The Hunger Games: I Volunteer As Conscript

Katniss volunteers as tribute in The Hunger Games (Lionsgate)

Someone, somewhere along the way requested a piece on The Hunger Games, and because I just rewatched THG this weekend, it seems like a great time to do that.

The first book of The Hunger Games series, and the movie based on it, are, in my opinion, both quite excellent (I don’t like the others quite so well, but that’s a topic for another time). While the trope of forcing groups of individuals to fight to the death in a dystopian Coliseum-like setting is nothing new, the addition of the social commentary with regards to celebrity culture, reality television, and the haves living lives of extreme demonstrative plenty on the backs of the oppressed have nots, elevates THG above other similar fare.

That Katniss even has her own Barbie is a cosmic joke so meta I cannot help but love it.



What most people single out about The Hunger Games, is, of course, that it features a female protagonist, Katniss Everdeen. Or as Jezebel put it:

Katniss is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who can make an unsmiling, serious heroine charming and likeable (Brie Larson, take notes please). At first blush, Katniss appears to be another You-Go-Girl, and as such THG has been hailed as a feminist extravaganza. Katniss was hailed as the antithesis of the bland and uninspired Bella Swan (though as I’ve written about in the past, the point of Bella was to BE bland and uninspiring).

But this being 2021, a place in which everything is Never Good Enough, this is not a universal opinion. A whole lot of self-described feminists decry Katniss as not only not feminist, but overtly anti-feminist. This is because Katniss is said to have had her agency removed, leaving her perpetually waiting around to be saved by forces external to her. It is claimed she saves no one at all and is basically the modern-day equivalent of a damsel in distress. Katniss even is given two pretty dresses by her “fairy godmother” (in this case, an attractive, caring man who wants nothing but the best for Katniss, despite working for her government oppressors) – making The Hunger Games not only anti-feminist, but a goddamn fairy tale.

Forget Barbie; Katniss is a Disney Princess, picked out by the strong and powerful to have fame and fortune and even love bestowed upon her.

According to this theory, Katniss is protected by men, manipulated by men, used and abused by men, and wins through a series of lucky breaks and literal packages from the sky.

And while I hear that angle and find it an insightful critique of THG, I don’t buy it. It’s reductive to the point of being insulting to my intelligence. I do not and will not ever accept that the only type of functional feminist female character possible is the one who goes out and takes on the world and breaks all the rules and seizes everything she wants and makes demands on everyone all the time. I do not and will not define “agency” as “making everyone do what I want all the time, damn the consequences, never settling for anything that isn’t completely desired by me in any given moment”.

I refuse to accept this definition of the word “agency” because it’s tailored to men’s values, not women’s. It’s a bad take that puts at its core the premise that “feminism” should consist of women embracing stereotypical male qualities (being aggressive and confrontational, solving problems with violence instead of negotiation, defeating one’s enemies via brute strength vs. making alliances or finding common cause, that compromise and delayed gratification is for suckers, that the highest pinnacle of human achievement involves “being a badass”) with the unspoken understanding that male qualities are superior to stereotypically female ones.

Beyond gender issues, it is a bad take because it puts at its core modern-day beliefs that it’s better to die than to ever bend, a take is constantly used to blame victims for not doing enough to fight off their attackers. Believing that it’s better to fight and die than submit to a greater power and live another day is Hollywood heroism, not the real thing.

Next, Killmonger will explain why the Jews were lame for losing to the Nazis, and why any woman who did not fight her attacker to the death deserved to be raped.

The story of The Hunger Games involves a world in which people lacked the freedom to display overt agency. If not for this setup, we wouldn’t HAVE a story. If the people of Panem had agency, there wouldn’t have been a Hunger Games to start with. Thus, it’s pretty unfair to then turn around and say, “but the characters had their agency removed!” I mean, yeah, duh, that was kind of the point. If the fundamental premise of a story is how people might behave when much of their agency is removed, it’s really an unfair – and even bizarre – criticism to say, “but our protagonist didn’t have enough control over their lives for my liking!!” You may as well shake your fist at the sky over Superman being vulnerable to kryptonite!

Katniss Everdeen “lacked agency” because she lived in a world in which an excess of agency could have gotten her killed, and (as had happened to Haymitch) her entire family killed. Katniss’ agency lay in picking her battles, in not fighting for hopeless causes that would simply have ended her without accomplishing anything. I’m sorry if that isn’t explosion-y enough for some of you, but it is not anti-feminist.

Oh, no, Katniss was given a dress to wear, Holy Cinderella! The fact that she wore it does not rob Katniss of agency. Katniss wearing the dress she was supposed to wear and performing her role put her in a position later where she could use her agency purposefully, to WIN. Though we are not shown this in the story, I’ll lay dollars to tracker-jackers that there were plenty of people who went to the Capitol and refused to wear the purty dress and were taken out back and shot, and more importantly, their families and friends were shot as well. Katniss was only ever going along with the charade in order to get to a place where she could survive by cooperating.

Deciding to jump through some of society’s hoops to give yourself opportunities in the future IS HAVING AGENCY – just ask a Jane Austen heroine. Saying Katniss didn’t save anyone is literally insane to me. She saved her family by putting on that damn dress even though she didn’t wanna. That IS agency, it’s just not Blockbuster Action Movie agency.

