Show 'em how it's done
Mar. 24th, 2011 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gryphonseggThose of you who follow my journal know I've read the (emotionally powerful, brutal, devastating) Hunger Games trilogy. It is, not surprisingly given its premise, notable for presenting easily likable characters and hurting them very badly or killing them off or hurting them badly and THEN killing them off. Rather more unexpectedly, it's also notable for presenting other characters who are NOT easy to like, who are set up to be disliked or even hated and then, in some cases, hurting or killing them in ways that make many readers cringe and feel sorry for them without ever portraying their past behavior as justified. I found the books very disturbing but also very entertaining, while being aware the whole time I was being entertained that one of major themes of the story is a blistering critique of the tradition in Western history, from the direct violence Roman Coliseum to the manufactured drama of contemporary reality TV, of seeking entertainment in the suffering of other people. I devoured each book rapidly, horrified all the way, but oh so interested too.
Today something clicked in my mind: this is the kind of reaction people told me I was supposed have to Dollhouse a couple years back. I sympathize and cheer on and weep for the oppressed characters, but the story won't let me forget that in being entertained by the characters' responses to their horrifying situation, I am indulging exactly the same impulse the oppressors in the story play to and manipulate. So I'm thinking about why one canon works for me when the other doesn't. Is it just because the books are faster-paced and more action-packed? Because their brutality is less gendered? Because they're centered on a character who retains her own personality?
Spoilers in comments are welcome. Because of the content of the source material, references to fictional examples of every trigger I can think of may naturally occur. Consider this a general warning for both spoilers and triggers.
Today something clicked in my mind: this is the kind of reaction people told me I was supposed have to Dollhouse a couple years back. I sympathize and cheer on and weep for the oppressed characters, but the story won't let me forget that in being entertained by the characters' responses to their horrifying situation, I am indulging exactly the same impulse the oppressors in the story play to and manipulate. So I'm thinking about why one canon works for me when the other doesn't. Is it just because the books are faster-paced and more action-packed? Because their brutality is less gendered? Because they're centered on a character who retains her own personality?
Spoilers in comments are welcome. Because of the content of the source material, references to fictional examples of every trigger I can think of may naturally occur. Consider this a general warning for both spoilers and triggers.
