Mockingjay, Part 1

At this point, it’s fairly clear that in some ways, we take from The Hunger Games what the world has brought to it. The movie franchise has become one of the highest-grossing woman-led properties ever, a go-to example of the power and viability of the girl protagonist. Its critique of pageantry as distraction from monstrosity is referenced for both its punishing celebrity culture and the economics of scarcity. And its fable of rebellion against totalitarianism has become shorthand of a more resonant kind. Amid ongoing struggles against police states at home and abroad, the Girl On Fire couldn’t be a more effective figurehead if she were real. (Recently, protestors in Thailand adopted Panem’s revolutionary salute; cinemas responded by pulling the film.)

But of course, we also take from The Hunger Games what’s been very deliberately brought to it. A “third space” between the production and the product offers a similar narrative shift to the dramatic refocusing that the books received when they moved from the first person of the novels to the inevitable third person of the camera lens. Filmwise, this works as both a distancing and a leveling tactic: Katniss’ inner monologue vanishes, and she competes in the frame for audience sympathy alongside everyone else. When Katniss sees the devastation in District 8, the focus on her grief over the grief of District 8’s leaders seems odd on the camera’s more even playing field, despite making sense in the novel—a sly condemnation, perhaps, of the rebellion’s focus on Katniss herself. The flip side is the camera’s ability to construct a story out of things far from Katniss in every sense. Mockingjay’s centerpiece scene is “The Hanging Tree,” which Katniss sings for a small audience. It becomes a propaganda video, and finally, chillingly, an anthem for District revolutionaries marching to a fatal confrontation with the Capitol. Her image is moved beyond her control: a parallel between the Capitol and District 13, and a concept that makes the jump intact from the screen to the making-of.

The producers behind the film adaptations have made the most of that meta-space that exists between the work and the creation of the work, a process in parallel with the story in a way that’s either wonderfully cynical or hilariously unintentional. It’s no surprise opinions about the films have been shaped by offscreen developments. Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson’s offscreen rapport often outshines their onscreen moments and has ignited shipper wars; Elizabeth Banks’ Effie was so popular, she sashayed her way into a role in Mockingjay, and Philip Seymour Hoffman died during the filming of Mockingjay, which makes his role poignant in a way the text themselves couldn’t have intended.

And then there’s the Katniss, real and imagined. When she was cast in The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence was little-known. Lawrence became a media darling (and then, inevitably, a media scapegoat) after the movie went gangbusters, and her out-of-character awkwardness became her calling card, as public opinion found it either charming or grating. In Mockingjay—which has the deliberate pace that comes from splitting a book into two movies—there’s plenty of time spent poking fun at Katniss’ awkwardness in her out-of-character propaganda spots. There’s even a scene in which Haymitch argues that her heavy makeup detracts from her intended image of innocence and youth, which—if it isn’t exactly what Lawrence has said she feels about red-carpet grooming—comes suspiciously close.

How much this says about The Hunger Games production’s self-awareness, though, is less clear. Despite her frankness about the trappings of celebrity, Lawrence is considered part of the property; her contract includes all that mandatory publicity. It’s a reflection of the Hollywood/Panem parallels of the novel that’s gone unexamined because it has to—not all systems can be broken. It might register as a shady situation in Panem, even to those making the movie, but Lawrence will walk every red carpet. Of course she will. She’s selling the revolution all over again.

(Originally published in Philly Weekly/Philly Now on November 26, 2014.)