panem et circenses
Someone stepped on a mouse on our sidewalk, and it's just lying there, all squished and dead and mouselike. Much as I hate mice, it's too horrible to imagine doing that, somehow.
In barely-thematically-related news, I finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy and I continue to be impressed. They went fast, because YA is fast - I had forgotten how you can blaze through a YA trilogy in a couple workdays without even staying up past 11. Doing that with an adult trilogy would result in serious sleep deprivation. They're fast without being shallow, although I felt like the speed did detract a little from the emotional impact for me. They're serious without relishing their darkness in an unhealthy way. They're the kind of mid-future dystopia that makes very clear statements about our society, where it's headed, and what it's doing to us. They're exactly the kind of gateway drug I want my students to get into. Dystopia 101. Science fiction serving its proper purpose, using the fantastic medium to say things that are harder to say in the mainstream, and which would have less impact without the metaphors.
With
nancylebov's post about the changing timing of the future in mind, my sister and I disagreed about whether they count as "near-future" or "mid-future". It felt so imminent to me - reality TV, the commercialization and glamorization of everything, technology that hasn't advanced at all from what we now have, politics and even war being about form more than substance. But I guess that's the nature of a dystopia, whenever it's set, to address the problems of the time when it's written. She argued that it would take time for America to collapse and rebuild itself in this form. I felt that if they hadn't said "75th Annual Hunger Games", it could have been a mere 20 years in the future. Thinking about how Lauren Olamina is three this year - maybe it was wise of the author not to include a specific date. But reality TV is a fad of now, and with Twitter and Facebook and the rest of Web 2.0, everyone's life is becoming more public. The stage has interesting effects on people, and you have to wonder where it will end up.
There is, however, a wonderful and painful kind of irony in the phenomenon of Hunger Games as media sensation. I Googled "Hunger Games Philadelphia" in an attempt to figure out if it was still playing anywhere. Got interesting results. Showtimes in second-run theaters in New Jersey, yes. But it seemed like half the hits weren't about the books at all - they were about the "train like a tribute" workout that some sports club or other has made wildly popular. The art behind the Hunger Games. Somebody trying to cleverly use the title in an article about our mayor banning public feedings. Comparing the hit movie to Twilight, "only without the vampires". The Hunger Games Cocktail Recipe Round-Up. The Hunger Games Diet. RALEIGH, N.C. -Fans of The Hunger Games are turning up in North Carolina, seeking out places where the movie was shot, from old-growth forests to an abandoned mill town. And the tourism industry is prepared to cash in on them, with everything from hotel packages and zipline tours to reenactments of scenes from the film and lessons in survival skills.
There was apparently a free symposium on The Hunger Games last week at Temple University. Title: Are the Odds in Our Favor?: The Hunger Games, Fame, Fasion, and the Fate of Humanity. Speakers addressed topics such as
I feel like somewhere, a lot of people are completely missing the point in their attempt to cash in on all the hype. And in a beautiful but disturbing way, isn't that the entire point of it all?
Our school librarian held a Hunger Games discussion earlier in the year, with free stuff. When I mentioned to her that I'd finally started the series and had just finished the second book, she warned me that the ending was kind of sad. I disagreed, when I finished the series last night. From that resonant emotional place at the end of a story, I felt like it was precisely the happiest ending the author could get away with without sacrificing the integrity of the novels. Life turns out not to be the kind of game you can win. It didn't seem all that sad - it had the distance and speed and thinly realized descriptions of YA, and I spent a bunch of time last week reading over the short stories my sister is trying to get ready to send out. Hers are so much richer and more immediate, and so much more depressing. But short stories are a different medium - you get to punch someone quickly and leave them alone to recover, instead of having to maintain the back-and-forth with them for pages and pages.
I keep talking about how we should make it to Wiscon one of these years, especially as long as I get four days off for Memorial Day weekend. It seems relevant here, somehow. This year I'd even looked up the cost of plane tickets, but they were ridiculous. Maybe next year, who knows?
