The Hunger Games – Antenna

Popular Culture and Politics: The Hunger Games 3-Finger Salute in Thai Protests

Ashley Hinck — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 13:52:07 +0000

On June 2, 2014, news about protesters in Thailand holding up the Hunger Games 3-finger salute began proliferating across news networks and websites like The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Global Post, Quartz and others. Across the coverage, reporters and commenters seem unsure of what to make of political action that draws inspiration from a fictional story. Drawing from my research on popular culture, rhetoric, and fan-based civic engagement, I offer a contextualization for the Thai protesters’ use of the Hunger Games 3-finger salute. In a blog post over at Rhetorically Speaking, I examine how the protesters appropriate the 3-finger salute to signal resistance and critique. Here, I want to offer a framing of the Thai protester’s use of the 3-finger salute by articulating the relationship between popular culture and politics and by placing the Thai protests within a history of fan-based civic engagement.

Journalists covering this story have struggled to frame the protests within a broader relationship between popular culture and politics in the real world. Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason.com says, “If I say the phrases Hunger Games and ‘life imitates art’ in the same sentence, you might start to worry. But this is actually an inspiring appropriation of the practices of Panem.” Ryan Gilbey at The Guardian points toward critics’ concerns that films inspire violent copy-cat behavior. Both Brown and Gilbey frame popular culture as a causal mechanism, but in doing so they undermine the agency of actors. This is particularly problematic when popular culture is connected to political action. In these cases, we ought to understand popular culture as resources. We must recognize that popular culture does not cause political action, while also recognizing the incredibly important role popular culture plays in offering up the choices we have for political resources.

The YouTube ID of hceO-SUoitk#t=35 is invalid. Reporters also seemed to position the Thai protesters’ use of popular culture as relatively uncommon. Gilbey from The Guardian says, “You’d have to go back to the film adaptation of the graphic novel V For Vendetta, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, to find a comparable crossover between on-screen behaviour and widespread political iconography.” But the use of popular culture in politics is actually quite common. In fact, Thai protesters aren’t even the first to utilize the Hunger Games 3-finger salute. In 2013, Senator Miriam Santiago from the Philippines used the 3-finger salute in a speech lambasting Senator Enrile in the Senate. The Harry Potter Alliance used the 3-finger salute in its Odds In Our Favor campaign, which critiqued economic inequality, particularly in the US.

Popular culture has always functioned as resources for politics. For example, Nan Enstad describes how American women factory workers at the turn of the century used dime novels, films, and fashion to come to see themselves as both ladies and workers, and thus as deserving of fair working conditions. These women staged labor protests in unexpected numbers. Today, we see examples ranging from Harry Potter to football. In January 2014, Chinese diplomats used Harry Potter metaphors to make arguments about regional power in Asia. In the fall of 2013, the TeamMates’ Coaches Challenge campaign invited Nebraskan citizens to volunteer to mentor by connecting mentoring with being a Nebraska football fan, beating Kansas, and joining the Nebraskan team. During 2012 and 2013, DC Entertainment led a campaign named “We Can Be Heroes,” calling Justice League fans to donate money to charities working to end hunger in Africa. These are just three examples from this academic year alone. Indeed, there are many more.

What I hope this contextualization provides is a framing that enables us as audience members, reporters, and citizens to take seriously the Thai protesters’ Hunger Games salutes. While not all political appropriations of popular culture are necessarily ethical, desirable, or effective, we cannot dismiss such uses of popular culture out-of-hand. Jonathan Jones at The Guardian takes this problematic approach when he asserts that the Thai protesters’ use of the Hunger Games salute “reveals something about the bankruptcy of political beliefs in the 21st century.” But Jones is missing the point because he’s got the context all wrong. The protesters aren’t claiming allegiance to the Hunger Games. They are using the symbol of resistance in the Hunger Games as their own, imbuing it with democratic meaning and critiques of the Thai government. Popular culture is a resource, combined and recombined with other resources, appropriated and changed through various performances. This framing is absolutely necessary to understanding the Thai protesters’ use of the Hunger Games salute in a complex and full way.

