A Quick Interview with Piper Mejia: Sci-fi, Horror and Urban Fantasy Writer
Maureen interviews New Zealand author about her latest novel, Dispossessed
Tag: science fiction
Towards White Book Review
Towards White Zena Shapter Publisher: IFWG Publishing First Published: 2017 RRP: $29.95 Disclaimer: Zena and I attend the same write in group once a month-ish. However, the publisher gave me a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Interesting fact about me:…
Feminist and Loving Moffat Who: Why I am Done (Re)Explaining Part 2
Midway through last year I began a long essay which was intended to be my definitive stance on Steven Moffat, Doctor Who, female characters and feminism. However, the post soon turned mammoth and I decided to cut my post in half. Besides, enough time has now passed that I feel I can objectively assess Clara’s character, particularly in light of Series 8. This post is part 2 of my original essay and explores my interpretations of River Song, Clara and Missy as either feminist characters or characters whose stories exhibit refreshing new ways of looking at, and representing, women on TV. There are spoilers for all of new Doctor Who. As usual, comments are welcome. Flaming, rudeness or idiocy is not. You can read the first part of the essay here.
River Song
Ah Professor Song. What an unexpected delight you proved to be. When I first saw River alongside Ten in the Moffat two parter Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, she made little to no impression, joining the ranks of people in s4 who became ‘the companions who never were.’ So little did she register on my character radar, I was left asking River Who? when she was announced as appearing in Time of Angels. From the opening few minutes of Time of Angels, the character felt fresh and revitalized: from her coy use of hallucinogenic lipstick, the peroxide blonde curls which she fluffed coolly to the confident way she knew that The Doctor beguiled would pick her up from space.So much did I grow to love River in series 5, I wrote an essay on her for my gender politics class in first year university.
River is such a refreshingly feminist character, I could write a book about it. Now nobody but the most die hard of Whovians have time for that, so I have made a list instead. Below the list are criticisms that people have of River and my responses.
Reasons Why River is a Feminist Character 101:
1. Alex Kingston is allowed to play an older, sexy, desirable woman, sometimes in a near lead part, alongside the youngest Doctor ever. For those who are thinking ‘so what?’ have you watched TV lately? When’s the last time you saw a sexy, older woman be allowed to be a sexy, older woman without the TV story harshing on her? Be honest now.
2. Following on from the last point, in a show about Doctor Who ie The Doctor ie white, male Brit actor, River is often smarter, wiser, more compassionate even, then The Doctor (well, she is a Pond). She spends a lot of her screen time making fun of The Doctor and solving problems he can’t solve. Lest we all forget the enormously entertaining time she told The Doctor to use his screwdriver to build a cabinet whilst she shot down The Silence. Some fans didn’t like this at all. To them I say, keep your sexist opinion to yourself. That kind of attitude says a lot about you and not a lot about Moffat.
3. River Song doesn’t care about rules or gender norms. River does things like date aliens with multiple heads to keep things interesting. River does things like shoot The Doctor’s fez because we all know it isn’t really cool. River does things like break out of prison all of the time in the most brazen way possible because why not? River does things like threaten to destroy the universe to save the person she loves because deep down you can’t keep a bad girl down. Remember Point No. 1? Alex was over 50 for all 13 episodes she appeared in. Just saying.
4. River Song is smart. She’s a professor of archaeology after all, and all of the best companions have a healthy respect for history (Evelyn Smythe). She runs rings around us ordinary folk. It must be a 51st century thing.
I could go on further but I feel like that covers the basics. Now, from what I read within fandom, most people didn’t have a problem with River as a sexist character initially. People disliked her because they weren’t fans of Alex or because they didn’t like River being depicted as The Doctor’s equal (oh the irony) or because they didn’t like the romance angle. This all changed with the dire yet utterly mad Let’s Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song in Series 6 which revealed that River was Amy’s child, stolen by The Silence to destroy The Doctor. River is redeemed by The Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler after her attempted murder fails. She then refuses to follow through on fate in The Wedding of River Song, nearly destroying the universe in the process. People didn’t like this seemingly sudden linear approach to Doctor Who’s Time Traveler’s Wife take which seemed to indicate that River’s birth, childhood and adulthood had all been molded and shaped by The Doctor, in an echo of Amy.
