Week 2 - The Good Stuff

I have decided to split this post in two because it was getting too long.
Now to the stuff I actually wanted to talk about - The Hunger Games and (to a lesser extent) Twilight.

The Hunger Games

I picked up the Hunger Games in second year university without any knowledge of it's following. I found it an interesting book. I read that the author came up with the idea after flicking channels from Iraq war coverage to kids competing in reality television and deciding that combining the two would be a good idea for a book. You can feel for Katniss as she tells the story from her point of view. The reader sees that her world is bleak and she is doing everything she can to fight it. When I read the book I wanted a happy ending and by seeing it was in the Young Adults section, I knew there was a 95% chance that I would get one.
When the hype was beginning about the movies I wondered about how it would transfer onscreen. The Hunger Games contains some very serious themes including dictatorship, censorship, class struggle and media control. Depending on the age and maturity of the child, these are important topics that need to be discussed, even if some think that it is too delicate for young people to handle.
One thing that did confuse me was people's reaction to the movies. On one hand people were concerned about the notion of kids killing kids and how it would be too violent for them to watch. Yet they watch coverage of wars happening overseas, where children are roped into fighting - regardless of whether they want to or not. On the other hand people had shirts with "Team Katniss" written on them, and fans boasting that she was a good role model for girls. Hang on, let's think about that a moment. Katniss is a survivalist, she is rude to her mother, she is surly, sarcastic and doesn't like making friends, she doesn't take compliments and doesn't like the authorities. I don't know about you but if I saw any of those qualities in my own kids I would be pulling my hair out (Yes, I know she volunteered for her sister at the Reaping, but this is because Katniss saw her sister Prim as someone who is small and weak,  and who needed to be protected, but I don't think this act alone makes Katniss a role model).
The Hunger Games has a huge following online - there are Tumblr pages, Pintrest boards, whole sites dedicated to Fan Art. Another feature of this fandom is that people can join the Paneem community (Paneem is the ficitonal country the Hunger Games takes place in) through Facebook and generate an ID card which categorises them into a District, gives them a personalised id number and gives them an occupation (including Tribute - For the Record I was put as a farmer in District 9, which is responsible for grain). After logging on people "show district pride" and write fan fiction using the character traits they'd been allocated, even adding the long id numbers after their names so people. This level of participatory culture is on the rise as the second movie Catching Fire is due to hit cinemas in November.

Twilight

I won't mention too much about Twilight as I don't find rants very attractive. Twilight came out when I was in high school. I read it. It was like reading the diary of some of the girls I went to school with. I remember girls swooning over Edward when I thought he was just down right creepy (give me Neville Longbottom any day of the week). I did see the movie with my brother's girlfriend - it wasn't my cup of tea. At least I didn't fall for the advertising pitch it was a "vampire movie".
But I suppose some good has come out of Twilight. It got girls who rarely read novels into reading. It brings up issues like sex before marriage. Over 200,000 fan fictions have been written (and as far as my friends have told me almost a third of them are amateur attempts of writing porn) which I guess gives people an outlet to... express themselves.

Look Forward to next week
(RANDOM NOTE: Did you know that the infamous 50 Shades of Grey began as a fan fic entry? with Chrisitan Grey being the AU, Alternative Universe, version of Edward Cullen. This may explain why the character is rich and creepy.)