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In barely-thematically-related news, I finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy and I continue to be impressed. They went fast, because YA is fast - I had forgotten how you can blaze through a YA trilogy in a couple workdays without even staying up past 11. Doing that with an adult trilogy would result in serious sleep deprivation. They're fast without being shallow, although I felt like the speed did detract a little from the emotional impact for me. They're serious without relishing their darkness in an unhealthy way. They're the kind of mid-future dystopia that makes very clear statements about our society, where it's headed, and what it's doing to us. They're exactly the kind of gateway drug I want my students to get into. Dystopia 101. Science fiction serving its proper purpose, using the fantastic medium to say things that are harder to say in the mainstream, and which would have less impact without the metaphors.
With
nancylebov's post about the changing timing of the future in mind, my sister and I disagreed about whether they count as "near-future" or "mid-future". It felt so imminent to me - reality TV, the commercialization and glamorization of everything, technology that hasn't advanced at all from what we now have, politics and even war being about form more than substance. But I guess that's the nature of a dystopia, whenever it's set, to address the problems of the time when it's written. She argued that it would take time for America to collapse and rebuild itself in this form. I felt that if they hadn't said "75th Annual Hunger Games", it could have been a mere 20 years in the future. Thinking about how Lauren Olamina is three this year - maybe it was wise of the author not to include a specific date. But reality TV is a fad of now, and with Twitter and Facebook and the rest of Web 2.0, everyone's life is becoming more public. The stage has interesting effects on people, and you have to wonder where it will end up.
There is, however, a wonderful and painful kind of irony in the phenomenon of Hunger Games as media sensation. I Googled "Hunger Games Philadelphia" in an attempt to figure out if it was still playing anywhere. Got interesting results. Showtimes in second-run theaters in New Jersey, yes. But it seemed like half the hits weren't about the books at all - they were about the "train like a tribute" workout that some sports club or other has made wildly popular. The art behind the Hunger Games. Somebody trying to cleverly use the title in an article about our mayor banning public feedings. Comparing the hit movie to Twilight, "only without the vampires". The Hunger Games Cocktail Recipe Round-Up. The Hunger Games Diet. RALEIGH, N.C. -Fans of The Hunger Games are turning up in North Carolina, seeking out places where the movie was shot, from old-growth forests to an abandoned mill town. And the tourism industry is prepared to cash in on them, with everything from hotel packages and zipline tours to reenactments of scenes from the film and lessons in survival skills.
There was apparently a free symposium on The Hunger Games last week at Temple University. Title: Are the Odds in Our Favor?: The Hunger Games, Fame, Fasion, and the Fate of Humanity. Speakers addressed topics such as
- "The Odds Are In Our Favor For What? Four Possible Destinies in The Hunger Games"
- "Searching for Reality in a Fictional World: How The Hunger Games Plays on Our Enjoyment and Knowledge of Reality TV"
- "Katniss Kardashian: Fame and Simulation"
- "Are We Katniss .. Or Are We the Capitol?"
I feel like somewhere, a lot of people are completely missing the point in their attempt to cash in on all the hype. And in a beautiful but disturbing way, isn't that the entire point of it all?
Our school librarian held a Hunger Games discussion earlier in the year, with free stuff. When I mentioned to her that I'd finally started the series and had just finished the second book, she warned me that the ending was kind of sad. I disagreed, when I finished the series last night. From that resonant emotional place at the end of a story, I felt like it was precisely the happiest ending the author could get away with without sacrificing the integrity of the novels. Life turns out not to be the kind of game you can win. It didn't seem all that sad - it had the distance and speed and thinly realized descriptions of YA, and I spent a bunch of time last week reading over the short stories my sister is trying to get ready to send out. Hers are so much richer and more immediate, and so much more depressing. But short stories are a different medium - you get to punch someone quickly and leave them alone to recover, instead of having to maintain the back-and-forth with them for pages and pages.
I keep talking about how we should make it to Wiscon one of these years, especially as long as I get four days off for Memorial Day weekend. It seems relevant here, somehow. This year I'd even looked up the cost of plane tickets, but they were ridiculous. Maybe next year, who knows?
This entry has
comments. Leave a comment? (Click "Log in with OpenID?", top right corner.)