Why is the Hunger Games popular?

[Pix]

Did anyone see the Hunger Games? My girl says nearly all the girls in school are now in love with Josh Hutcherson over his role as Peeta. I got dragged to this movie but after seeing it I very much appreciated it. (That is to say I very much enjoyed it myself even though I didn't think I would.)

But anyway I came across this article that reflected on why the movie was so popular among teens, and there were some comments that seemed insightful as well:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdrobert...ar-part-2/

It gives plenty of possible reasons, but these 2 seemed the most likely (or at least intriguing) to me:

The answer, I believe, lies in the congruence between the world of The Hunger Games and the world we adults in America have created for our teenagers. Not only have they been substantially abandoned by us, so that they feel alienated, but also they are literally caught in a cruel game that pits them against each other. No, I’m not thinking of the usual adolescent conflicts that have been around for ages. Rather, I’m thinking of the battle among teenagers to be successful, to win, to be not just their best, but better than their peers, including their friends.

This battle often begins on athletic fields or in dance studios as parents drive their young children to win, even at great cost to their emotional health. The battle is brutally evident among teenagers in the most contested game of all . . . getting into a great college.

If this seems silly, allow me to defend what I’m saying here. I know of which I speak because I have a freshman in college and a daughter who is a junior in high school. I’ve watched the pressure my own children have had to live with since they were in elementary school. I’ve seen how they must compete with their peers, and often against their best friends, for success that will someday lead to the most prized success of all . . . getting into a great college and, if possible, with a fine scholarship

It's not just that. Someone pointed out an ep of Toddlers & Tiaras to me that was just sad...the little girl didn't even seem to understand what was going on just that her mom went into hysterics if she messed up in a beauty pageant because she had to be THE BEST. (I thought the mom needed psychiatric care.)

And I can also think on how our jocks are often given very special treatment just as the gladiator kids in the Hunger Games were as well. And it also seems distressingly common to me that parents of little kids on sports team are actually more brutal and passionate (and even violent) than the kids themselves who sometimes seem to understand far better than the adults that it's just a game.

And where did this game come from? Did teenagers invent it to torture each other? Hardly. It’s a creation of the adult world, the world of hyperactive tiger moms, the world of dads who demand athletic prowess from their children to stoke their own egos, the world of colleges competing with each other for top ranking (and therefore money, reputation, and influence). The college game has almost nothing to do with helping young people become moral, well-balanced, healthy, spiritual, and well-educated. Rather, it has to do with parental egos and the cutthroat business of education, not the business of educating students, but the business of building financially successful academic institutions. (If you’re looking for documentation of the claims I am making here, I would highly recommend Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College by Andrew Ferguson. This very funny and, at times, very chilling book reveals in detail the craziness of the game into which we draft our teenagers.)

The competition among teenagers to get into college epitomizes what they have experienced in so many other settings throughout their lives. The adults who have the power over them demand that they compete, often against their friends, for the sake of the adults’ own benefit (pride, success, bragging rights, etc.). We force our children into the game whether they want to go or not. We provide all sorts of preparation and prettying up so our kids will be successful. And we laud the few who win the game. In the process, our children can feel used, pressured, desperate, lost, alone, starved, hurt, and as if they are fighting for their very lives. Hmmm. Sounds a lot like The Hunger Games

Of course I realize that not all teenagers are shooting for the top colleges. But even those who are not competing at this level still feel the demands of the game, not to mention the sense of failure when they don’t live up to the expectations of the adults who control their lives. So, even though Katniss Everdeen is hard and remote, teenagers relate to her. They feel her pain, if you will. They relate to her experience of being trapped in a world that makes unfair demands upon her. They connect to her desire to break away and be free. They suffer with her as she is forced to conform to adult expectations. They feel her desperation as she is forced into a competition she didn’t and wouldn’t choose for herself (except to save her sister’s life). Thus, young adults connect with Katniss in spite of, or perhaps because of, her depressed stoicism. Take this sense of connection with Katniss and her cohort, throw in action, mystery, danger, surprise, interesting characters, and a bit of love, and you have a formula that will sell millions of books and millions of movie tickets

I thought plenty of the comments that followed were also worth reading.

