This week, I caught up with the rest of the world and picked up the young adult phenomenon, The Hunger Games. I read the first novel of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy voraciously over the course of a luxurious summer day spent on my balcony. It drew me in and held me captive in Katniss’ world of Panem for hours.
I’m relatively inexperienced when it comes to dystopian YA fiction, especially considering the current (Hunger Games-inspired?) boom in its popularity. There wasn’t nearly so much of it when I was a (pre)teen, I can tell you that. I tend to find it troubling to step into words where everything is somehow more screwed up than it is now. But the exception to my distaste for depressing fiction comes with complexity, layers of meaning or thought, and really compelling characters and/or story.
I believe The Hunger Games succeeded on all these counts, and I totally understand why it’s a best-seller.
However, after finally catching up on this contemporary bastion of YA literature, I figured it was time to step into 2012 (I’m only a year late, come on!) and watch The Hunger Games – the movie.
I almost wish I hadn’t.
Not because it over-shadowed my images from the novel, or anything like that. More because I can’t get those two hours (plus) of my life back. Plainly put, the movie was awful.
Having read the book recently, all suspense was nullified making any attempt to draw out tension painfully slow and boring. I recognized details and lines of dialogue awkwardly culled from its pages. I also understood details mentioned but left utterly unexplained (like why characters have different numbers of chances to be picked at the Reaping). But understanding and recognition gave me no pleasure. I expect movies to hang together independently of their source material. A gesture to the novel should be allusion, not pointlessly recreating a particular conversation with all context removed. This foreknowledge also gave me insight into what was added (a view of the game-makers), what could have been added but wasn’t (crowd reactions, the edited video, the whole slaughter for entertainment aspect of the games) and most importantly what was left out. Which was, to put it bluntly, the heart, soul, tension, emotion, social commentary, trauma and tragedy, and hunger.
Yes, you read that right, Hunger.
Not once throughout the entire bloated, drawn-out film does it become apparant that Katniss, her family, and fellow downtrodden citizens are hungry – no, not hungry STARVING TO DEATH!
Sure, we get some shots of some sad, poor people, but food plays such a shockingly small role throughout the film that – despite the cliff-notes-style faithfulness paid to certain (seemingly random) details of plot – I challenge the very use of the title “the hunger games”.
At the time of its release, I read about criticisms of Jennifer Lawrence and how she wasn’t “thin enough” which, on the websites I read, was scoffed at as sexist promotion of unrealistic body image. Sure, ok. But here’s the thing, I have a similar criticism. Not of Lawrence, but of her make-up artists and costumers. The complaint was poorly phrased. I don’t care about skinny, I care about starving. Did she look starving? No, not in the least. After what’s supposed to be a gruelling fortnight battling bloodthristy, armed enemies, fearsome creatures, extreme weather, dehydration, malnutrition, lack of sleep, illness and trauma, Katniss looks – in the film – totally fine. Like she’d been camping for about two days and emerged (a little grubby from having slept in her clothes) no worse for the wear.
No worse for having been forced to participate in the ritual slaughter of twenty-two fellow young people for the entertainment and continued suppression of her people.
But she’s cool. Her scratch healed.
Katniss is a kick-ass teen heroine – on the page. On screen, she’s a pretty girl with a bow who knows how to look scared and barely says a word so that the intimacy of the novel’s first person narration is replaced by cold, stony silence and some giant question marks about what she’s thinking or feeling, or why she’s even the main character (I guess because she ends up winning?).
Everything I can think to comment on about this movie was poorly executed (ugh, what terrible pacing; how did we not get a single crowd reaction shot; they made it less gory? really?) so let me leave it at this.
I was not surprised that The Hunger Games was a huge success after reading it. I am absolutely and completely dumbfounded that this movie got generally positive reviews. I know I tend to show up late to the party, so I’m not there to yell “no olives!” when someone orders pizza. I’m used to my voice (or my hatred of olives) not being factored into a group consensus. But I just cannot find the words this time… You’re all wrong! It’s a bad movie! Does everyone else in the world like olives?! Pick up a book, for goodness sake and enjoy the depth of character, emotion, and glorious context that comes from the words on the page.
And if you’re still hungering for a kick-ass teen heroine of screen, go back and watch Buffy while we wait for the next YA movie phenomenon to come out.
