Catching Fire – Bitch Flicks

Playing with Fire: “Compulsory Heterosexuality” in ‘The Hunger Games’

While my conversations with my friends’ 12-year-old daughters about the trilogy always began with “Team Peeta!” or “Team Gale!” our conversations in the classroom focused on the scholarship of female collectives and violent resistance; we didn’t need Gale and Peeta as fodder for conversation. But on the last day of class, I introduced Adrienne Rich’s idea of compulsory heterosexuality to complicate the larger conversation in which readers—and viewers—find themselves forced to choose a camp, just as Katniss is forced to do.

This guest post by Colleen Clemens appears as part of our theme week on Reality TV.

I taught Suzanne Collins’s novel The Hunger Games as the culminating text for my Women and Violence in Literature course this semester. Almost all of us had read the book already, but to look at Katniss through the lens of the female protagonists that had come before her in the semester—The Bride, Firdaus, Aileen Wuornos, Legs, Lisbeth Salander, Malli, Phoolan, Sihem—meant we could consider the work Katniss is doing in popular culture. So while we had read the book before, we hadn’t read it the way that we read it together.

Much conversation focused on subverting gender norms, yet we talked little about the focus of the love interests until our final discussion. While my conversations with my friends’ 12-year-old daughters about the trilogy always began with “Team Peeta!” or “Team Gale!” our conversations in the classroom focused on the scholarship of female collectives and violent resistance; we didn’t need Gale and Peeta as fodder for conversation. But on the last day of class, I introduced Adrienne Rich’s idea of compulsory heterosexuality to complicate the larger conversation in which readers—and viewers—find themselves forced to choose a camp, just as Katniss is forced to do.

Of course, the filmic versions of the novels rely on the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale as a way to include the most viewers, including the 16 or so people who saw the films without having read the trilogy. In a perhaps unintended meta-moment, Caeser smiles to the adoring crowd and calls a surviving Peeta and Katniss “the star-crossed lovers from District 12” from a set that looks uncannily like one from American Idol or The Voice.

Within the context of the Hunger Games and the arena, The Capitol, just like Hollywood, gives the audience what it wants: a forced—or let’s borrow Rich’s term “compulsory”—heterosexual relationship that Katniss barely tolerates in the novels. However, Katniss co-opts the Capitol’s compulsion, her only opportunity to ensure the survival of both herself and Peeta, and uses it to resist the Capitol and disrupt their narrative of what the Hunger Games should accomplish—passivity—and instead incites the fire of revolution.

After Katniss becomes District 12’s first volunteer in an attempt to spare her sister Prim, whose odds were clearly not in her favor, the former is whisked to the Capitol where she must become what the audience wants: the picture of femininity as a clean, waxed, young lady, a female object that must win the affection of the wealthy sponsors who hold her life in their hands. In the clinical setting of the Remake Center, her team—after a required second round of cleaning–transforms her body from that of a ragged, hard coal-mining daughter to that of a smooth, soft Capitol woman where femininity means manipulation of one’s body, often to the point of disfigurement (as happens to Tigris in Mockingjay). Haymitch reminds Katniss that she needs to be “nicer” to win the attention of the viewers.

Once the tributes are in the arena—the Capitol’s entrancement with the Hunger Games relying on bloodlust, the Districts’ on fear—Katniss and Peeta separate. After many, many deaths of children in a PG-13 film, the Gamemaker announces a change of rule after his menacing conversation with President Snow: two winners can emerge from the same District. As Gale watches the Games, his jealous sidelong glance casting toward the television, the rest of the Capitol can now root for love in the reality death match.

The Capitol viewers—and the Hollywood viewers—are then treated to the scene they have been waiting for. All of us feel relieved there is a chance for the heterosexual love to live; the edict seems to good to be true! We get the love scene that confirms their relationship, and Katniss’s performance makes it easy for all of us to forget that this relationship is forced, that Katniss and Peeta have both come to realize that their best chance of surviving is by feigning heterosexual desire. They press together in the cave. Haymitch sends medicine with a note reminding Katniss what she must do: “You call that a kiss?”

In talking about Kathleen Barry’s work, Rich reminds readers in her 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” that “[t]he ideology of heterosexual romance, beamed at her from childhood out of fairy tales, television, films, advertising, popular songs, wedding pageantry, is a tool ready to the procurer’s hand and one which he does not hesitate to use.” The viewer requires a fairy tale—Katniss and Peeta’s lives depend on this fairy tale. In an infection-induced fog, Peeta dreamily recounts watching Katniss go home, “Every day. Every day.” We are led to believe she has been the object of his love without her awareness. We can hear the viewers in the Capitol swooning—and lining up to help. And we see Gale leering at the screen as his love goes to another man.