The Hunger Games and the Female-Led Franchise Part 2

William Proctor — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 14:00:01 +0000

While teaching an undergraduate film module this week, I asked my student cohort to come up with any female-led film franchises. We were discussing gender and I was trying to illustrate how inequality still persists in the twenty-first century both at the level of industry and aesthetics. Masculine film franchises were easy and the students offered a litany of examples: Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Batman, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, James Bond…the list goes on.

For female-led franchises, the results were rather telling. The Hunger Games, of course. Twilight (which led to a debate about it being female-led and the conclusion was that it is a unisex franchise that may be directed towards a female demographic). Some mentioned Tomb Raider as a duopoly of films which tied into an incredibly successful gaming franchise with Lara Croft being heralded as a character who broke through the hypermasculine frontier and continues to influence gaming culture almost two decades after her first appearance on the Sony Playstation. (No one mentioned the criticism levelled at the Lara Croft character as masculine wish-fulfilment or her being nothing more than an Indiana Jones analogue.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels were also mentioned. Indeed, Lisbeth Salander is another interesting case study as she also functions as a political force in the novels as she collaborates with Mikhail Blomqvist to take down a serial killer who targets women. The Swedish title of the first book is The Men Who Hate Women which, for my money, would have made for a better title (and deliciously political). Re-reading the books or watching the Swedish film series with this title in mind changed my interpretative experience somewhat and I came to view Lisbeth as a cipher for female empowerment and emancipation. (You may or may not agree).

My students also mentioned the Alien film franchise, of course. Perhaps it all began with Ripley, in film at least?
Lt. Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver in four Alien films, is perhaps the first female lead in a science fiction film franchise (I am certain someone will marshal evidence to the contrary which I would be interested in learning about). And while the character has been disregarded by many critics and commentators in the past for being a man trapped in a woman’s body – ‘butch’ rather than feminine – I believe that Ripley challenged gendered roles in considerable ways. In the second film, Aliens, she is both action hero and Mother, much in the same way as Katniss Everdeen. Ripley has no problem wielding military equipment and weapons while also providing maternal care for Newt, the child character in Aliens. Like Katniss, Ripley also operates along a hegemonic faultline that challenges gender normativity and stereotypical dichotomies. Lt. Ellen Ripley was an incredibly progressive move at the time when the science fiction landscape was reeling from the impact of Star Wars which led to masculine-dominated narratives such as television’s Battlestar Galactica, the resurgence of Star Trek and even James Bond got in on the act in Moonraker. Like Katniss, Ripley also challenges the patriarchal capitalist order described in the films as ‘The Company,’ and even gives her life to prevent the military body from possessing the Alien gestating inside of her (Alien3). Ripley is nothing if not a morass of contradictions and complexities.

In Jennifer K Stuller’s excellent book, Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, the author points out that Ripley was’ limited by socially accepted gender stererotypes that kept her from being radically progressive.’1 I think, however, that the character is highly political and subversive. Simply having a female lead the charge and end up as the driving force behind the Alien Queen’s destruction is a political statement in and of itself.
The Terminator films also gave us Sarah Connor who mutates from damsel-in-distress into action heroine, but she exists primarily to protect her son, John Connor, who is destined to become the leader of the resistance in the future – she is an ass-kicking mother, but she is primarily in the role of mother all the same. One cannot exclude John Connor’s destiny as another male saviour (with the same initials as Jesus Christ thrown in for good measure). Along the way, however, she kicks some dust in the face of stereotype. Sarah Connor may be limited – certainly more so than Ripley and Everdeen – but she does ask significant questions along the way.

Much has been written about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: The Warrior Princess, and Scully of The X-Files. Perhaps television has succeeded in ways that film has not? At present, Daenerys Targayen in Game of Thrones can be read from a feminist perspective as she continues her march to Westeros, freeing slaves along the way and laying down the gauntlet at the feet of many male-rulers in order to reclaim the throne from the Patriarch-King. Only time will tell if she succeeds in supplanting the ubiquitous masculine figure-head. But Game of Thrones is hardly a female-led franchise and there are many pernicious representations within the text that illustrate women as ‘whores,’ scantily clad and in the service of men. This is another faultline, of course, as HBO seek to have it both ways. The programme is both reactionary and progressive depending upon your viewpoint.

