Shadow Puppet Storyteller

A review of fiction or of Life?

Saw the wildly popular film adaptation of Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games last night. Having seen it before ever reading the books of her series, my main impression is that the story comes across as quite diluted from what I expect her written volumes must explore. Watching a story with any hint of depth to it is always good for me as a writer. I can be full of questions or ambivalent about it that evening, but by the next morning, it is like rain that has seeped down beneath the surface, and my writing muscles are as loosened as the soil, and anything I have growing in my mind is partly feed.

It is violent. And given the main premise sets twenty-four 12 to 18 year-olds battling for survival in an annual death match, you endure scenes over half the movie in which children are in peril. Any drama with those elements have always been difficult for me to watch. I can easily say that from Prim Everdeen's first shriek, I was disturbed. That doesn't keep me from analyzing it in hindsight.

The main thing I walked away with was a curious comparison. A social commentary to research. The Hunger Games is what passes muster today for sparking young minds, and which Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz books did over a hundred years ago. The main difference being a crucial one, what passes now for innocence and also for evil. Not my intent, but an ironic jest comes from thinking of it: Where these two sets of fiction coincide, I think The Wizard of Oz was one of those first epics for children that did not look at innocence and evil in black and white terms, it allowed for the grey areas (and the Technicolor areas) to seep in to the discourse. And talk about evil -- who is your enemy? In The Hunger Games, your whole country is the evil neighbor that wants to kick your dog. When you travel to the seat of power, whether by bullet train or by tornado, that perception of evil is transported too. When you get to the capitol, you are bathed and groomed like some muddy stray terrier. Those medical technicians searching for Katniss' lice, were they not silently singing, "Snip, snip here, snip, snip there..?"

The tapestry of a fictional story and its characters are built from threads of experience and truth. Of course Gale Hawthorne could mouth the opening line from the video presented during the District 12 reaping, it speaks to the way we actually ask youth to be molded and indoctrinated by the history of forefathers. "Happy Hunger Games" is repeated about as many times as Jerry Lewis ever uttered the word, "Give" on a telethon, and of course it comes across as irritating. Could such a place ever exist? Living, but under the shadow that -- the odds are -- you won't live the life you dream of.

The twelve year-old I know has to weigh along with the rest of us if KONY 2012 is a reality to battle, or is that grey evil we won't be discussing at length at the dinner table. The twelve year-old I know doesn't know how to be liked, is fiercely independent, speaks her mind without manners, and despite the warning, may not come out unchanged by the manipulators of the Games. The twelve year-old I know would trust, much like Dorothy or Katniss, would be compassionate like them, and would travel the Hero's Journey to its completion. The hard question: why aren't we writing the stories of the real twelve year-olds?