No matter how many Marvel movies you’ve seen, the uncontrollable desire to punch and kick wildly is not necessarily a sign of personal agency. I have seen an awful lot of men who are so hotheaded that their temper controls them utterly. They may be fighters, they may be badasses, they may stand their ground, they may always be dueling to the death for their honor and all, but they ain’t got no agency, no agency at all. They have no agency because they have no discretion, and they have no self-control. They are pulled around by their emotions like a bull with a ring in his nose. In lieu of agency, they have too much pride and too much testosterone often coupled with too much booze, pushing them into situations where they end up going to jail for barfights and domestic abuse, or dead at another’s hand.

A burning need to rush headlong into physical confrontation is not agency per se, and it’s certainly not the only means to gain agency.

A world in which one lacks direct control over one’s life pretty much completely is the reality in which women have historically lived, and in many cases, still live to this very day. Women are born into systems in which they are told what they can wear, what they can learn, what kind of work they can do, who they can consort with, and even if they can lift a hand in their own self-defense. Women who shoot first and ask questions later, who make incessant demands on their oppressors, who don’t care to have demands placed upon them, are generally speaking, not living happily ever after.

But this reality doesn’t mean women lack agency when they choose other means to get what they want from this world. Women have a variety of other weapons at their disposal other than physical domination, and we use them, just like Katniss did.

It’s interesting, I don’t see anyone telling Peeta he didn’t have agency. Peeta went into the games physically at a disadvantage, and through charm and savvy, manipulated the audience into liking him, rooting for him. He didn’t headbutt his way to the top, he got there using guile. And while this is open for debate (I would have loved to see this plumbed in greater depth in the subsequent books/movies rather than that boring “how about the Even Hungrier Games” plot device) I personally think he played Katniss to some extent:

Even though Peeta did not overpower anyone with brute strength, and used other means to win The Hunger Games (in a fun twist, traditionally female skills like making the correct alliances, romantic love, and even makeup/cake decorating) no one ever says he didn’t have agency. It is presented, repeatedly presented, that keeping your head down and being sneaky are viable strategies to win the game – not only Peeta, but Rue and Foxface survive quite a while using this strategy. It is repeatedly presented that just having survival skills alone – skills Katniss has achieved in spades on her own long before anyone ever told her “may the odds be ever in your favor” – is one of the strongest advantages anyone has in the games. Katniss could have just coasted on stealth and survival, but instead she rose above her personal limitations repeatedly. Every challenge she was faced with, even things that did not come naturally to her like wearing dresses, appearing on tv, opening up to virtual strangers like Peeta and Haymitch, even pretending to have feelings for Peeta (at the risk of losing Gale’s affection), she met and surpassed.

Yet according to some, Katniss is supposed to be an unstoppable killing machine 24-7 or else she will have the “no agency” moniker hung around her neck?

No.

Katniss did a LOT in order to survive, starting long before she ever arrived in the Hunger Games. She made choice after choice as an active participant in several important arenas in order to put her in a position to win the Games. It just so happens that only some of that was open confrontation — but again, a lack of confrontation is not a lack of agency — this is presented clearly in both the book and the movie.

If you go in for biology, one could even say that it may be an innate quality in all human beings, whenever one is smaller, weaker, less physically able, that leads us to be less confrontational and find alternate means of survival than “badassery” in the face of aggression. If you go in for environmental explanations of behavior instead, you could say Katniss’ culture presented her with experiences that she learned from, important lessons that helped her to survive the Hunger Games. But neither of these definitions robs Katniss of her agency.

In one of the articles I linked to above, the author presents the following question – would you rather see your five-year-old daughter with only one hit point left on her health put in the hands of Alice from Resident Evil, or Katniss Everdeen. The answer is supposed to be “Alice from Resident Evil” because she’s more badass, but that answer is wrong. It’s wrong because there is a hell of a lot more to staying alive than just who can kill more zombies. A scared and injured child needs food and water and nurturing and basic levels of medical care and emotional comfort. A scared and injured child needs loyalty, connection, someone who wouldn’t just walk away and abandon them when the going got tough. A scared and injured child needs someone willing to be sneaky, to swallow their pride, to pretend when pretending is necessary, to bend when the situation requires it, instead of running in screaming AAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH! against overwhelming forces. If one approaches this thought experiment valuing anything except sheer physical strength, it is obvious that their child would be in better hands with Katniss.

I find I have HAD IT, with a capital HAD IT, with these takes on “feminist entertainment” in which the only characters deemed feminist are those who pummel things with their fists – a purview that is traditionally, historically, MALE.

One of the most subversive parts of The Hunger Games to me was that in a gladiator arena, which is the closest thing I can imagine to a literal manifestation of the stereotypes of aggressive masculinity, it was an injection of something stereotypically female – romantic love – that ended up destroying the entire thing. #LoveWins.

Feminism is not and never has been about valuing male qualities over female ones. Anyone who says that it is, is not a feminist; they’re a misogynist who thinks women are fundamentally broken and can only be fixed by adopting the worst qualities of men.

To ignore the pro-feminist elements of The Hunger Games to focus on a “Katniss didn’t beat up enough boys” angle, is grossly anti-women. A world in which “only the strong survive” and anything that isn’t overt confrontation is seen as weakness, will quickly descend into a world in which women are reduced – as Katniss was – to displaying their agency via keeping their heads down and their mouths shut and wear the pretty dress society tells them to wear and believably pretending to like a boy they’re really not that into.

We already have that show – it’s called The Handmaid’s Tale.