I again repeat what I said in my first essay. That is one aspect of the story but it is not all of River. We do not see her life outside of the show which revolves around The Doctor as the main character. This is because the show is not the River show. It is The Doctor show. We do know that River has adventures separate to her life with The Doctor. Hence her relationships with unmet aliens and humans, her archaeological adventures (why was there no spin off?), her refusal to travel full time with The Doctor because the fun is in the not knowing when they’d next meet. It was interesting that River refused. Hardly the actions of someone whose entire identity revolved around The Doctor.
Besides, I feel people miss the point of River’s character arc in Series 6. Moffat’s Doctors aren’t about Gods and destiny ala RTD and Ten. Moffat’s Doctors are about being catalysts for change, about bringing out the best in humans so that they bring out the best part in The Doctor. River is stolen away as a baby and brainwashed to kill The Doctor. When she is outwitted The Doctor gives her a choice to choose a different way. He knows it. Because his first is her last. That doesn’t make River predictable. It gives her agency. Agency to claim any identity she wants as long as that identity is not one based on hate and anger. That isn’t about gender politics. It’s about humanism. And so we end up with series 5, 6.1, and 7.1 River who is bad ass and wild and sexy and and smart and blows shit up for fun. We end with post library River in The Name of the Doctor who gets her Doctor closure and… chooses to let go and accept her fate, fading away. River, you strong woman, I salute you.
Clara Oswald
After The nuanced Pond’s, Clara felt stale before she even got started. Though she had strong starts as Dalek Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks and as governess Clara in The Snowmen,, throughout series 7 she remained more of a plot device than a character. People choose to read this as Moffat’s propensity for sexism. I read it as Moffat’s propensity to write complex and detailed plots using characters like stiff set pieces to move plots forward. A story telling failing? Absolutely! Sexist? Harder to determine, not living inside Moffat’s head and understanding his intent.
From the Series 7 finale on, something strange and kind of magical happened. Clara became important. Really important. Not just pretty sidekick companion important to the plot because of reasons. Actually, meaningfully and powerfully important within the entire Who canon. First, it turns out she tells The Doctor to take that faulty TARDIS, second, she discovers his secret and sees all of him in a way no other companions have, thirdly, she makes The Doctor see a way to go back and prevent himself from committing genocide to end the Time War, fourthly, she is one of the only companions to see The Doctor’s childhood, even offering him words of comfort about fear and creatures under your bed, fifth, she BECOMES the freaking Doctor in the excellent Flatline, sixth, she manages to prolong near certain cyber death in Death in Heaven by pretending to be The Doctor, earning Jenna Coleman the privilege of being the first ever companion to have her name come before the actor playing The Doctor in the opening credits, seventh, she spends all of series 8 telling and showing The Doctor that she won’t be bossed around by him, spending many episodes solving alien problems herself before The Doctor gets near them. So unexpectedly important has Clara become in The Doctor’s life, a friend of mine has re-titled the show and her, Clara Who?
That doesn’t excuse the woeful Series 7. Or the limp injection of the Danny/Clara story line into series 8, and the poor writing that created these messes. By the same token, it doesn’t make Clara a sexist character. It makes her a partially poorly written one. In Series 8 she becomes more though: control freak, passionate lover, angry avenger, teacher, problem solver and most importantly, a close friend. It helps that Jenna is an excellent actress. I’m not entirely sold on Clara as a character, but I do think we should acknowledge the audacity of Moffat making her the unexpected linchpin of the show. Hardly a sexist move.
Missy
I admit, I am not objective when it comes to Missy. I was in love from the second she manically spun around her creepy version of Heaven in Deep Breath.
People have made lots of dumb claims about Missy on the internet. How dare Moffat change a Time Lord’s gender some say. Fuck off, sexist twits, I say. This post sends up some choice examples of the idiocy and is entertaining to boot. Others complain that Moffat is a sexist pig because as soon as he started writing a female Master she flirted with The Doctor. I admit, I feel vaguely sorry for these people. Have they read fanfic.net? Livejournal? Tumblr? Oh bless, have they ever seen a single canon Master story? People have been slashing this pairing for years, and um yes folks, that means shipping Doctor/Master same sex (oh the horror!). Still others (I believe MarySue was one of them), complained that a female Master merely served to mock fans who want a female Doctor and have no hope of getting one. This is so unfounded I can’t even. Unless you are determined to hate on Moffat in the face of all evidence to the contrary, it is evident that he is trying to push the possibility of a female Doctor on to many fans radars. Not everyone has thought about it as much as the rest of us have. Some people are dead against it. Change needs to be introduced slowly. Hence Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife, which revealed Time Lords can switch gender, the Missy gender change reveal, and the conversation at the end of Death in Heaven where Clara suggests to The Doctor that he could return home to be a Queen rather than a King and he agrees with her. If The Doctor is cast as a female next regeneration, I will be mocking half of the internet. I told you so.