The Canadian sci-fi drama, Continuum, has a female protagonist in the lead, but, at the moment, she fights for a future where corporations have taken over the role of government and much of the moral ambiguities come from the so-called terrorists who seek to challenge the status quo. One can only hope that Kiera Cameron recognises her part as protector of the 99% and changes tact.

Vicky Ball explores the female-ensemble drama in British Television in a series of articles and a forthcoming book, Heroine Television (2014)2. Texts such as Prime Suspect, Band of Gold and many others privilege female protagonists that, at times, are radical and progressive. Consider Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison (played by Dame Helen Mirren) who works as a detective in the masculine-dominated workforce and the political ramifications that result from the clash of genders. (The less said about the U.S remake, the better).
(To be continued…).

1 Stuller, Jennifer K. (2010) Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology. New York: I.B Taurus.

2 See, Ball, Vicky (2012) ‘The ‘Feminization’ of British Television and the Re-traditionalization of Gender’, Feminist Media Studies Vol. 12, No. 2. March.; Ball, Vicky (2013) ‘Forgotten Sisters: The Female Ensemble Drama’ in Moseley, R., Wheatley, H and Wood, H. (eds.) ‘Television for Women’, Screen Dossier (Vol. 54, No. 2. Summer 2013).

The Hunger Games and the Female Driven Franchise (Part 1)

William Proctor — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 18:38:46 +0000

Female-led film franchises are few and far between, especially in the traditionally masculine genres of science fiction and fantasy. There are, of course, exceptions to this ‘rule’ which I shall discuss in a moment – but, firstly, I would like to point out that I am not implying that so-called ‘boy’s genres’ – science fiction, horror, fantasy, thrillers, etc – and ‘girls’ genres – ‘chick flicks,’ romantic comedies, soap operas, love stories – are anything more than social constructions that replicate the gender politics that continue to pollute the socio-cultural landscape in significant ways. Despite the litany of post-feminist discourses that permeate the cultural sphere with the tenuous claims that equality has now been achieved and women can ‘have it all,’ there remains large-scale inequality in popular culture and, by extension, society at large. Film, television and other cultural forms remain gendered spaces that are bifurcated into male and female pockets.But upon closer inspection, these binary distinctions do not hold weight and collapse altogether when scrutinized. Traditionally masculine spaces, such as the San-Diego Comic-Con, are now attended by many women who engage in Cos-Play and wear their fandom on their sleeves – quite literally in some cases. Moreover, the annual Girl Geek Con gives female fans a space of their own to demonstrate their passion for so-called geek-related culture. A recent article featured in the UK broadsheet newspaper, The Guardian, ran with the headline, ‘The Rise of the Female Geek.’ I hesitate to say that this represents a significant shift, but more that women feel that they can now experience and explore spaces hitherto closed off from them. Historically, perhaps, female fans have always existed, but have been deterred from crossing the ostensible gender boundaries that remain an intrinsic feature of the cultural landscape? Are we witnessing a sea-change here? And does popular culture somehow reflect these shifts?

The Hunger Games or ‘How to Overthrow the Government’
Based on a trilogy of YA (young adult) novels, The Hunger Games features a female protagonist who not only challenges the male-dominated sphere of science fiction and fantasy, but, within the diegesis itself, represents rebellion and revolution on a grand scale. Katniss Everdeen acts as the catalyst that fosters an alliance of the working classes who unite beneath the Mockingjay symbol in order to overthrow the patriarchal order who force participants from each district to fight to the death in an annual-event – the titular Hunger Games – as penance for a previous uprising. From this perspective, The Hunger Games trilogy is political manifesto disguised as a multi-million dollar franchise.

