the contemporary postfeminist dystopia: disruptions and hopeful gestures in Suzanne

Collins' "The Hunger Games"

Author(s): Andrea Ruthven
Source: Feminist Review, No. 116, dystopias and utopias (2017), pp. 47-62
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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116 the contemporary
postfeminist dystopia:
disruptions and hopeful
gestures in Suzanne Collins1
The Hunger Games

Andrea Ruthven

abstract

Through an analysis of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy (2008, 2009, 2010), this text wi
ways in which contemporary postfeminism can be read as a dystopic narrative. The protagonist of
the rest of the trilogy) is Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who through an ethics of care, disr
heteronormative script, and a critical posthuman embodiment offers an alternative to the dy
offered by postfeminism. In Katniss' dystopian world, Collins constructs a narrative that highlights t

need for a feminist politics of engagement and activism that works against claims for neo-liberal

keywords
postfeminism; dystopia; posthumanism; care; community; The Hunger Games ; Suzanne Collins

feminist review 116 2017

(47-62) © 2017 The Feminist Review Collective. 0141-7789/17 www.feminist-review.com

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 Suzanne Collins' popular dystopic novel The Hunger Games (2008) introduced readers to Katniss
Everdeen, the fierce heroine who comes to rebel against her oppressive government. Though set in an
indeterminate future, like most dystopias, Collins' (2008, 2009, 2010) novels have more to say about the
contemporary moment than they do about what is potentially to come. Arguably, what Collins' trilogy
represents is a dystopic moment in which the postfeminist claims of the present are 'driven to one logical
(though not inevitable) conclusion' (Neuman, 2006, p. 864). I propose that we are living in a postfeminist
dystopic present where the death, failure or rebirth of feminism is frequently hailed in a contemporary
postfeminist rhetoric that has, in many ways, deeply permeated Western, neo-liberal, globalising systems
of representation. With Katniss Everdeen, Collins highlights the ways in which a feminist ethics of care,
through the affirmation of affective bonds and a correlating posthuman subjectivity, can work as a
powerful means of countering the pernicious effects of postfeminist discourse.

Although a contentious label, postfeminism can be understood as discourse claiming 'that any needed
gender equity has been attained and that further feminist activity is contraindicated', and it 'co-opts
the motivating discourse of feminism but accepts a sense of empowerment as a substitutive for the work
towards and evidence of authentic empowerment' (Kinser, 2004, pp. 132, 134). Third-wave feminism, on
the other hand, identifies itself with the feminist movements that preceded it, focussing on the necessity
of actively working for change and the role of resistance within that action. By first considering what it
means to be living in a postfeminist present, I will then turn to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy
(2008, 2009, 2010), with specific emphasis on the first novel as an example of feminist dystopic fiction,
to explore how this representation of the postfeminist dystopic present posits utopie potentialities for
feminist projects of caring and community.

Conceiving of the present postfeminist moment as somehow dystopic runs the risk of suggesting that
feminist theory and activism, on the one hand, offers a unified understanding of what a feminist future
would look like, and on the other hand, that it has in some senses been relegated to a past that, while
influencing the present, is no longer part of it. In 'Feminism's apocalyptic futures', Robyn Wiegman
(2000) argues that misunderstandings of the feminist project automatically presuppose that a utopie
ideal exists and can be reached. This is encapsulated in 'the hyperbolic anxiety that the future may now
be unattainable because the present fails to bring the past to utopie completion' ( ibid ., p. 807). Bearing
this in mind, my criticism stems not from disappointment or disillusionment with the ways in which
feminist principles have been materialised in contemporary Western culture, but rather from the
conviction that postfeminist rhetoric is bound up with the discursive construction of a social reality that
is perversely dystopic. In naming the present a postfeminist dystopia, I do not mean to signal that
feminism has failed or is no longer part of the present. Rather, much like the dystopic and the utopie, the
presence of each can be found in the other, so that postfeminism necessarily relies on and predicates the
continued existence of feminism.

For Margaret Atwood (2011, p. 67), within the dystopic there are traces of the utopie, and vice versa:
'utopia and dystopia-the imagined perfect society and its opposite [...] in my view, each contains a
latent version of the other'. Indeed, it is worth suggesting that the dystopic and the utopie are only
dystopic and utopie for some, and that each harbours the potential for the other. Veronica Hollinger
notes that one of the principle effects of feminist dystopic and speculative fiction is to highlight

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 hegemonic representations of a patriarchal culture that does not recognize its 'others.' Like other critical discourses, it

works to create a critical distance between observer and observed, to defamiliarize certain taken-for-granted aspects of

ordinary human reality, 'denaturalizing' situations of historical inequity and/or oppression that otherwise may appear

inevitable to us, if indeed we notice them at all. (Hollinger, 1989, p. 129)

Arguably, the consumerist, individualistic, competitive and apparently apolitical Capitol of Suzanne
Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy calls attention to the ways in which postfeminist rhetoric surrounding
women's alleged liberation through capitalist consumption, competitive individualism and heteronor-
mative desirability, can be read as a contemporary dystopia.

