethnicity that affects her job opportunities, privilege, etc. Reader reactions to Rue and Thresh and District 11 are impacted by their race; the metaphor to the Antebellum South clicks because USAmerican readers are aware of our own racial hitsory… Just as Amanda Steinberg’s race had a context for (scary, scary) audience members, so does Jennifer Lawerence’s—and so many of the other actors who play a lead in the story (the overwhelming majority of whom are white.)
The fandom backlash also demonstrates that to many readers, characters are white until proven otherwise. In that sense, the lack of racial subtext for many of The Hunger Games characters results in them being read as white and cast as white. What does it say when people of color in The Hunger Games are not the power players in the Capitol or the Rebellion?
It makes me think about Star Wars books…I’ve been reading them since I was ten and I have hundreds and hundreds of them. Most of them are about the continued adventures of Han, Luke, and Leia. In the books, they make a lot of new friends—most of these friends are human and in the real world, would be considered to be white. Luke takes in a bunch of students to train to be Jedi. Most of them, again, are human and “white.” Even though this replicates the same oppressive power structure exhibited by the same Empire the trio overthrew (notice in the film the leaders of the Empire are all white human males), and the xenophobia and sexism of the Empire is continually looked upon by the characters as oppressive, no one in-universe ever comments on the within-human racism/colorism of the Empire. And no one ever calls out Luke’s Jedi Academy—it is presumed that the students he enrolls got there on meritocracy alone (and did not benefit from human privilege or any established power structures in the galaxy, nor the authors’ desire to create more white human male characters.) It’s really weird, because if Luke’s Jedi Academy were a real-world institution, people—well, people like me, anyway—would be saying something.
I guess what has really been gnawing at me is that there are clearly racial caste lines in The Hunger Games. Yet, these racial caste lines are not directly acknowledged in the narrative.
Those in District 12 who have “the Seam” look and olive skin are more likely to work in mining jobs and fare more poorly than their blonde, blue eyed Merchant Class counterparts. The people of District 11, with their dark brown skin, who farm in the heat, are whipped, etc. are acknowledged as experiencing harsher treatment from the Capitol than the other Districts—none of which are described as containing people who have the same physical appearance as District 11’s people.
Whether intentionally or not, the book clearly depicts people of color as treated differently from their “white” counterparts. It may not be strictly because of their skin color or due to ‘old school’ racism, but there remains a clear differential racialization and clear differential impact that falls along those lines.
In real life, even kindergartners are prescient enough pick up that people are treated different because of their racial appearance. They may not understand why, but they notice it. Katniss never seems to notice or comment on this in an explicit way. And readers seem to argue that race couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it…the Capitol put the PoC in District 11 not because they are racist and evil, but simply because they are evil. The Merchants in District 12 have it better off and benefit from classism, but surely do not also benefit from being differentially racialized from the people of the Seam.
The characters don’t need to be insightful, necessarily, about the norms imposed upon them by society—although I would argue it is less believable when they are not. Whether or not the author is insightful, on the other hand…when we read The Hunger Games as raceless and genderless and simply frame the story about class castes and hunger, are we invalidating real-world or fictional racial and gender realities?
Thanks, for the reblog (and blast from the past—I almost forgot I wrote this). I realize that in my original post, I don’t make it quite clear that I pictured Katniss as non-white. Although I would still argue that Collins is not really interested in racial division in Panem, which is why most characters can be perceived as “white until proven otherwise,” I do agree that the filmmakers had an opportunity to explore the racial tension that is only hinted at in the books by showing the racial division within District 12. Jennifer Lawrence does a great job in the film of The Hunger Games, but what might have been, and what kind of impact could it have had?
The Hunger Games series does not address racism in any meaningful way, but I don’t think they have to, and I’m not sure that Collins could have addressed racism in any way that would have felt authentic. Yet, the film could easily have made race a major issue without altering the narrative, and this is a big disappointment.
Yes.
Wish I could have used this during Teen Tech Week, when we had a bulletin board full of memes. This is succinct and perfect.
“…the ideas about ‘alternative lifestyle’ sex (James’s actual words) are kind of hilarious. It’s like it was all filtered through that sexually precocious but ultimately clueless friend from Catholic elementary school…”
Although the author is a little harsh in her opinion on fan fiction, this article is hilarious.