Michelle Gomez is great as Missy and I am glad that she is playing a more Delgado style Master. I like that she is chillingly evil and like a deranged Mary Poppins at the same time. I like that her reason for her plan was the most interesting plan a Master has had in years. I like that she manipulates humanity and The Doctor with lies and deception the same as every other Master before her. Her gender has changed, but if anything, she felt the most masterish for a long time. Poor Moffat. He casts the best person for the role (and across the internet and fandom it’s pretty widely acknowledged that Michelle was the best person for the role) and writes the character in a way that doesn’t depend on gender stereotypes (If you can’t see that The Master/Doctor nose kiss was about power, I give up) and people still accuse Moffat of Missy sexism. The poor man can never win.
In Summary:
Look, it’s no secret that I dig Moffat Who. I think that his stories are richer and subtler and more nuanced than RTD’s. I think that he dares to be audacious and break audience expectations. I think that he dares to push boundaries. I think that he dares to make unpopular decisions for the sake of stories with wide appeal. It’s also no secret that I think my faves, including Moffat, can be problematic. The second half of series 6 and series 7 is best never mentioned again, OK?
However, I don’t think my fave is problematic because he writes sexist characters. I think he writes roles for women which push TV boundaries. I think he sometimes manages to write feminist characters, and actually, the score is that he writes them on Who more often than not.
I passionately believe that Moffat is problematic because his ambitions don’t always fit the television medium and his crack makes it from the page to the screen without a filter. I passionately believe that Moffat can be unintentionally problematic about his characters because he writes complex plots and forgets how to characterize.
I also passionately believe that Moffat is not sexist. I passionately believe that Moffat Who is one of the most unexpectedly feminist shows on TV, and that the internet heat is mostly a lot of ill informed and poorly contextualized hot air. And this essay has ended without even mentioning the lesbian relationship between a lizard alien and a human woman…
I am feminist and I really, really, really love Moffat Doctor Who. I’m done (re)explaining why.
The Allure of Steampunk: An Interview with Richard Harland
A short while after the NSW Writers Centre Speculative Fiction Festival I thought about interviewing a steampunk author to go with my posts on steampunk. Of course, I soon thought of steampunk author Richard Harland. I really enjoy his novels and had met him once…
This Month We Talk About… Ebooks
This month the great eVolution debate is here courtesy of beloved Australian author, Isobelle Carmody. Never one to bite off more than she can chew, she has decided to independently re-release her 1997 novel Greylands as an ebook with a bang. Enlisting the help of web designer Min Dean…
Sydney Writer’s Festival 2012: A Neverending Story: Fantasy Worlds Panel with Isobelle Carmody, Justine Larbalestier, and Scott Westerfeld
Yesterday I took notes at the Sydney Writer’s Festival on this panel, so I thought I’d write up a post for those that couldn’t make it. Any mistakes in the notes are my own, as no recording devices were allowed. I tried to only scrawl down things relevent to fantasy generally, rather than parts where authors spoke very specifically about their own work.
A NeverEnding Story was facilitated by freelance reviewer and interviewer, Joy Lawn. Isobelle Carmody is the author of multiple speculative fiction novels and short stories for young adults and adult readers. She is most famous for her Obernewtyn Chronicles, but she has received many awards for her other work, most recently, for her children’s book The Red Wind, also illustrated by Isobelle. Justine Larbarlestier is author of the Magic or Madness trilogy, and debuted with her realist novel, Liar. Scott Westerfeld has written Uglies, Midnighters, and more recently a trilogy of steampunk novels beginning with Leviathan.
Joy: What is speculative fiction and which sub genres have you chosen to write in?
Justine: Everything that isn’t boring- world’s that I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve written Team Human with Irish author, Sarah Rees Brennan.
Scott: World’s with new rules- alternative world’s which really captivate the reader. My latest book, Leviathan, is steampunk.
Isobelle: As a kid I didn’t have tv, or travel, and I lived on housing commission. For me, speculative fiction was anything set in new locations that were unfamiliar to me, like Peru or somewhere, but I also don’t like to label with specific genres.
I like to think that I use certain tools and utensils when I write a story, and for me, speculative fiction embodies the tools and utensils I always come back to.