How, then, to conceptualise postfeminist discourse? In Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the
Politics of Popular Culture , Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (2007, p. 2) assert that postfeminism is tied
in with 'consumption as a strategy for healing those dissatisfactions that might alternatively be
understood in terms of social ills and discontents'. Indeed, for Sarah Gamble (1998, p. 44) '[t]he term
'postfeminism' itself originated from within the media in the early 1980s, and has always tended to be
used in this context as indicative of joyous liberation from the ideological shackles of a hopelessly
outdated feminist movement'. Postfeminism as an ideology refers here to the media-manipulated
message that the work of feminism proper has been accomplished. The postfeminist is someone who
embraces the multiplicity of opportunities that contemporary society appears to offer her to fulfil her
consumer-driven desires (Gill, 2007). This rhetoric suggests that women's 'choice' is in large part
reflected by a market economy that can fulfil her lifestyle choices (as the only ones she might have). In
'Unhitching from the "post" (of postfeminism)', Mary Douglas Vavrus argues that

the desire to 'post' a social movement or a politics is at once a recognition of the significance of that to which it is
appended; the problem [...] however, is that the oppressive practices that necessitated the interventions of various
social movements and politics-and that we hoped we had buried decades ago-continue to crawl out of their crypts and

exert themselves in a surging, lurching, endless night of the living dead. (Douglas Vavrus, 2010, pp. 222-223)

For postfeminism, then, what is the 'post' dragging with it; with what signifiers is it burdened; and what is it
trying to shake off? Within postfeminism, ' [t] he young woman is offered a notional form of equality,
concretised in education and employment, and through participation in consumer culture and civil society,
in place of what a reinvented feminist politics might have to offer' (McRobbie, 2009, p. 2). While access to
education and employment possibilities are fundamental aspects of feminist activism, when the end goal is
'participation in consumer culture', then this goal falls short of achieving the aims of a feminist politics of
equity as 'the idea of feminist content disappeared and was replaced by aggressive individualism, by a
hedonistic female phall icism in the field of sexuality, and by obsession with consumer culture' (ibid., p. 5).
Situating participation in consumer culture as the measuring stick by which feminist goals can be
evaluated, reinforces a neo-liberal framework that privileges the individual, rather than the communal,
within the struggle for political and social equality to the extent that the 'political' becomes elided.

The 'aggressive individualism' identified by McRobbie is a further example of the way in which postfeminist
discourse turns its back on feminist ideology. While recognising that feminist activism and theory has a
long and problematic history of excluding women of colour, lesbian, disabled and disadvantaged classes,
the present moment of contemporary feminism engages in a politics that works to overcome the white,

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 middle-class, heterosexist legacy in favour of an intersectional understanding of oppression. As such,
standpoint theory, which seeks to validate and make heard the individual voice, is critical. And yet,
postfeminist discourse appears to ignore wilfully the ways in which the individual can mobilise the
collective, preferring instead to privilege acting and speaking for individualistic purposes. The discourse of
postfeminism is premature if it means to herald the end of patriarchy. To celebrate the end of feminism is,
at best, to buy into a fabricated Utopian dream; at worst, it is to recognise elements of an equally
dystopic fiction. If the present world is one in which the aims and work of feminism are no longer
necessary, then we are living in the consensual hallucination of the most depressing of speculative texts.

Taking into account that postfeminist discourse advocates an individualism that privileges heteronor-
mative bonds and white, docile, humanist bodies, Collins' trilogy, with its exaggeration of the present
postfeminist landscape, offers potential for hope through the rebellious figure of Katniss Cverdeen. In her
work on the uses and modes of speculative fiction, Belén Martín-Lucas (2014, p. 69) has asserted that
1 [a] Ithough dystopia is most often considered a pessimistic and depressive mode of writing, this is in
fact a genre of hope: after all, there is life beyond the apocalypse and, even more importantly, dystopic
fiction's cautionary tales signal the ways to prevent it happening'. Collins' trilogy is less a reflection of a
potential future and a 'cautionary tale' about what could happen than it is a hopeful gesture towards a
means of understanding the present.