This feigned relationship is in fact their only option for survival, one that they will play up later in this film as they dress like Prince Charming and Cinderella…

and (spoiler alert) in Catching Fire with their acceptance of the sad fact that the Capitol’s desire for their heterosexual relationship to carry on means that they must marry in order to survive…

and (super spoiler alert) by Katniss’s resignation in the epilogue of Mockingjay in which she succumbs to Peeta’s desire to have children with him.

In the final scene of the Games, Katniss is mocked by another girl for trying to save her “lover boy.” We see the Capitol watching the love story. The command center grows quiet while the men and a few women controlling the couple’s environment watch during a rare moment of stillness; even they are captivated by the story they have created. Katniss and Peeta are the finale. The audience must know: Will their (heterosexual) love survive?

Panem holds its breath. The desire for compulsory heterosexuality is the pair’s shield—though it puts them at risk, it is the only way for the two of them to survive. They are in a bind of expectations others put on them in order to endure in this system of oppression called Panem and its games. And instead of choosing herself–“We both go down and you win”—she sends Cato to the dogs, saving her life and Peeta’s (and in a moment of gender essentialism, fires a mercy shot to spare Cato an even more horrible death).

They hug. Everyone relaxes. A crescendo of anxiety is released for a moment when we think they will both live: Heterosexual normativity can persist.

And then the previous provision is revoked. Peeta and Katniss stand at the cornucopia, the ultimate symbol of hearth and home reflecting the audience’s desires for heterosexual normativity, and recognize that their attempt at playing into the Capitol’s desires for a heterosexual relationship to flourish even in the face of terrible odds did not work. One of them must kill the other.

Katniss takes control of the situation. We see the districts watch them hold the poisoned berries to each other. The thought of losing both lovers becomes unbearable, and the games are called to an end. They are the “winners,” a moniker few of the surviving tributes accept. Katniss and Peeta hug again.

Rich argues that “[h]eterosexuality has been both forcibly and subliminally imposed on women, yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.” The Capitol has done just this: imposed the narrative of heterosexuality onto the lovers, and then used it to attempt to kill them. However, when Katniss takes the Capitol’s desire and pushes it to its limit—to the star crossed lover, the Romeo and Juliet, the Pyramus and Thisbe, the dangerous hyper-heterosexual narrative of “if my partner is dead, I can no longer bear to live” story—and thereby breaks the games. By encouraging co-suicide, she makes the story so much more than the viewers can bear (whilst they have no problem bearing the awfulness of watching children die) that she takes the Capitol’s desire and exploits it to save their own lives—though it relegates her to a life of living a lie to maintain the ruse that saves her life.

In their final interview, the fairy tale couple, “the star crossed lovers from District 12,” sits onstage as the audience swoons. Caesar feeds them the story they are to parrot: “You were so in love with this boy that the thought of not being with him was unthinkable.”

Katniss plays into the audience’s desire, though we know she is not in love with Peeta: “I felt like the happiest person in the the world. I couldn’t imagine life without him.”

And finally, “We saved each other.” The audience practically faints with joy.

But forcing herself into the ruse of heterosexuality puts her at more risk, not less. Katniss is trapped: she cannot “win.” Playing into the deception draws the attention of the Capitol’s leaders, while not playing into the narrative means she may have been dead in the arena.

The last shot of the film focuses on Snow watching the “lovers” hold hands overhead. Menacing music plays as he walks off. The image of their heterosexual coupling is not enough for him. Katniss will be at risk for the rest of the trilogy because of her subversion. Rich ends her essay with a call to the reader to consider the damage that occurs to women within the framework of compulsory heterosexuality:

“Within the institution exist, of course, qualitative differences of experience; but the absence of choice remains the great unacknowledged reality, and in the absence of choice, women will remain dependent upon the chance or luck of particular relationships and will have no collective power to determine the meaning and place of sexuality in their lives. As we address the institution itself, moreover, we begin to perceive a history of female resistance which has never fully understood itself because it has been so fragmented, miscalled, erased. It will require a courageous grasp of the politics and economics, as well as the cultural propaganda, of heterosexuality to carry us beyond individual cases or diversified group situations into the complex kind of overview needed to undo the power men everywhere wield over women, power which has become a model for every other form of exploitation and illegitimate control.”