Travel is really important as a writer. It takes you out of your comfort zone and strips you back to who you really are. My new collection of short stories, Metro Winds, is about mental journey’s, and the metamorphosis caused by travel. You reinvent, and reintepret yourself and your worldview when you’re travelling. Speculative fiction really suits exploring these ideas.
For me, speculative fiction is really about personal philsophical questions. Speculative fiction is speculative.
Joy: What are some key themes in your books?
Isobelle: In Obernewtyn, it’s about why human beings are both so great, and capable of so much greatness, and yet so terrible? What makes humanity the way it is?
Scott: In Leviathan, I wanted to write about airships and tanks, and once I knew that, my setting kind of defined both my genre, and even themes to some extent. Life is super, super messy as it is, and I wanted to explore people’s responsibilities to the world and each other, in terms of the social class and hierachy of World War One, and relationships between poorer and wealthier people.
Justine: My books kind of just grow. I don’t have an outline, they happen. My books are about appearance vs. true personality, and about how people are raised, with the grandmother/granddaughter relationship explored in one of my books. It’s about generational difference.
Joy: Do you toy with realism?
Justine: Yeah, in Liar.
Scott: In So Yesterday, but I found it difficult.
Isobelle: My partner gave me a story for Metro Winds as a birthday gift. He found a miniture circus, and I was so jealous that I wasn’t… only he would find that kind of thing. I used that in one of my short stories in Metro Winds [InkAshlings: The Dove Game]
Well- fantasy comes out of reality- it always leads back to us personally. Speculative fiction isn’t fact, but it IS truth, and they are two different things.
[InkAshlings: Such an interesting point raised by Isobelle here. I had an argument with my history lecturer once about history as a form of story telling which tells the same sort of ‘truth’ as a fiction writer, based off the fact/truth difference. Essentially, don’t historians and authors do the same thing, in revealing truths about the human experience, but using different tools? I would have liked to have heard more on this from the panel]
Scott: In the Ugly Series, eveyone turns beautiful at 16. That story came from a friend who lived in LA after New York, and emailed us about a trip to the dentist. The dentist asked him in all seriousness about a 5 year dental plan, with appearance the emphasis, not health. What if everything was about appearance? was my central question for that series, but that came out of realism, out of reality.
Justine: I’ve used biographical stuff in my stories too, facts from my childhood. I used to live near an Aboriginal settlement, and that has crept into my writing. You can’t write out of nothing. That’s the fun aspect of being a writer. It’s a constant surprise.
Isobelle: You can also get revenge. I got revenge on a teacher I hated in school, I was so scared of him. I used his name, and described him as bald and ugly, and then one day I actually bumped into him! I tried to avoid him, but he came over and told me how proud everyone was of me!!! He even mentioned how happy he was that I’d used his name, even if the character wasn’t like him at all!!!
Joy: Is that the teacher in The Gathering?
Isobelle: Yes. The Gathering.
Justine: I hated a girl from school, and wrote her into my book.
Joy: Can you tell us a bit about your individual writing process?
Isobelle: Scott sounds organised- you know, perfect histories, languages, maps, charts. Are you?
Scott: Yeah- well… kind of…
Isobelle: I didn’t even have a map for Obernewtyn. The publishers told me I needed one and I had to go back and figure one out. Anyone in the audience who has read Obernewtyn will know how sketchy that map is.
I’m chaos, I don’t take notes, in my mind it’s fluid. Writing it down in plans ruins that fluid creativity. Sucking the world up is natural, and I do that. It’s like fly paper, you suck things up and it sticks in your brain till you need it.
Scott: The little details had to be correct for a World War One steampunk setting. I did loads of research. In writing, you find out what you don’t know. Like zippers? When were they invented? Wikipedia tells you that, but not when zippers were filtered down to Scottish orphans, did orphans wear zippers in WW1? and I needed to know that. Wikipedia didn’t tell me that.
Research can give narrative. I went on a zeppelin ride as research in Germany, and I found out important minor details, like how balanced the craft has to be, and how carefully people have to move on and off a zeppelin. I needed to know that for Leviathan.
Justine: [InkAshlings: Justine talked about the difficulty of working with another author but I didn’t catch all of this or get it down] Sarah plans everything, she knows the entire plot of novel’s she hasn’t even written yet. It’s mind blowing, and I can’t work like that.
Isobelle: Yeah… but has she written these books yet?
Justine: No… but she has used this method to publish books before.
[Isobelle looked pretty incredulous here. It was quite funny.]
