Eek! The Hunger Games movie is fast upon us! In about eight hours, I’ll be on my way to the movie theater for a midnight showing! Can’t wait!
Over at Tor.com, I wrote a post as part of their Hunger Games coverage talking about symbolism and its importance to political movements. It’s called Symbols in The Hunger Games: Katniss, the Mockingjay, and Humanity At Its Best.
Excerpt:
When I sat down to write about the Mockingjay symbol used in The Hunger Games trilogy, both the pin and Katniss Everdeen herself, the first thing I thought of was child soldiers and the Kony 2012 campaign.
Bear with me.
One of the criticisms I’ve heard about the Kony 2012 campaign (or rather about Invisible Children, the organization that started it aside) was that it was too slick: the video made too big an issue of finding Joseph Kony and oversimplified the many issues involved in the problem of child soldiers in Africa. Kony is not the only problem (or rather, he’s only part of the problem). This is very true.
Yet the Kony 2012 video went viral and spread in a way that years of news coverage, books, and the work of other organizations didn’t. It is precisely because Kony was used as a simple but potent idea and image that people were inspired to act in a way that simply appealing to their altruism and sense of decency just couldn’t. If a problem seems too large and complicated to solve, it becomes white noise.
In Panem, Katniss Everdeen focused the noise and broke through the static.
To read the complete post, as well as to comment, CLICK HERE.
In other Hunger Games-related news, if you haven’t yet listened to the soundtrack for the film, The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond, you really should. It really captures the feel of the books (I can only imagine the film as well), and is on par with the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which makes sense as both were executive produced by legendary country producer, T Bone Burnett. In any case, I’m about to interview another producer on Songs From District 12, the only producer on the album other than T Bone, producing great Greg Wells. He not only produced on this album, but has amassed a jillion credits writing and producing for artists as diverse as Adele, Katy Perry, Celine Dion, OneRepublic and Timbaland, Colbie Caillat, and more! Expect to see that interview on PopMatters.com and ChinaShop Magazine soon!