In her work on feminist posthumanism, Rosi Braidotti (2013, p. 22) has affirmed the need to move past
the Humanist model in order to question anthropocentric bias and to introduce 'a new brand of
materialism, of the embodied and embedded kind'. In this respect, she sees her own work and that of
feminist science and speculative fiction as an 'attempt to devise renewed claims to community and
belonging by singular subjects who have taken critical distance from humanist individualism' (ibid.,
p. 39). Her work is especially valuable as a means of articulating alternative understandings of
embodiment and ways of being in the world that question the neo-liberal individualist mode of
postfeminism, which rests so firmly on humanist concepts of 'Man'. Collins' novels participate in this by
critiquing humanist individualism through Katniss' affective community-building, which relies heavily on
a posthuman understanding of the body. As I will discuss, by becoming the Mockingjay, the hybrid
representation of rebellion, Katniss opens a space for communal bonds that extend beyond her own self.
As such, the trilogy offers an alternative to postfeminist narratives of fierce individualism expressed
through commodity culture and disciplinary measures for grooming and beauty. Thus, through the
posthuman embodiment of the Mockingjay, Katniss forges new relational bonds for feminist community
and activism.

In The Hunger Games, Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010), the three novels that comprise
Suzanne Collins' trilogy, the setting is Panem, a future North America decimated by civil war and
environmental collapse. The country is organised into twelve districts, each responsible for providing
labour power and specific goods to the privileged and consumerist Capitol, the government's seat of
power. This structure closely resembles the present network economy, with its specialised regions of
production (e.g. for textiles or software) feeding global hubs of power. To reinforce the idea that the
districts are in service of the Capitol and to punish them for a rebellion that took place seventy-four
years prior to the time when the novel opens, each year the Hunger Games are celebrated: a televised
lottery system selects one teenaged girl and boy from each district. Once selected, the so-called

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'tributes' spend a week in the Capitol, where they participate in televised interviews before a team of
stylists takes them through a 'beautification' process- a process that is strongly reminiscent of the
multiple makeover shows on popular television. Furthermore, tributes engage in physical training in
preparation for the mediatised event to follow. After a week of living in the Capitol and preparing for
the Hunger Games, the tributes travel to the 'arena', a space designed especially for this purpose,
where they will fight each other to the death. The surviving tribute is crowned the victor and returns to
their district to live a relative life of ease, to be supplied by the Capitol with food, housing and money
so that they will no longer have to work. The trilogy's premise reflects, albeit morbidly, the
contemporary zeal for reality programming that promises a life of celebrity (and supposed riches) in
exchange for winning the televised contest.

Katniss Everdeen is a 16-year-old girl from District 12 (the most impoverished district) whose father dies
before the novels open. He had, however, previously taught his daughter to hunt- an illegal activity that
takes her into the woods surrounding her district, outside the boundaries of state power. The ability to
hunt and to move outside the limits of her town becomes necessary for survival when, upon her father's
death, her mother is unable to care for Katniss and her sister Prim, and Katniss sustains her family
through the animals she hunts and the bartering in which she engages, also illegally, on the district's
black market. The novel opens on the morning of the 'reaping', when the tributes are chosen for that
year's Hunger Games. When Katniss' sister Prim is chosen, Katniss volunteers to take her place,
continuing the ethics of care that motivated her to feed her family after her father's death.

By volunteering to take her sister's place, an act that Katniss regards as a death sentence, she
unwittingly performs what will be construed as her first act of heroism and defiance of the Capitol's
rules. Although 'volunteering' is often seen in two of the other districts- which supply luxury goods and
military personnel to the Capitol, and where being a tribute is considered more an honour than a
punishment- Katniss is the first in her district to ever volunteer, and the act is read not only as selfless
but also as a direct but subtle challenge to the Capitol's bid to pit residents and districts against each
other. As Katniss' (only) friend, Gale, notes: 'It's to the Capitol's advantage to have us divided among
ourselves' (Collins, 2008, p. 17). Clearly, the Capitol's disciplinary measures work to separate individuals
and communities from each other and reduce the potential for affective bonds and community to
emerge, and by choosing to sacrifice herself Katniss actively defies this individualistic imperative.