Justine: We had to use a rough outline to compromise. We set ourselves a challenge. I wrote a chapter, and then Sarah discussed it with me, and reworked it, and then we switched and did the same thing forwards and backwards for every chapter. We even kept a catalogue of how many times we laughed reading each others chapters [InkAshlings: Sarah and Justine wrote the paranormal romance comedy, Team Human, together]
Isobelle: [Pulling all kinds of faces] That would kill me. That would absolutely unravel me as a writer.
Justine: Yeah, but it wasn’t my book. It was unique. I’m not sure I would ever do it again. Liar was carefully structured after I wrote the entire manuscript. I used a new program, I hate word… if I ever met Bill Gates… I’m joking. Anyway, I used scriptnet, because I wrote small sections at a time, and replaced sections. I could move index cards around on the computer using scriptnet.
Isobelle: I typed my first book on a type writer. You’re young. I hand write with an ink pen and paper. [to the audience] who here does that still?
[Joy asked for a show of hands on who used scriptnet, word, and wrote by hand from the audience here]
Isobelle: This is really showing my age [upon the lack of handwriting hands in the air]. Actually, I have this funny story. I met a young fan once, and he actually asked me, when was the world black and white? He actually thought the world was literally black and white in the olden days.
[Lots of audience laughter]
Joy: Have you ever created a fantasy world that failed? And what did you do about that?
Justine: I got fired on a ghost writing job once- too many cooks. There was the publisher, the packaging house, the author, the ghost writer, and then me. There were too many contradictary instructions. The world building rules got hopelessly confused.
Scott: I’ve had bad ideas- For example in The Extra’s, I wanted to write from a male perspective, and the book was due in a month. I realised that the male protagonist’s sister was experiencing the entire story, so I asked my editor if I should rewrite the story from her POV. I had to rewrite the world from her perspective in a month because I was seeing my world from the wrong place.
Isobelle: Perfect people are boring in stories. You need them to have flaws.
Joy: You’ve all written about vampires. What makes yours stand out?
Justine: I’ve read loads on vampires- I love and hate them. Dead people walking around freaks me out, it would be so cold, and creepy and horrible, touching a vampire isn’t sexy. The romance aspect repels and compels me. I mean, wouldn’t the vampire smell? They’re dead!
We [Sarah and Justine] wanted to explore the real cost of becoming a vampire, of losing your humanity. In this book [Team Human], vampires can’t laugh or cry.
Scott: I used research on cats. My take was the idea of cats/rats/bats as familiars, but also as carriers of vampirism in Peeps. It spreads to us, to cat lovers, that way. Vampires were parasites. It was the case of a cool book of science becoming an accessable story.
Isobelle: I hate horror. When I was 14, I was so scared of vampires. I used to wrap a towel around my neck, so that the vampire couldn’t bite me, and I shared a bed with my sister, so I used to push her to the outside, so the vampire would get her first. I’d pull the covers right up. There was no way that vampire was getting me!
I’m not a fan of horror, so I didn’t plan to write it. I got inspired by a sentence from an old battered guide book I found on Santorini. “Bringing vampires to Santorini is the same as bringing coal to Newcastle.” I wrote a vampire short story inspired by that, and by the island setting. [Story in Metro Winds, called, The Stranger- IA] When I sent the story to my editor, it was really strange, because they got another story from a British author inspired by the exact same quote!
Well- the thing I do like about vampires is immortality. I like that idea. I like the idea of being around to see things happen. I don’t like the idea of everyone going on without me, without having any kind of impact [InkAshlings: Ha Isobelle! You have your own massive wikipedia page and published books. Stop worrying on this front] So yeah- I wrote a horror short story… but I don’t think I’d be likely to write in that genre again.
Three questions were solicited from the audience now, and I was first up.
InkAshlings: Do you think that because fantasy is removed in setting from reality, it allows you to talk with more ease about difficult issues in society, that maybe people wouldn’t normally want to talk about, or wouldn’t feel comfortable dealing with, in a realist novel?
Justine: Yes. I mean, especially in America, where there is a small, but very vocal book banning minority. I know so many people who wouldn’t have been banned if they had been writing in the speculative fiction genre. It’s less confronting maybe? Sad but true. I know someone who was banned for depicting a very G rated lesbian relationship. I guarantee if that had been fantasy, it would have been ok.
[InkAshlings: I didn’t actually intend the question to go down the censorship route but it was interesting anyway. I was more asking about the way that imagination allows for uncomfortable truths to be aired in ways that challenge a reader, in a way that maybe can’t happen in realist novels.]
