$\"Still$
The leading lady we've been waiting for? Katniss Everdeen takes aim<\/p><\/div>\n
“Like Joan of Arc”<\/h3>\n
Sarah:<\/strong> Katniss’s attitude to sex is worth thinking about, too. She’s almost completely sexless (unless we read between the lines a bit with all the many nights she spends sleeping in Peeta’s arms?) and just not really that interested in romance… but she explains that quite early on, I think, because it’s not a safe enough world that she’s ever really thinking beyond her next meal. I bloody love her, in exactly the same way I love Buffy and Starbuck<\/a> and all those other tough-because-they-have-to-be women out there in sci-fi\/fantasy.<\/p>\n
Bucky:<\/strong> I think it’s pretty awesome. I know I wanted<\/em> romance, but it’s still cool that she just doesn’t have time in her life to care about “petty” stuff like that.<\/p>\n
Miranda: <\/strong>This whole area fascinates me. I think Katniss’s story engages with the issue of ‘sexless action heroines’ really well. A lot of my early engagement with feminism came from a place where, sick of all the sexualising\/objectifying\/insert buzzword here, you know what I’m talking about – I constructed a sort of mental checklist for movies. It involved asking questions like “is the heroine SENSIBLY DRESSED?!” and “is she defined by her romantic attachments (usually to men)?” It was like Bechdel Plus.<\/p>\n
I think these remain pertinent questions to ask, and I still ask them. But I also think I spent years mistrusting any<\/em> heroine who dared to fall in love or wear a V-neck, just in case she was being somehow undermined from somewhere. It’s only recently I’ve begun to engage with heroines like Emma Frost, and also to confront the fact that ‘sexless heroines’ can also feel quite limited in their own way, depending on how they’re written. Often I think we cite a heroine’s lack of sexual desires as evidence for her liberated awesomeness, but this can feel for me like a bit of a red herring, and one that’s still being driven, in a sense, by the same set of patriarchal restrictions. The question about how to write “feminist romance” is therefore an interesting one.<\/p>\n
Katniss directly faces off with these questions. The novels show her wrestling a load of societal pressure to live out a romantic narrative and define herself against one – her survival may depend on it. Uunderneath all that, she does struggle with genuine desires for Peeta and Gale, played out against a hugely traumatic backdrop.<\/p>\n
I thought it was fascinating – she does find love, but it’s a struggle to get there in fair, real terms. I think Katniss – though Jennifer Lawrence describes her as a Joan of Arc figure in your interview – goes a lot further than many heroines in TVTropes’s Jeanne D’Archetype section<\/a> because we get to see that struggle played out, with all the paranoia over who’s controlling the narrative that that entails. She moves through<\/em> a sexless phase, in the process taking on an entire system of oppression in order to discover how she really wants to express her desires, and how to be able to do that safely rather than it being a capitulation of any kind. These are books about struggle, <\/em>personal and<\/em> political.<\/p>\n
$\"Illustration$
Illustration from the initial range of UK print covers for the books - by Jason Chan<\/p><\/div>\n
Revolution!<\/h3>\n
Bucky: <\/strong>I almost like the books more now that you’ve both pointed out the media and propaganda themes that I took for granted – they are, in hindsight, pretty strong ideas to sell to a teenage audience. I like to think that I’m quite media-savvy, but I guess that if I encountered this at a time in my life when I wasn’t then it might have raised some interesting questions.<\/p>\n
Sarah:<\/strong> I do super-love that tension Miranda pointed out in her blog post, re: merchandising this franchise when it’s all about the evils of capitalism and in particular the way we exploit people in other countries. I think they should’ve gone with more Mockingjay “symbol of the rebellion” stuff, but in a way Capitol-themed makeup ranges<\/a> are perfectly apposite.<\/p>\n
Bucky: <\/strong>Yeah, the merchandising is insane, especially because propaganda is insanely merchandisable (by its very definition) so to ignore that angle and create “straight” merchandise like a Katniss barbie instead of “in-character” merchandise is just batshit.<\/p>\n
In Conclusion…<\/h3>\n
Bucky:<\/strong> The more I talk to you guys, the more I feel like it’s cool I enjoyed these books and all, but I’m not the person whose life this might make a difference to. I don’t need any more role models, but younger readers might benefit from Katniss and will almost certainly benefit from the way that she isn’t sexualised or defined by her relationships. So that’s pretty cool.<\/p>\n
Sarah:<\/strong> I’ve just got back from a press screening of the film. I think Gary Ross really really gets the political aspects of the book, and he’s really explicit about it, and there were at least two new bits he’d put in that made my jaw drop. My review’s over here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Miranda:<\/strong> ONE DAY TO GO!<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Reddit<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Tumblr<\/span><\/a><\/li>
More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul>

LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Email<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li>
Print<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The editor and two guest writers have a nice long chat about The Hunger Games. THE MOVIE IS COMING OUT VERY VERY SOON. WE NEEDED TO PASS THE TIME.<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Reddit<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Tumblr<\/span><\/a><\/li>
More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul>

LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Email<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li>
Print<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[478,770,894,1132,1536,1619,1723,1739,2220,2262,2487,2529,2827,2972],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xLWb-2Ff","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}