if the music ain't good well that's just too bad
Rocks fall. Everyone dies.
[...]
I feel like the best way to explain the Hunger Games trilogy is to compare it to that grand old genre trilogy in the sky: Hunger Games is like Star Wars if every single movie was The Empire Strikes Back. I want to say that I was disappointed by the end of Mockingjay, but that's not entirely fair. Each of the first two books ended on a things-are-about-to-get-even-more-fucked note. The sentimental sap in me might have secretly hoped for a all-singing all-Ewok ending, but these books were always going to end with someone barely hanging on at Cloud City.
So, okay. War is hell. Even when you're fighting to defeat an oppressive dictatorship, this does not guarantee that the motives of your leaders are pure, and you may still have to do evil things (WARNING: WAR ON TERROR ANVIL ALERT). War destroys soldiers, even the ones who survive, and sends them home broken psychologically pretty much forever (SECONDARY ANVIL ALERT). I am both impressed that Suzanne Collins hammered this home so unilaterally in a young adult book and sad because my secret wretched fourteen-year-old self wanted the improbable plucky hero uplifting ending.
However, I do take issue with the resolution of the love triangle and the part that it played in Katniss' character resolution. One of the things I loved most about the first two books was the very deft way the love triangle was played. I liked that, most of the time, Katniss didn't really know how she felt about either Gale or Peeta, and I loved the quasi-meta moments where romantic interest would get raised and she would be like "UM SERIOUSLY WHAT DOES IT MATTER I'M JUST DOING WHAT I CAN TO KEEP EVERYONE ALIVE." On Monday night, I was trying to explain to Julia why I loved these books so much, and I compared it to the Twilight series, and how fans of those books have Team Edward and Team Jacob, but in the Hunger Games books, there's only one team and it's Team Katniss.
And in Mockingjay ... not so much. Peeta's hijacking is an interesting idea plot-wise, but it does crappy things to both characters. Peeta as a character in the first two books is kind of a blank slate. Everything that you know about Peeta is actually just something you know about how he feels about Katniss. I'm willing to let this slide because it's a twist from the usual formula, to have the male character be the reflective surface (to return to the metaphor of the previous paragraph: what do you know about Bella Swan besides the fact that she loves Edward Cullen). So to send Peeta back hijacked and then muddle the line between what memories are fear-brainwashing and what memories are him finally seeing Katniss' nature without love-sick goggles. Which again, is interesting, but since we're in her POV, it all gets very internalized as a) 100% accurate and b) completely deserving.
And that part just sucks. Katniss is a compelling character because she's obviously flawed and not entirely redeemable, and the brief moments where her internal-POV "oh I'm so unlikeable" are mirrored with external-POV (usually Haymitch) "yeah, you really are completely unlikeable" are killer because they're sparse. But Peeta sniping at her about their nights on the train in front of everyone just feels like this awful heavy-handed hammer of character assassination. And so the silver lining of the book is supposed to be that they confine her to District 12 instead of executing her for assassinating Coin but Peeta moves back to be with her and they learn to love each other on their own fucked-up terms and 15 years later Peeta CONVINCES HER THEY SHOULD HAVE KIDS?
I'm sorry. Madge dies, Finnick dies, pretty much every character introduced in the third book dies, the President of District 13 is just as evil as President Snow, Prim dies, Katniss' contribution to the actual defeat of the Capitol is watching Prim die and then waking up in a hospital bed (AGAIN), Katniss' mother deserts her because of her long-running weakness and grief, Gale's indirect contribution to Prim's death poisons their relationship forever, Katniss kills Coin but is redeemed because they decide she's too fucking broken and fucked up and crazy to be held accountable for her actions, but the silver lining is that she has nightmares for the rest of her life but eventually Peeta convinces her that she should GET OVER HER FEAR OF HAVING BABIES.
Ugh. Motherhood = happiness is ugh enough, but it's 1000% worse because it's not even her own decision, she makes a point of clarifying that Peeta had to talk her into it.
I guess that was ultimately my problem with this book, was Katniss' total loss of agency. Throughout the first first book and midway through the second, Katniss is presented as having no agency (life in District 12), attempts to assert control by trading a fucked-up situation for a more fucked-up situation (takes Prim's place in the reaping), realizes that she's traded one cage for another (the arena), decides again that self-determination is preferable even if it means certain death (the berries) and realizes again that she's traded one cage for another (from the arena to Snow's scrutiny). Her attempts to assert agency and her realization that there is no freedom as long as she still lives in Panem are a powerful narrative. Once she goes into the arena a second time, this all starts to fall apart a little bit. From halfway through Catching Fire, she is being manipulated by the Capitol, by the district rebels and by the District 13 military. That's a powerful narrative too, and there are similar moments of cages-within-cages (go off the sanctioned military mission to save people, great, you just made us another fantastic commercial!) that are true to the original narrative.
And so, the decision to shoot Coin can be interpreted as the ultimate assertion of agency, the realization that the biggest cage is bigger than the dictatorship of Panem, its power and what human beings are willing to do to each other to seize it. And if the book had ended with Katniss being executed, or Katniss in forever in solitary confinement, it would have depressing as all get the fuck out, but it would have been true to the story. The clumsy attempt to tack on a happy ending ("Peeta saw how terrible a person I really am but he still loves me, also I realized that I loved him best all along because Gale is too much like me, and I am bad and Peeta is good") and have the hazy sunshine epilogue of the happy ending be YAY BABIES sells those characters short.
Dear Internet:
Sorry we haven't talked in a while. I have a new job (Fancy title! Embarrassingly huge office! Staff of thirteen direct reports!) which is eating my face with its overwhelming new jobness, and some days I come home from work so exhausted I just sit on my bed and eat arugula directly from the bag for dinner.
Before I started this job at the end of July, I went on vacation and tried to remember how to write fan fiction, and have written 16,000 words of a Star Trek reboot story (yeah, I know, 18 months late to the party, awesome) which may or may not be terrible gibberish. Last week when I was eating at my desk instead of taking a lunch, I spent some time at Wikipedia University teaching myself astronomical spectroscopy, so there's ... that?
I saw and liked the movie Inception, but my only commentary was "Hahah, isn't it funny how you could show a blind person who doesn't speak English thirty seconds from Memento, The Prestige and Inception and they'd know that Christopher Nolan made all three movies?" But I saw the movie with my dad and his response was "I didn't get it. When were they dreaming?"
xoxo,
lj user equals throughadoor