The second audience question was directed at Isobelle, and asked about her series Little Fur, and its relation to fairy story traditions.
Isobelle: I wrote the Little Fur series after a big flood in Prague, and there were things everywhere, all the debris, and cracks in the pavement. I was walking with my daughter, and she asked me what was in the cracks, so I told her trolls, and she asked, ‘what kind?’ so I said, ‘big, scary trolls.’ It went from there.
Metro Winds is realist, but I use the ornate language of fairy stories to tell these realist stories.
Justine: Fairy stories are a huge influence on fantasy authors. Myths and legends, and fairy stories…
Isobelle: They use rich symbols that are repeated over and over again. When I asked (with Nan McNab) various authors to contribute fairy stories to our Tales from the Tower compilation [InkAshlings: The Wilful Eye, and The Wild Wood] they all said yes, without even asking about money and stuff. It’s just… they… fairy stories tap into something that resonates with the human psyche.
Joy: Any questions for Scott?
Audience Question: Where do you go visually for world building ideas and perceptions? How do you visualise a world?
Scott: I really learnt about the value of illustrations and designs. The collaborative value of working with artists really means… the story happens with those extra dimensions.
Thanks to all three authors, and to Joy, for such a great event! If you want to support Australian fantasy, and you liked what these authors discussed, why not check out their websites, and grab a book?
Soulless: Book One of The Parasol Protecorate by Gail Carriger
Sometimes you aren’t after a big fantasy read. Sometimes you just want something gentle, and funny and a bit silly. Soulless was all that for me. My friend gave me the best selling Soulless last year for my 21st, but my book backlist was so…
The Sending Book Review
Isobelle Carmody’s The Sending is Book Six (Australian version) in her popular Obernewtyn Chronicles, Book One now itself a Penguin Classic. This review is therefore not pitched at new readers, but rather at those who are already invested in the series; people who are no doubt…
The Hunger Games: Movie Review
Before I say anything more, I should point out that I haven’t read the books by Suzanne Collins. I now wish I had and I will now add them to the ever growing book queue. The movie wasn’t perfect, but it sold me the story, and maybe that’s all that matters.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie. Comparisons to the Twilight franchise weren’t selling me anything, and the rise of teen franchises isn’t exactly thrilling to me either. Most movies that fall into the speculative fiction genre these days bug me because they throw so much energy into CGI spectacle, and don’t spend enough time on actual storytelling- on things like characterisation and sense of thematic purpose. If a movie does manage this I’m usually (and this is a sad indictment) pretty happy with it. And then rarely, every once in awhile, I see a genre movie that has actual emotional resonance. The Hunger Games achieved all of these things for me.
Set in a dystopian future, the Capitol rules over its people, not with a literal iron fist, but with something perhaps even more powerful, Machiavellian politics. After rebellion, the poorer districts must show that they submit to the power of the Capitol by giving up two of their children every year to participate in the Hunger Games. These children, aged between 12 and 18, must fight to the death, for the glory of their district, and more importantly, and very ironically something that the film does a poor job of explaining, to win food for their district for that year.To save her sister from participating, after her name is drawn out of a lottery , Katniss Everdeen volunteers to represent District 12. Can she survive the games alive? And more importantly, if she does survive, can she live with what she has seen and done?
I really liked this movie alot. Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss, has a good deal of screen presence, and I was pleased to see that the script used its actors properly, to show rather than tell, what characters were thinking and feeling by allowing quiet scenes and letting the eyes do the talking. The script gave time for the audience to process the enormity of what Katniss and her fellow competitors were being put through. I felt what it was Katniss was losing- innocence.
That loss of innocence was made more visceral by the brutal on screen deaths of those in the Game. One scene depicted a child being hacked to death by another child, and all on national television. I was horrified. My friend, who watches all mannor of horror movies, covered her eyes in parts of this movie. For once this is a movie adaptation that doesn’t shy away from its own themes (ala The Golden Compass), and uses cinematic image to ram its theme home. The ending was suitably anti-climatic, in time for part two, presumably released sometime next year, and yet somehow also appropriate. How does one go on, after all, knowing they’ve been watched on tv, every weakness and strength exposed, as they murdered other children in cold blood? A very disturbing thought indeed, and one that clamoured around my brain long after the film had ended.
So, yes, the Hunger Games of the title could have been explained, and the logistics of the political institutions that control the districts made clearer, with the ending less abrupt, but this is the first time in an age I’ve actually cared about the movie I’ve just seen.
The Hunger Games packed an emotional and visceral punch. Thank God for that.