Katniss spends the rest of the trilogy grappling with the material consequences of her decision to co-opt heterosexuality to save her life in the arena. Her experience echoes in Rich’s words: “absence of choice,” “cultural propaganda,” “the power men everywhere wield over women.” Catching Fire and Mockingjay find their roots in her struggle to come to terms with her need to feign a heterosexual relationship with Peeta. We will have to wait to see how the filmmakers decide to construct the rest of their “love story.” Because Katniss and Peeta never really have a choice.

Colleen Lutz Clemens is assistant professor of non-Western literatures at Kutztown University. She blogs about gender issues and postcolonial theory and literature at http://kupoco.wordpress.com/. When she isn’t reading, writing, or grading, she is wrangling her two-year old daughter, two dogs, and on occasion her partner.

How ‘Frozen’ Fails Where ‘Catching Fire’ Succeeds

While this will probably be remembered as the “Winter Of The Polar Vortex,” it’s also fair to call it the “Winter Of The Feminist Blockbuster.” Grossing a combined total of more than $700 million domestically, ‘Catching Fire’ and ‘Frozen’ have definitively proven that films with female leads can attract a major audience. Even better, they’ve inspired think pieces about everything from Katniss’ movie “girlfriend” to queer readings of Elsa. Yet as I cheered on the strong ladies at the center of both films, I couldn’t help but notice something troubling. While ‘Catching Fire’ presents a diverse supporting cast, ‘Frozen’ rounds out its ensemble with a disappointing parade of white, male characters.

Catching Fire sisters — *Catching Fire* sisters

This is a guest post by Caroline Siede.

While this will probably be remembered as the “Winter Of The Polar Vortex,” it’s also fair to call it the “Winter Of The Feminist Blockbuster.” Grossing a combined total of more than $700 million domestically, Catching Fire and Frozen have definitively proven that films with female leads can attract a major audience. Even better, they’ve inspired think pieces about everything from Katniss’ movie “girlfriend” to queer readings of Elsa. Yet as I cheered on the strong ladies at the center of both films, I couldn’t help but notice something troubling. While Catching Fire presents a diverse supporting cast, Frozen rounds out its ensemble with a disappointing parade of white, male characters.

Geena Davis’ Institute On Gender In Media recently commissioned a study that concluded that for every female-speaking character in a family-rated film, there are roughly three male characters. Davis explains, “We are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space.” Like many films before it, Frozen subtly suggests that the only women who deserve screen time are the ones with exceptional stories. Men, on the other hand, don’t need to be extraordinary to appear on screen; their maleness is justification enough for their presence. Davis’ study determined that while women make up roughly 50% of the population, most crowd scenes contain only 17% of female characters.

Don’t get me wrong I adored Frozen. I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat since I saw it a few weeks ago, and I’m fully prepared to perform a karaoke duet of “Love Is An Open Door” at the drop of a hat. But for all of its feminist subversion, Frozen’s supporting cast falls in line with Davis’ study. Despite its dual female protagonists, men still outnumber women: There’s a wise Troll King, a repressive father, a brave ice cutter, a friendly shop owner, a scheming prince, a manipulative dignitary, an open-hearted snowman, and a dog-like reindeer. Men aren’t limited to being good or bad, heroes or villains, rich or poor; they are all of these things. Women, however, are almost entirely absent from supporting roles. Elsa and Anna’s mother remains silent and inactive while her husband takes control, a female troll gets a brief solo, and a townswoman delivers a line or two to Elsa. As far as I can recall, these are the only supporting women of note, and I’m really stretching it with that townswoman.

And in case you didn’t notice, there are also no women (or men) of color in Frozen. Some are quick to claim it would be historically inaccurate to depict racial diversity in the film’s medieval Scandinavian setting. Putting aside the ice powers, anthropomorphized reindeer, and magical trolls for a moment—Arendelle is depicted as a major trading city with ties to countries around the world. It seems perfectly logical that it would be a bustling metropolis with a diverse population. And to be perfectly frank, the benefit of a child of color seeing herself represented onscreen far outweighs the danger of someone being confused about the demographics of Scandinavia.

Catching Fire tributes — *Catching Fire* tributes

It’s difficult to say whether Frozen’s creators subconsciously mimicked the gender and racial disparity we’ve become accustomed to onscreen or whether the white male-dominated world was an intentional choice meant to keep the focus on Anna and Elsa. (After all, audiences are used to seeing white men as business owners and dignitaries so there’s no need to justify their appearance in these roles. Perhaps the creators feared a female shop owner would be too much of a distraction.) Either way, the homogenized supporting cast feels like a huge oversight for a film that otherwise goes out of its way to craft a feminist story. Frozen subverts Disney clichés, celebrates female friendship, and even promotes asking for consent as an act of romance (swoon!), but it utterly fails when it comes to creating a world that accurately reflects our own. Perhaps most frustrating, it would have been so, so easy to improve representation. Make the Troll King a Troll Queen. Make Anna and Elsa’s mother the active parent. Make the shop owner a black woman. Make Kristoff an Asian man who traveled to Arendelle yet never quite fit in. Make half of the visiting dignitaries women. And heck, make some of those female dignitaries corrupt, just as the men are allowed to be!

Frozen dignitaries — *Frozen* dignitaries

If Frozen required a template, it need only look to the winter’s other female-driven powerhouse film, Catching Fire. In fact, the entire Hunger Games franchise seems to deliberately demand diversity. The parameters of the titular Games require each District to send one male and one female tribute, a fictional mandate that matches nicely with Davis’ suggestion that writers dictate all crowd scenes contain 50% women. There are still more male characters overall, but it’s a huge step in the right direction for gender parity onscreen.

In addition to everyone’s favorite bow-and-arrow wielder (sorry Legolas), Catching Fire depicts a beautifully varied array of female characters. There’s the vapid, wealthy women of the Capitol; the hardworking, poor women of District 12; Katniss’ emotionally-fragile mother; aggressive Johanna; tech-savvy Wiress; vicious Enobaria and Cashmere; old but brave Mags; young but brave Prim; Snow’s impressionable granddaughter; Rue’s stoic mother; the drug-addicted tribute from District 6; and a career-driven socialite named Effie Trinket. Even better, many of these characters have agency and arcs of their own. Effie slowly learns to question the society she once worshipped, and her growth is one of the most moving elements in an all-around exceptional film. Effie’s subtle resistance to the Capitol is a foil to Katniss’ aggressive frustration—an acknowledgement that women can show strength in many ways, not just through traditionally masculine pursuits like hunting and fighting.

Though Catching Fire is still predominately white—and the whitewashing of Katniss is problematic—it does take some important steps to represent racial diversity. Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) and Rue (Amandla Stenberg) are not only essential characters of color; they effortlessly defy the racial stereotypes of aggressive black men and sexualized black women that too often fill our screens. The film could and should present more persons of color, but it’s certainly an improvement over Frozen’s all-white ensemble.

So does all this mean Catching Fire is a more feminist film than Frozen? Of course not. Representation is just one way we can examine feminism onscreen. Simply counting up the number of women will not indicate how well written they are or how actively they impact the story. Like the Bechdel test—which both films pass, by the way—representation is one feminist lens. But it is an important one. As Davis asks, “Couldn’t it be that the percentage of women in leadership positions in many areas of society — Congress, law partners, Fortune 500 board members, military officers, tenured professors and many more — stall out at around 17 percent because that’s the ratio we’ve come to see as the norm?” Couldn’t Frozen’s homogenized world teach its audience that women are only worthy if they are “exceptional”?

Frozen just took home the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, and I’m thrilled that such an overtly feminist film has been embraced by mainstream culture. It’s especially exciting because Frozen has not one, but two female leads, and both of these ladies are wonderfully nuanced and complex. So let’s continue to celebrate Frozen and Catching Fire for everything they get right. Let’s use Elsa, Anna, and Katniss as examples of fantastic female protagonists who are allowed to be both strong and weak. Let’s demand positive female relationships like the ones between Elsa and Anna or between Katniss and Prim. But let’s also continue to point out flaws in the films we love. Let’s demand more representation of women from all walks of life, not just brave, pretty heroines. Let’s demand more representation of persons of color. Most importantly, let’s demand more fully realized human beings onscreen, especially ones who just happen to be ladies.

Caroline Siede is a freelance writer living in Chicago where the cold never bothers her anyway. She frequently contributes to The A.V. Club and documents her experiences in the city on her blog Introverted Chicago. When not contemplating time travel paradoxes, she often tweets sarcastic things @CarolineSiede.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Laverne Cox flawlessly shuts down Katie Couric’s invasive questions about transgender people by Katie McDonough at Salon

7 Movies That Changed Your Political Views, According to Science by Asawin Suebsaeng and Chris Mooney at Mother Jones

A Way to Stop Abortion Threats, Get Women Behind the Camera: As Directors, Writers, and Cinematographers by Ariel Dougherty at Media Equity

Gabrielle Union Would Have Been Olivia Pope. Instead She’s Being Mary Jane by Stephen A. Crockett Jr. at The Root

Stomaching “Girls”: Why I Regained an Appetite for the Show’s Third Season by Kerensa Cadenas at Bitch Media

Are TV Networks Fully Realizing The Ratings & Profit Potential In Producing Content for Black Women? by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Meryl Streep attacks Walt Disney on antisemitism and sexism by Ben Beaumont-Thomas at The Guardian

“Catching Fire” Is The First Film With A Female Lead To Top The Annual Box Office In 40 Years by Adam B. Vary at Buzzfeed

“SNL’s” best move yet: Hiring black female writers by Carolyn Edgar at Salon

“Am I Crazy for Even Considering This?” Stuntwoman Zoë Bell Says, “Yes,” Then Does It Anyway by Matt Zoller Seitz at MZS. at RogerEbert.com

Amy Poehler and the ‘Broad City’ Team Demonstrate Why ‘Television’s Such a Great Medium for Women’ by Alison Willmore at IndieWire

Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Being a Feminist on ellen

2013 Was A Good Year For Women In Movies. What Will 2014 Hold? by Megan Gibson at TIME

Golden Globes by gender: where are all the women? by Clara Guibourg at The Guardian

Watch the Athena Film Fest 2014 Trailer by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists Theme Week here.

Powerful Realism and Nostalgia in My So-Called Life by Leigh Kolb

Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

Are You There, Hollywood? It’s Me, the Average Girl by Carrie Gambino

The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing)… There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.

Six Lessons Lisa Simpson Taught Me by Lady T

…Lisa takes a stand against the sexism spouting from the mouth of the new talking Malibu Stacy doll. Frustrated with the doll’s collection of sexist catchphrases that include “Let’s bake some cookies for the boys,” “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” and “My name’s Stacy, but you can call me *wolf whistle*,” Lisa collaborates with the creator of Malibu Stacy to create their own talking doll, Lisa Lionheart. When Malibu Stacy outsells Lisa Lionheart, our creator feels temporarily dejected, until she hears her own voice speaking behind her: “Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.” She turns to see a girl her age hold a Lisa Lionheart doll in her hand and smile.

Bob’s Burgers: The Uniquely Lovable Tina Belcher by Max Thornton

Delightful Tina. Shy, painfully weird, butt-obsessed, quietly dorky, intensely daydreamy Tina. Tina is a little bit like all of us (and–cough–a lot like some of us) at that most graceless, transitional, intrinsically unhappy stage of life that is early adolescence. She is also a wonderfully rich and well-developed character, both in her interactions with her family and in her own right, and she’s arguably the emotional core of the whole show.

The Relationships of Veronica Mars by Sarah Stringer

It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).

My Sister’s Keeper: Anna and Kate Growing Up On Screen and On the Page by Dina Martin

My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.

Sixteen Candles, Rape Culture, and the Anti-Woman Politics of 2013 by Stephanie Rogers

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”

Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.

The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.

Sucker Punch Might Leave You Wishing for a Lobotomy by Angelina Rodriguez

My main issue with the film is that it is speckled with meaningless platitudes and clichés about girl empowerment when the film simply isn’t empowering. The women in the film are portrayed as oversexualized, helpless, damaged goods. Though there are metaphors at work that symbolize abuse or objectification of women, nowhere does the film stress an injustice or seek to dismantle its source. It is just like any other formulaic action movie complete with boobs, guns, and explosions, but it has a shiny, artificial veneer of girl empowerment. The false veneer is the aspect of the film that truly infuriates me, along with the side of artsy pretentious bullshit.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: Teeth As Cautionary Tale by Colleen Clemens

Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.

The Horror of Female Sexual Awakening: Black Swan by Rebecca Willoughby

What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center. It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth. Instead, Darren Aronofsy has produced an Oscar-winning horror film. That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story. The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

Girl Gangs Are Mean: Teenage Girl Gang Movies Through the Years by Emanuela Betti

While most teen movies revolve around coming-of-age stories, gang movies reveal the extreme side to adolescence—the misfit, criminal, and violent side. Gang movies are rather simple, either focusing on episodes of gang debauchery, or revolving around rivalry and jealousy. Usually the viewpoint is that of the ring leader, or the “new girl,” who is initiated into the gang but is still an outsider. Yet, among the plethora of girl gang movies, every decade has produced stories involving specific issues and specific types of teenage girls.

What a Witch: Girlhood, Agency, and Community in Kiki’s Delivery Service and The Little Mermaid by Megan Ryland

Kiki’s Delivery Service carefully constructs a world where a girl’s agency is expected, accepted and supported, while Disney movies typically present a girl’s agency as unusual, forbidden, and denied. The difference between these two messages is that Kiki’s world anticipates and encourages her independence, while the women of Disney are typically punished for this.

For example, in The Little Mermaid Ariel wants to “live out of these waters,” but her father forbids her exploration of the human world and punishes this dream. Sea witch Ursula exploits Ariel’s desire to discover another world beyond her own as well. This is hardly an isolated incident.

The Book Thief: Stealing Hearts and Minds by Natalie Wilson

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.

Just One of the Guys: Sexism, Gender Stereotypes, and the Rise of the Female Teenage Protagonist by Shay Revolver

Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.

Troop Beverly Hills: What A Thrill by Phaydra Babinchock

Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Declaration Feminism by Matthew Abely

Immortality is not what makes a world better. Hope, friendship, and love do, and love is not limited by sex, gender, ethnicity, or race. Women like Homura and Kyoko can fall in love with other women like Madoka and Sayaka respectively. We have the responsibility to stand up with people like them. This series is part of the reason I try to do that and more. I hope that many others to do the same.

Young Women and Heroism in The Host by Sade Nickels

Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations.

Q&A: Girlhood Behind and In Front of the Camera

Ten questions between filmmaker Morgan Faust and 13-year-old actress Rachel Resheff.

Morgan: The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t?

Catching Fire: Positive Fuel for the Feminist Flame by Natalie Wilson

The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.

The CW: Expectations vs. Reality by Nicole Elwell

The CW is a rarity among the many networks of cable television. Its target demographic is women aged 18-34, and as a result has a majority of its original programming centered on the lives of young women. On paper, this sounds like a noteworthy achievement to be celebrated. However, the CW produces content devoid of any sense of the reality of its young audience, and as a result actually harms its most devoted viewers. The CW creates an unattainable archetype for what a teenager should look like and fails to maturely handle issues of murder and rape.

Defending Dawn Summers: From One Kid Sister to Another by Robin Hitchcock

OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.

Why Alex Russo Is My Favorite Fictional Female Wizard by Katherine Filaseta

The protagonist of Wizards is a girl who acts like girls really act: she has boyfriends and broken hearts, but isn’t overly boy-crazy or dependent on them; she’s curious and smart enough to ask questions when other people are telling her not to; and throughout the series she faces a lot of the struggles women really do face throughout their lives.

Ja’mie: Mean-Spirited Impression of a Private School Girl by Katherine Murray

Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.

True Grit: Ambiguous Feminism by Andé Morgan

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.

True Grit: The Formidable Fortitude of Tweens by Vicky Moufawad-Paul

Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

Princess Mononoke Has No Desire to Marry a Prince by Jen Thorpe

Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!

Pretty in Pink: Side Effects from the Prom by Kim Hoffman

In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.

Portrait of a Girl: Reflections on the Role of Flora in Jane Campion’s The Piano by Rachael Johnson

What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Temporary Tomboys: Coming of Age in My Girl and Now and Then by Elizabeth Kiy

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.

Brave and the Legacy of Female Prepubescent Power Fantasies by Amanda Rodriguez

Basically, Brave isn’t really that brave of a film. It’s traipsing through a well-established trope that, though positive, is stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the prepubescent female power fantasy tales I’ve listed, and I’m grateful that they exist and that I could grow up with many of them. However, we can’t pretend that Brave is pushing any boundaries. It sends the message that little girls can be powerful as long as they remain little girls. The dearth of representations of postpubescent heroines who are not objectified, whose sexuality does not rule their interactions, and who are the heroes of their own stories is appalling.

‘Catching Fire’: Positive Fuel for the Feminist Flame

The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.

This cross-post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine Blog and appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

I think most of us would agree there is no place on this planet that is utopian in the sense of being a perfect society (utopia literally means “no place”). Dystopia, on the other hand, exists to some extent every place. The Hunger Games trilogy is very apt in this sense of the word.

The post-apocalyptic nation of Panem’s bleak, poverty-stricken Districts echo so many other places on Earth today—West Virginia, inner-city Chicago, war-torn Afghanistan, to name just a few. Its beleaguered, starving, overworked, underpaid (or unpaid) citizens are akin to real-world fast-food employees, migrant workers and sweatshop laborers. The privileged citizens of Panem’s Capitol, in contrast, represent the figurative 1 percent—the haves who have so much that little is left for everyone else. They’re so comfortable in their having that they are not cognizant of dystopic Districts outside their utopian bubble—other than in the ways that citizens of those bad places can be exploited for their labor or their entertainment value.

The second book in the trilogy, Catching Fire, builds upon the themes initiated in the first book but pushes the themes of performance, corruption, excess, and defiance even further. The same is true of the film adaptation. Circulating around notions of the performance of the self—not only the gendered self but also the self as lover, as friend, as enemy—the film also functions as a critique of gender norms, consumer capitalism, staged warfare, and patriarchal power.

Gender inversion is plentiful in the film, with Katniss carrying on in her heroic, savior role (typically a spot occupied by males) while Peeta and Gale are more akin to damsels in distress. Peeta (the baker, played by Josh Hutcherson) is saved repeatedly by Katniss (the hunter). Gale (with his “feminine” name, played by Liam Hemsworth) pleadingly asks Katniss, “Do you love me?”—a question usually posed by female characters. Katniss refuses to answer, indicating that the revolutionary times they live in deserve her attention more than romance.

Prim (Willow Shields), Katniss’s younger sister, also comes into her own in this film, telling Katniss, “You don’t have to protect me” and by stepping in to doctor Gale. Various other characters defy gender expectations, from Johanna’s (Jena Malone) wise and witty confidence to Cinna’s (Lenny Kravitz) nurturing and motherly care of Katniss. These non-stereotypically gendered characters highlight gender as performance, nodding to an overarching concern of the series—the ways in which performance can kowtow to social norms—as with the brightly colored hairdos and over-the top outfits of those in the Capitol who happily perform excess. Or, in contrast, how performance can be used strategically as a form of resistance, as when Peeta and Katniss perform the role of young lovers in order to game the system.

Though Katniss is visibly suffering from PTSD from her first round in the Games, she, against her truthful nature, learns she must “play the part” so as to protect those she loves. Near the start of the film, when she emphatically answers “no” when President Snow (Donald Sutherland) asks her if she would prefer a real war to the Games, we, as audience members watching from the safety of our movie theater seats, sympathize with this answer. We, too, would rather watch war from afar, glimpsing it via our flatscreens or play at it via video games that allow us to be virtual soldiers, rather than actually face war’s real pain, loss, destruction, and dehumanization.

Alas, by the close of the film, we have changed our perspective along with Katniss, recognizing that revolutionary war may be the only way to bring down the Capitol—that the tributes–people from the Districts forced to play in the life or death Games (or metaphorical soldiers) are mere set pieces in the Capitol’s plan, not the saviors that we and the citizens of Panem need and want them to be.

Will this revolutionary spark take hold, firing up audiences to question the ways in which the film is not so much set in a fictional future as an allegorical present? The excessive performance of consumer capitalism on display in the Capital of Katniss’s world is, sadly, not so far removed from the glut of glitter that adorns our own malls in the run-up to the winter holidays. The purging tonic which allows Capitol citizens to keep eating is not all that different from the reality in which some have far too much food at their disposal and others not even a cupboard in which to store food. The media of Panem is closer still to our reality, brimming as it is with surveillance, over-zealous pundits such as Ceasar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) and mediated war that broadcasts just enough fear mixed with the right amount of hope to keep people transfixed and immobilized.

Leave it to Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), the deceptively drunken mentor to Katniss and Peeta—functioning much as a Shakespearean fool—to lay bare this performance, telling Katniss, “Your job is to be a distraction so people forget the real problems.” This film is itself a distraction, with Hunger Games: Catching Fire paraphernalia already flooding stores and fueling our consumerist desires.

So is this trilogy so different from Twilight and its sparkling vampires? I say it is, not only because it gives us a complex, brave, indefatigable heroine (Katniss is not Bella!), but also because it reminds us that “every revolution begins with a spark.” Perhaps the revolutions it ignites will only be in the ways in which viewers envision acts of heroism, love or forgiveness, but such sparks are important. If we can imagine a world in which men do the baking and women the saving, in which young black girls are mourned by a community rather than shamed and blamed, in which the corruption and privilege embodied in the likes of President Snow are resisted rather than aided and abetted, then we are, if nothing else, adding fuel to the feminist fire.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Review: ‘Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom’ Anchored by Strong Performances by Nijla Mumin at Shadow and Act

The Best Part of “Catching Fire” is What it Says About TV News by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

5 Hilarious Web Series That Were Created By Women by Shannon Iggy at Bust Magazine

The Book Thief: Stealing Hearts and Minds by Natalie Wilson at Ms. blog

For Every Woman Working in the Film Industry, There are Five Men by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Kathleen Hanna and ‘The Punk Singer’ Director On New Doc, Riot Grrl and Why People Hate on Feminism by Bryce J. Renninger at Indiewire

