Start With What You Know Is True: Mental Health in The Hunger Games
In the real world, mental illnesses affect millions of people, and yet there’s often a silence surrounding the issues, brought on by social stigmas and a lack of education on mental health. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety and panic disorders are prevalent within The Hunger Games, experienced by Katniss Everdeen and those around her. The trilogy highlights just how much trauma can affect people, especially the young adults and children manipulated by those much older.
While the novels are far more adept at portraying the characters’ understanding of and struggles with their respective illnesses, the films do make an effort. The opening scene of Catching Fire, where Katniss hallucinates another tribute from the Games while hunting with Gale, visually captures the nightmares of the arena that plague Katniss, setting up the audience’s understanding of her mental state following the 74th Hunger Games. The majority of Katniss’ interior struggles, however, are found within the pages of the books.
The Bird & the Snake
“Remember who the enemy is,” Haymitch tells Katniss, moments before she is taken off to the Quarter Quell arena. Again, he reminds her as she attempts to talk down a man in District 2 holding a gun to her head; “Who is the enemy?”
The enemy, she knows, is the Capitol, and the man who embodies the so-called “beating heart” of Panem: President Snow. Where she is the symbol of freedom, he is the symbol of an oppressive system.
When Katniss first meets the President at the presentation of the victors, she understands instantly that he knows she is a threat, that she is the reason the Games and the Capitol were undermined. In the film, he seems to come across softer, commenting on her mockingjay pin and telling her that her district must be proud.
This softness and civility, we know, is a ruse. His eyes, she notes in the novel, are “as unforgiving as a snake’s” as he crowns her. What Katniss doesn’t realize at the time is how alike the two are, and just how much they will come to understand each other.
Panem Today, Panem Tomorrow, Panem Forever in Our World
Katniss raises her bow and lets loose an arrow, blowing a Capitol hovercraft out of the air. As it crashes into a second craft and they plummet to ground, the screen bursts into flames, and then: the Mockingjay logo over black. We watch this in the theater at the end of a trailer, Panem sees this at the end of a rebel propaganda short—a propo. The Hunger Games reflects a darker version of our own future, but our world reflects Panem right back.
Young Adult dystopian fiction is not a rare genre to find. Divergent, The Chemical Garden, Delirium, Uglies, Unwind, Chaos Walking, the list goes on. There are a vast array of reasons young adults connect with dystopian fiction. Give them a world they can see coming in their own future, a land destroyed by those before them, rules that tear away their agency, adults who would manipulate them, and yet give them the strength to grow, to change the narrative of their world for the better.
By wiping away the tedious normalcy of our lives now and exaggerating the things that already make life harder for everyone such as surveillance, media bias, body autonomy, and more, YA dystopian literature manages to not only distill issues in our present, but warn of future problems.
State of the Blog (and Where It’s Headed)
April was the second birthday of this blog (April also happens to be the birthday month for both me and my Twitter, too) and at the time, I didn’t have much to say on the fact. Plus, last month ended up being impossibly busy—the coolest thing being volunteering at Play by Play (NZ’s first international games festival), running a Twine workshop and doing event photography.
So, where is Not Saf for Work headed now that it’s in its terrible twos? Well, for what feels like the first time since I first posted here, I’ve actually got a somewhat solid plan.
Letting Your Character Grow
You have a character, and she’s your new baby. She has a picture-perfect face, and a name researched for days that exactly sum up her personality and her role within the narrative. Three chapters into the story, and she’s already pulling at the leash, wanting to turn left when the plan dictates turning right.
Sometimes, a character grows beyond their creator, forming opinions and traits that alter their trajectory. If you’re unprepared, an especially rebellious character can entirely throw a story’s path into turmoil.
Not every writer experiences their characters suddenly gaining a will of their own, and others will very seriously state that these characters must be kept very firmly on their destined track—you are in control!