What is interesting in the way in which Katniss Everdeen has been interpreted in the mainstream media as a feminist character. By struggling against the status quo – that is, capitalist and patriarchal – Everdeen’s biology is often put forth as evidence of a feminist agenda. Yet the problem with this viewpoint is that Everdeen does not fight for women’s rights: she fights for everyone. Katniss Everdeen is the Proletariat and, as such, can be read as both Feminist and Marxist which challenges the contemporary ideology. She is a metonym for the 99% – the working classes, whether man, woman or child – and serves as an ideological symbol to unite the exploited, disenfranchised and oppressed people of District 12 (Panem). The message of the story is that ‘there are many more of us than there are of you’ and by coalescing into a faction, the 1% – or bourgeoisie, to use Marxist terminology – which stand at the apex of the economic pyramid, do not stand a chance. As Marx himself put it, the inequalities inherent within the capitalist mode of production will facilitate an uprising when the Proletariat recognizes h/er subjugation and unites to challenge the status quo. ‘What the bourgeoisie therefore produces above all,’ writes Marx, ‘are its own gravediggers.’ In The Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss Everdeen becomes such a gravedigger.

Katniss is one of the most complex characters in popular fiction, at least in recent years, and straddles a fulcrum of femininity and masculinity – she exists in both pockets and thus deconstructs the socially-constructed gender binary. She is, to borrow the words of Alan Sinfield, a ‘faultline’ that destabilises both myth – à la Barthes – and common-sense perceptions – ideologies that have become ‘naturalised’ in discourse.
In an early scene, for example, she is represented as maternal as she ‘mothers’ her sister which dovetails with stereotypical representations of the female figure as ‘nurturer.’ There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong about women as maternal – gender is both biological and societal. But to represent women as only mothers is incredibly problematic and succeeds in replicating gender stereotypes that exist – and persist – in contemporary culture and society. Following the scene where she acts as mother to her sister, Katniss takes to the outlying woodlands where we see her line up her bow and arrow to shoot a deer for food. Although she is interrupted by Dale, her male counterpart and friend, we can see Katniss as both hunter and gatherer or, perhaps more pointedly, mother and father. She is an ideological faultine that subverts gender normativity and problematises a succinct separation into binary camps. Moreover, in The Hunger Games, the traditional role of woman as ‘damsel-in-distress’ is subverted and it is her male companion from District 12, Peeta, who requires rescuing.

Of course, themes of resistance in film franchises are not brand-new per se. The Matrix trilogy deals with similar issues and can also be read as a Marxist critique of capitalism, ideology and alienation. The 1970s sci-fi thriller, Rollerball, explores subjugation and resistance to the status quo. Duncan Jones’ Moon is a metaphor for class alienation and oppression. More recently, Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium acts as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the Occupy Wall Street generation and the inequities and inequalities implicit within capitalism and the (unequal) distribution of wealth. All these ideological battles, however, are fought primarily by men. In The Matrix, for example, Neo is ‘The One,’ a patriarch of the resistance. The fact that Katniss Everdeen is both woman and ‘The One’ in The Hunger Games trilogy is a potently charged political statement and one which is very welcome indeed. By operating within a traditionally masculine narrative and generic space while also telling a story about working class resistance to elite rule, the franchise challenges the ‘rules’ in significant ways.
(To Be Continued).

Creating a Spark: Official and Fan-Produced Transmedia for The Hunger Games

Melanie Kohnen — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:58:03 +0000

The Hunger Games (THG) has become one of Hollywood’s biggest success stories of the year. Since the film is based on a successful young adult novel by Suzanne Collins, the cinematic adaptation could count on a built-in audience. In order to mobilize the existing fan base and court new fans, Lionsgate’s marketing department rolled out a campaign that incorporated transmedia storytelling elements. The centerpiece of the campaign is an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that allows fans to become citizens of Panem. Accessible through the “Citizen Information Terminal,” a website that aggregates content from Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Youtube, the ARG mixes diegetic information (such as trends in Capitol fashion) with extradiegetic material (e.g. a link to Fandango, accompanied by a note declaring that “attendance [of the film] is mandatory”).