Prior to becoming a tribute, Katniss has no contact with anyone outside of her district. The relationship
between districts is non-existent, and the 'Games' function to foment distrust and competition and
ensure that districts do not bond with each other. As Susan Shau Ming Tan (2013, p. 58) has suggested,
although the arena is essentially a stage upon which the tributes must kill each other, it is here that
'Katniss is forced into contact with others from outside her district. And, as she finds herself unable to
ignore their humanity, Katniss is finally allowed voice, able to hear and be heard'. At the outset of the
first novel, the community that Katniss cares about is quite small; not only is this a result of being
'imprisoned' in her district, but it also depicts an aspect of her personality. She cares for her sister, her
mother and her friend Gale. However, as demonstrated by Katniss' willingness to take her sister's place in
the Games, her agency- her ability to effect change- resides in her capacity to care for others, and it is
this capacity that she must develop if she is to resist the Capitol's imperative that the tributes see each
other as nothing more than competitors who must be killed in order to survive. While the fight-to-the-

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 death aspect of the deadly serious Games means that the tributes have no option but to kill each other,
it is the ancillary necessity of dehumanising her opponents that Katniss resists. As I will discuss further
on, Katniss' embodiment of a posthuman feminist ethics that is predicated upon links across differences
is crucial to her resistance to the Capitol's demands.

Once in the arena, Katniss befriends another tribute, Rue. Alliances are common in the arena, especially
between the strongest, as tributes join together to increase their individual chances of survival. Katniss,
however, does not ally with the strongest; rather, she joins with one of the smallest and weakest (but no
less intelligent and strategic) tributes, less from a desire to increase her own chances, than from a
feeling of affinity and caring. Paradoxically, the result is that the relationship is both mutually beneficial
and yet also makes Katniss more vulnerable. Rather than worrying only about herself, she now fears for
Rue's life as well:

I turn and head back to the stream, feeling somehow worried. About Rue being killed, about Rue not being killed and the

two of us being left for last, about leaving Rue alone, about leaving Prim alone back home. No, Prim has my mother and

Gale and a baker who has promised she won't go hungry. Rue has only me. (Collins, 2008, p. 258)

By caring about Rue, Katniss extends her network of affective bonds beyond relationships of filiation,
towards those of affiliation. Katniss' affection for the younger tribute creates a link that extends beyond
the two of them towards the inhabitants of District 11. Because she cares for Rue, others outside her
immediate family come to care for Katniss. The isolation that the Capitol enforces through competition
between tributes and districts is disrupted, and Katniss' affective bond creates both a personal and a
political network. As she reflects: 'I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How
comforting the presence of another human being can be' (ibid., p. 252). The personal comfort she offers
and receives from Rue extends beyond the two of them, as Rue's district also comes to care for Katniss,
going so far as to send her a gift of bread in the arena after Rue's death.

Katniss enacts and recognises through her ethics of caring, the importance of resisting the neo-liberal
discourse of individuality and consumption that goes hand-in-hand with a postfeminism that is all too
friendly with capitalist ideology. Sonya Sawyer Fritz (2014, p. 28) asserts that 'Katniss's political activism
and acts of rebellion in the Hunger Games novels are also often largely informed by her impulse to look after
others'. This connection between caring for others and 'political activism and acts of rebellion' asserts a
direct defiance of postfeminist individualism, contending that affection for others can be a political
strategy, especially when taking into account that Katniss does not merely respond to an impulse to care
instilled by domesticity discourses, but rather understands the personal risks at stake in protecting Rue and
takes the premeditated decision to form a bond with the younger tribute. Worth noting, however, is the
potential for feminist caring to be read as part of an essentialised femininity. For Carol Gilligan (1993,
p. 17), 'women not only define themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in
terms of their ability to care'. I would argue that Katniss' 'ability to care' is not rooted in her femininity so
much as it is depicted as an aspect of her heroism, and that caring is not specific to one gender. Change and
resistance are enacted and based on what could be interpreted through Rosi Braidotti's (1994, p. 25)
arguments for a nomadic feminism: 'In contrast to the oppositions created by a dualistic mode of social
constructivism, a nomadic body is a threshold of transformations. It is the complex interplay of the highly
constructed social and symbolic forces. The body is a surface of intensities and an affective field in

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interaction with others'. Katniss' body, through her affective bonds, serves as a 'field of interaction', which
heightens the potential for both social and embodied transformation.

Martin-Lucas (2014, p. 76) has argued in her discussion of Canadian dystopic fiction by women of colour:
'Their emphasis on community constitutes perhaps the most efficient tool against the fierce individualist
alienation on which capitalism depends'. Throughout the novels, Katniss battles the 'individualist
alienation' fomented by the state, and enters into a consciousness of her capacity for action on behalf
of others even across district borders. Key to this burgeoning consciousness is her relationship to her
fellow District 12 tribute, Peeta Mellark. During the costume pageant preceding Katniss' first appearance
in the Games, Peeta and Katniss' styling team order the pair to hold hands. Their first presentation to
Capitol society, then, shows them linked together. After the parade, their mentor, