Day 163: Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  ISBN: 9780439023511.

Collins' take on the role of media in this book is absolutely fabulous.  In fact, I think someone could write a very well written college-level paper about the Media as Character and manage to astound their professor if they were ambitious enough.  With three books' worth of material you could easily write about 15 pages and include an analysis of the personalities of different news and "news" shows.

I'm actually very happy that there as no internet in the Districts or the Capitol.  It would have made the dumb complacency of the Capitol highly unbelievable.  With a tightly controlled televised media, it's easy to pipe whatever thoughts you want into households and make people swallow it.  Since there was no communication between districts, you had to accept the information as true, or know that it was fabricated and altered, but not how.  No one was able to fact check, so it was nearly impossible for anyone to start a rebellion because no one really knew how bad it was except for their own little District.  Not that I think the internet would have helped form a revolution, but it would have potentially created a more informed citizenry.  Our civilization is complacent in different ways.  We seem to enjoy being uninformed and somewhat stupid, but I think that's a different topic.

I was actually surprised that the rebellion decided to use Katniss in pretty much the same way the Capitol used her during the Hunger Games.  In fact, I was surprised that Kantiss allowed this.  I suppose I shouldn't have been; by this point it probably felt natural to have cameras follow her around.  I'm not saying I didn't expect the Rebellion to use her for publicity, but sending her into combat situations with cameras seems like a very risky move to a group of people concerned with losing a sustainable population of humans.

Sure, we throw camera men, etc. in to combat situations, but we have billions of people where the world Katniss lives in probably only had thousands.  We're also not used to the idea of watching live combat situations for entertainment (unless you count boxing, a handful of other sports, and cop shows).  It seems to me that the Rebellion would want to distance itself from the Capitol as much as possible, but then when you're trying to reach an audience I suppose you work with what's best.  Kind of makes you think about the TV shows we watch and have foisted on us, not to mention the kind of news they try to feed us.

An excellent spoiler-free review can be found over at books i done read.  I have previous posts about Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  Click the shiny links.

Day 162: Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  ISBN: 9780439023511.

Holy crap.  That was not the ending I was expecting, despite all the griping from other book bloggers I've been reading, or skimming really in an attempt to avoid spoilers.  It's definitely a worthy ending to the series, and I think will be appreciated much more once people calm the fuck down and get over the hype.  I will agree that the tacked on epilogue was very end-of-Harry-Potteresque and I hated them both.  They were unnecessary, the story was over, I don't need to know what happens after everything is wrapped up.  That's what fan-fiction is for.

Now I'm going to get on a soap box and start yelling at people.  Here we go.

Cut out the Team Peeta, Team Gale, Team Whatever bullshit!

Ahem.  Thank you.  Seriously, you have no idea how much this annoys me.  Sure, it's cute when they do the sketches on The Daily Show.  However, it is obnoxious and insulting when grown women (in particular) do it and not much better when teenager girls do it.  You wanna know why?  Of course you do, because I'm ragey and hatey and it makes for good blogging.  It's insulting because it assumes that (in this case) Katniss only has two options and that she can't make valid decisions for herself, so we, the audience, ought to barge in and make them for her with yelling and shouting and fan-girling all over the place.


Oh, but she's a fictional character, so it's okay to have a little bit of fun with it, etc.  Okay, so it doesn't have a direct influence on a real person's life, but I don't think this is behavior we ought to be encouraging women to participate in.  They may end up distrusting their own judgment regarding their selection of mates, and the idea of using a system as childish as Team X or Y kind of makes me sick to my stomach.  It also removes any sort of autonomy or power or even responsibility from the person in question to make her own decisions about her future.

Without giving away too much about the end, I think Katniss made the right decision for her, because it was probably the first and only decision she actually made on her own. In fact, I think Collins tried to slip in some "OMG STFU about the Team shit" herself when she has Katniss make this statement very early in the book: 

"The very notion that I'm devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning."  Page 40.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  Yes.  For the first two books Katniss was consistently told us she had no interest in getting married regardless of how she felt for anyone because she didn't want to bring children into a world with the Hunger Games.  Rather than applauding her maturity in this decision (when she seems to avoid being mature about much else, granted - teenager), people are yelling and screaming and fawning and pressing for her to choose one or the other and right now.

They're fictional characters and they're going to end up with who the author wants them to end up with, but they're also stand-ins for real human beings and we need to respect who they are and who they represent as people.  Don't get pissy when they make the "wrong" choice, it's not your decision to make and we read to grow.  Watching other people make the wrong choice is often more helpful than having them live perfect lives, and often a lot more exciting.

I am decidedly Team STFU, by the way.  And maybe a bit Team Buttercup, but who can go wrong loving a cat?

An excellent spoiler-free review can be found over at books i done read.  I have previous posts about Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  Click the shiny links.