Yet as interesting as I find this, and as much as the article and comments made a lot of sense, it doesn't seem to be a complete picture. For example, I liked it a lot (while not a favorite I'm looking forward to getting it on dvd and I'm not a big dvd collector, and I also mean to read the book) yet I wasn't pushed to be competitive by anyone. My parents were neglectful, Granny was easy going and other relatives just expected I'd get married someday and be a housewife, and school faculty tended to be happiest when I was quiet (so I was allowed to read and write when I quickly finished the assignments which most others weren't allowed to do on the unspoken agreement that I didn't ask the teacher questions). It's true that I feel unfair demands were made of me by the schools and court system but not as described in that article. Yet I still related (perhaps there was enough of my life not being my own when I was a kid to count, I lived with my mom who was about as useless as Katniss's own mother, Katniss's & Peeta's sponsor Haymitch reminded me of Dad in both good and bad ways, I've had dreams of being chased by fires since I was 5, including forest fires, and when I entered dangerous situations, such as a runaway living on the streets or imprisoned in a hellish teen gulag passing itself off as a mental hospital, I faced evil and/or violent characters among both adults and other kids trapped in the same sitch while forging deep if short-lived friendships and desperate alliances with other kids in the same boat as me, many of whom didn't expect to live to see adulthood, along with a couple of adults who had no real power but sources of great advice and dire warnings). When I was 17-18 living off the grid I did some hunting and learned all kinds of nifty survival and combat skills (including archery) among those who feared and/or hated the government similar to District 12 so maybe that helped me to relate to it, too. And if I have different reasons for liking it as much as I did then maybe many others who love it (even those who are obsessed with it) have different reasons as well.

And I also can't ignore that Harry Potter featured many adults that tried as hard as they could to protect Harry (and the other kids) from those who preyed on them, and while the kids had to fight it was because the many protective adults couldn't prevent it (Harry and friends even WANTED to compete in deadly games, particularly the Triwizard Tournament, and enter mortal combat and usually had to evade their adult guardians to do so), and even so those adults were still depended on more often than not, yet this appealed to kids as well (granted, the books took a sinister turn later on but it achieved its popularity well before that happened). And Twilight...with the caveat that I've only read the first book the impression I got was a desire by the author & target audience to never grow up, to have some powerful figures look out for you in a dangerous world even if one had to accept the guardians being extremely controlling (and even a little menacing, but that fits with how many children experience parents). I'll grant that Bella takes care of her father (but then plenty of kids have to step up and help carry dysfunctional parents they'd prefer to escape), but she still seems more the girl than woman to me and she's wanting to be rescued from that (if anything she seems to want even less autonomy than more). The vampires, including Edward, have more of a parent-child relationship with Bella than Bella does with her dad. At least that's my observation, though my memories are kinda vague on it now.

Now it could be just different tastes, like some women swoon over the alpha males in Gone with the Wind and Princess Bride while others prefer the sweet men in Ever After, Enchanted, and Stardust, so it would be no surprise that teen girls are the same (those preferring alphas would go for Jacob or Edward while those wanting someone sweet would go for Peeta). Yet if nearly all the girls at the local school is in love with Peeta then that means many who love the Hunger Games also loved Twilight and/or Harry Potter as well (and that would seem to clash with what the article states that kids relate to).

But then maybe a bowl of fruit is just a bowl of fruit and the reason for the popularity are the fab abs of the guys involved (that is perhaps any boy--or man--cute enough is transformed from "stalker" to "romantic" or "psycho jerk" to "manly" or "spineless" to "sweet"). That is to say maybe the article I linked to is just mental masturbation skillfully done but no more accurate than reading meanings from clouds and ink blots and what really appeals to the target audience (and makes a movie popular) is eye candy spiced up with some emotional drama (of course the claims could still be true of some viewers, but not necessarily enough to justify generalizing the teen demographic).

OTOH, maybe the enjoyment of different fandoms comes from approaching them each in a different way so that while they seem contradictory it's more that these different stories appeal to different and conflicting desires and varying circumstances most everyone experiences to one degree or another (perhaps with some peer pressure thrown in, with "eye candy" again once it's on screen).

I'd be curious what others thought of the article. My above thoughts are my first impressions so obviously I'm not sure what to think yet and maybe someone else's perspective or insights might help or inspire me to ultimately decide what I think about this.

And are boys really avoiding this movie? I know this series was aimed at teen girls but I'd think boys would love this. (I wonder if many do but just won't admit to liking "chick lit/flick." My girl says the boys don't complain anywhere as much taking girls to see it as they did over Twilight anyway...)

I'd also be curious what members of GS thought of this flick, even if it's just to say you liked it only because Josh Hutcherson was in it.

[pellaz]

the storyline is about some exceptional ladies.