Thank you, John Green.
Yesterday on twitter, I expressed annoyance with the hundreds of people who send me emails or tumblr messages or whatever to let me know that they illegally downloaded one of my books, as if they expect me to reply with my hearty congratulations that they are technologically sophisticated enough to use google or whatever. (I dislike it when people pirate my books. I know that not all authors feel this way, but I do. As I’ve discussed before, I think copyright law is disastrously stupid in the US, but I don’t think piracy is an appropriate response to that stupidity.*)
I then pointed out that my books are already available for free at thousands of public libraries not just in the US, but also in Europe, South America, Australia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, the UK, etc., to which many people replied, What’s the difference between pirating a book and checking it out from the library?
1. Libraries are broadly collecting institutions curated by experts. The curation facet of a library is hugely important: We train these librarians to organize information based not solely on what is popular (which is what piracy does), but also on what is good. The truth is you can’t get “anything” via piracy; there are hundreds of thousands of books you can’t get, because they aren’t yet popular. American public and school libraries play a huge role in preserving the breadth of American literature by collecting and sharing books that are excellent but may not be written by YouTubers with large bulit-in audiences.
Libraries improve the quality of discourse in their communities in ways that piracy simply does not. And if it weren’t for the broad but carefully curated collection practices of libraries, the world of American literature would look a lot like the world of American film: Instead of hundreds of books being published every week, there would be four or five.
2. Libraries buy books. Lots of them. And there are tens of thousands of libraries around the country. That is good for me and good for my book. (Like, the average library copy of The Fault in Our Stars might get checked out 100 times, or even a thousand, butsingle files of Looking for Alaska have been illegally downloaded more than 50,000 times.)
3. For the more than 100 million Americans without Internet access at home, libraries are the only free places to use the web to search for jobs or connect with family or buy t-shirts at dftba.com. I am very happy if my books can help add value to institutions that facilitate such important services. I do not feel the same way about BitTorrent.
4. And this is the most important: I believe that creators of books should have control over how their work is distributed. If, for instance, a musician doesn’t want her songs played during Rick Santorum rallies, then Rick Santorum should not be allowed to use them. I don’t want my books to be available for free download (unless you borrow an e-copy from a library, that is). I just don’t. It’s not because I’m a greedy bastard or want to keep my books from people who might otherwise read them. It’s because I believe books are valuable. Right now, on Amazon, my brand new hardcover book costs about $10, which represents 1.2 hours of work at the federal minimum wage. I believe books are worth 1.2 hours of work.
One last thing: A lot of people compare the world of books with the world of music. I think this comparison is unfair. For one thing, CDs were overpriced before Napster. I really don’t believe that books—at least my books—are currently overpriced**. More importantly, most musicians have a secondary source of income: They can charge for live performances. Writers—or at least the vast majority of writers—can’t do this. The book is The Thing. The book is all we have to offer.
And in my opinion, libraries preserve the integrity and the value of the book in ways that piracy simply does not.
Based on how many of you have already seen Season 2 of Sherlock, I realize that most of you disagree with me. And I’m happy to acknowledge that I might be wrong. I welcome your thoughts and responses on these complicated questions.
* The whole argument that piracy is some kind of civil disobedience in response to unfair copyright laws is ridiculous and indicates to me that not enough people are reading Civil Disobedience, or even the wikipedia article about it.
** As pointed out by no less an authority than John Darnielle, CDs weren’t overpriced by many independent record labels. Also, I should add that many books—particularly literary fiction hardcovers published for adults—are overpriced, sometimes dramatically. I think this is a bad and discouraging trend, which is one of the (many) reasons why I like publishing my books the way I do: It’s still possible for a hardcover to cost less than $20, and if you adjust for inflation, it always should be.
Teaser trailer for The Host.
There is something cheesy and low rent about the still photos used, but that only diminishes my excitement a tiny bit. Saoirse Ronan is a terrific young actress, and if anyone can pull off playing two characters in one body, she sure is the person to do it. Despite its many failings I still love The Host and can’t wait for this movie.