No two people write exactly alike, nor will they experience the writing process the same way. I’m going to talk about how I—as someone who throws the reins free the instant I begin a story—approach character creation and growth.
Of Bows and Sabers, and the Girls who Wield them
2015 was a year of great cinema, that’s without a doubt, but the best part? That the two most anticipated of last year—The Force Awakens and Mockingjay Part 2—had something in common other than their sci-fi foundations, something that is still unfortunately new in action and science fiction and big blockbuster films: female leads. Rey, and Katniss Everdeen. Not adults, but girls, both thrown into their respective stories while still teenagers.
Though similar in their survivalist personalities and ability to defend themselves, having learned their fighting abilities simply to survive their harsh lives, both Katniss and Rey have vastly different personalities. Maybe it’s the traits that parallel the two that make them work so well as leads, and their differences that create such compelling young women as they fight for their lives, and the lives of those close to them.
An Incomplete Ranking of 2015 STAR WARS Literature
For someone who has fully embraced the new canon of Star Wars, this year has been a great year for reading. For the past two years I’ve been slowly making my way through the now-Legends novels chronologically (though the X-wing series got pushed ahead, for obvious reasons), and I can definitely say the ratio of books I’ve enjoyed to those I’ve slogged through has been much higher with the new stuff than the old EU.
That’s not to say I don’t love what I’ve read of the old novels, but I absolutely adore some of the newer books, so much so that two of them have become two of my favourite books ever, something that none of the old EU books have managed to do so far. In fact, that list is damn hard to get onto, because I dislike almost everything I read.
Protip: never suggest I read your favourite book, because odds are I will hate it and will pick apart all the reasons I think it’s awful right before your very eyes. (I’m so sorry, friends who like The Name of the Wind.)
Female Protagonists, Who Cares?
While at PAX Australia earlier this month I tagged along to a panel called, Who Cares About Female Protagonists? with a friend because, well, I care about female protagonists a hell of a lot.
There’s a reason the majority of my favourite games are headed by women and girls, or at least give the player the option to pick their gender (props to you, BioWare.) These games make me feel like I can be a hero in a way male-led games do not. They make me feel like I can be something more than I am.
Younger Fandom Interviews: Mára
For some, Star Wars is a hobby. For others, it is their life. This goes for people of all ages from all backgrounds, regardless of gender, race, or age. Something truly beautiful about the saga is how it can bond people—from friends to family to complete strangers.
My latest interviewee is a friend found through our mutual love of Star Wars, thanks to a network on Tumblr. Her jokes about Darth Wheezy were what initially made me think she was Too Damn Cool (and really, her jokes are hilarious).
A twenty-year-old who speaks her mind, Mára Kuryt:nîk grew up in various locations in Canada. Her native tongue is French-Canadian and her second language is English. Her mama is of Ukrainian descent and her papa is of Mohawk and Māori descent.
Until she was eight-years-old she thought Star Wars was real and had happened in the past, and had to see someone for about two years before finally accepting the truth. Life just hasn’t been as fun since. You can find her on Tumblr, and hear her A+ mixes on 8tracks.
MHAW: Silence and Stigma
This week has been one of mental health awareness, and in typical Saf fashion I left this post to be written at the last day. In NZ it’s been Mental Health Awareness Week, while elsewhere it’s been Mental Illness Awareness Week. Exactly a year ago I wrote a post about why awareness is important, and a year later it’s still just as vital.
It was maybe a month or two ago that a friend on Twitter opened up about their own struggles with mental illness, which prompted an open discussion among our little community. A lot more of my friends were struggling with mental health than I realized, and I’m sure others felt the same about me.
Despite my personal vows to be open and honest with regards to mental health, I suddenly realized that I am essentially a freezer of feelings—I carefully tuck the bad ones away in a back shelf and leave them to freeze for a few months, until the power breaks down and they begin to thaw. I fully contribute to the lack of awareness, in part because I don’t like to show weakness, and that is a failure of mine.