Infographic: Gender Inequality in Hollywood (It’s Worse than You Think) by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Emma Thompson Calls Out Hollywood Sexism in Ten Different Ways at THR Actress Roundtable by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

MHP’s Black Feminism Reading List by Melissa Harris-Perry at msnbc

Black Women, White Women and the Solidarity Question by Janell Hobson at Ms. blog

Top 12 Feminist Reasons to Be Thankful This Year by Melissa McGlensey at Ms. blog

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

‘Catching Fire’: Protect and Be Protected

It’s protecting these people that stops Katniss from running into the woods and away from her Important Role and Grave Duties. Using family in danger as motivator for heroes is a well-worn trope. Male heroes often “nobly” walk away form their love (see Peter Parker and his love interests in both 21st century film adaptations of Spider-Man) or lose them and are then motivated by their death (see Peter Parker and oh, every other hero ever).

In an inverse of the source material, Catching Fire is a much stronger movie than The Hunger Games. It looks better, the acting is stronger, and the trickiest story elements—including the Katniss-Peeta-Gale love triangle—are handled more gracefully. If you liked the books or the first film, go see Catching Fire immediately. Then come back and read this review, because I’m about to go on a spoiler spree.

Katniss and her sister Prim in Catching Fire — Katniss and her sister Prim in *Catching Fire*

Katniss: We know she’s an Action Hero because her family is in danger.

Katniss got into this situation through desire to protect her family: in the first book/film she volunteers to go to the Hunger Games in her sister Prim’s place. But as a survivor of the 74th Hunger Games and potential symbol of a revolution, every move Katniss makes is monitored by the Capitol. And she’s stubborn enough that she would rather defy their control and be killed. Until she’s reminded they can also hurt her family: her mother, her sister, her best friend/would-be lover Gale, and even her “management team” for her role as tribute/victor.

Too often female action heroes are a) not motivated at all, because they’re just “Fighting fuck toys” b) motivated only by their own survival, becoming heroes only by failing to become victims. So trite as it may be, seeing Katniss as the cliched tortured protector of her loved ones was satisfying for me.

BUT EVERYONE ELSE MUST PROTECT KATNISS!

Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch walking between Capitol Peacekeepers

While Katniss is busy trying to keep her loved ones alive, everyone else (with the exception of President Snow and the other sinister Capitol forces who want her dead) is focused on keeping her alive. Peeta volunteers for the Quarter Quell games to keep Katniss alive, even though that means his certain death. Haymitch and Effie both conspire behind the scenes to help Peeta keep Katniss alive, even though Haymitch promises to focus his efforts on saving Peeta. And then they’re all the people who don’t even know Katniss who are fixated on her survival because of her value to the rebellion in Panem: she’s their Mockingjay, a symbol of hope that the Captiol is not all-powerful. After the climax we learn that half the tributes (including the brash Johanna Mason and the sex symbol Finnick O’Dair) allied with Katniss and Peeta with the express goal of getting her out of the arena alive. Even the Head Gamemaker is a secret agent for the rebellion, which only makes sense if you want it to.

Everyone wants Katniss alive and she almost ends up dead around 30 times this movie. Even though she’s a badass who can shoot anything at any speed from any angle (and apparently generate arrows in her quiver through sheer willpower). I realize the Hunger Games arena—and the dystopia of Panem more generally—are horrifying deathscapes that kill plenty of badasses, but it’s frustrating that Katniss’s proven survival abilities are more or less dismissed by her many protectors. Meanwhile Peeta, who’s showcase survival skill is CAKE DECORATING, is pretty much left on his own and at one point better trusted to protect vital engineer Beetee (although that might be a ruse to actually protect Katniss? I’m confused on that point but either way, sheesh).

While Katniss is loveable and Important for the World, it does get a little tiresome having every person around her either trying to kill her or trying to save her. It takes away from the individual agency that makes the character so satisfying and iconic for us in the first place.

But this isn’t enough to take Catching Fire down. Katniss is still a great character and Jennifer Lawrence is even better than usual (which is saying something) in this role. The story is still fascinating and this installment of the film series is absolutely captivating. It would be wonderful if the next film continues this trend of improvement, and the bizarre network of protect-and-be-protected relationships in Panem is handled more delicately (and knowing where the story goes, I’m hopeful).

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Watch the Trailer and Get Ready for Katniss to Continue…

Okay. Now we’re really excited.