Transmedia storytelling has become a familiar element of film and television promotion, especially for media properties incorporating fantasy and scifi elements (currently, transmedia campaigns are underway for Prometheus, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight Rises). While many fans readily engage with official promotional material, they also create their own media. Transmedia produced for THG shows how multifaceted and sometimes conflicting interests among fans and marketing departments arise out of shared media platforms and a shared storyworld.

With the widespread use of Twitter and Tumblr, official and fan-produced transmedia increasingly share the same media spaces. Both fans and those who address fans through marketing use these spaces because they make sharing media easy. Indeed, sharing images and videos via reblogging is perhaps Tumblr’s core functionality and defining characteristic. Via reblogging and retweeting, fans spread news about the latest part of a marketing campaign faster and wider than a print ad, poster, or traditional preview could. Most importantly, reblogging turns officially produced transmedia into a personalized message: fans feel they receive an update about THG from a fellow fan, not from a studio’s marketing department. Or at least this is the perception that marketing departments try to create.

It is important to recognize that both Lionsgate’s marketing department and fans face constraints when producing transmedia for THG. Official transmedia’s main purpose is twofold: create interest in THG and persuade as many people as possible to purchase a ticket to see the film. In order to create this investment, official transmedia has to offer material about the world of THG that appears new and exciting to fans; at the same time, this material cannot give away too many details about the film itself. This is particularly crucial for a book adaptation because many fans are familiar with the story and are most interested in seeing how this story has been translated to the screen. In addition, official transmedia cannot stray too far from “canon.” It has to remain faithful to the story moviegoers will see. Working within these constraints leads to transmedia elements that focus on exploring places and settings rather than on expanding plot or characterizations.

Capital Couture announces the winner of its stylist contest. Fans reblog and respond.

Two core elements of THG transmedia campaign, namely the Capitol Couture Tumblr and the related virtual tour of the Capitol, focus on the culture of Panem’s premiere city. Both are perfect examples of official transmedia that provide new insights about the world of THG without spoiling the film or diverging from Collins’ canon. While the Capitol is an important location in THG‘s storyworld, neither the film nor the novel spend much time there. Offering a deeper insight into the city expands fans’ understanding of Panem without giving too much away. At the same time, a campaign that centers on the people and culture responsible for the terror of the Hunger Games is also a risky strategy. Fans might not have been willing to engage with this aspect of the book(s) and film. But the Capitol also appears as a decadent and alluring place in Collins’ universe, which makes it an interesting place to see even if one disagrees with its ideology.

Additionally, I would argue, fans can easily find the more sympathetic people and places of THG in fan-produced transmedia. Free from the constraints of avoiding spoilers and adhering to canon, most fanfiction and fanart delve into the lives of central characters, envisioning moments before, during, and after canon events. Fan creations spread across the same platforms as official transmedia: a new interpretation of a character might emerge in a tweet, turn into a story posted on a blog, and generate accompanying fanart on Tumblr.

Screenshot of the original Panem October ARG

Of course fans also face constraints: their creations are not officially sanctioned and often exist in a legal gray area, and they don’t usually have access to the resources that fuel official transmedia such as the Capitol tour. Frequently, these divergent sets of constraints in official and fan-produced transmedia enable new and largely complementary perspectives on the world of THG. This co-existence is less harmonious when fan productions appear too “official,” as was the case with Panem October, a fan-authored ARG that also revolved around a “citizens of Panem” theme. An early iteration, launched in spring 2011, was shut down by Lionsgate. The second version appeared simultaneously with the official ARG last fall. Thanks to fannish word-of-mouth, participation in Panem October grew to 50,000. Despite its popularity, the creator announced last December that he was abandoning the ARG to pursue other projects. It is unclear whether or not increasing pressure by Lionsgate motivated this decision.

Screenshot of Panem October, version two, on the left, and the official ARG on the right.

It is tempting to draw parallels between Panem October and THG trilogy’s overall story (a temptation the pursuit of which I leave to someone else). Regardless, it seems apparent to me that fan enthusiasm is most welcome when it stays within officially endorsed boundaries—as participation in the official THG ARG—and is tolerated as long as its focus does not encroach on commercially significant territory.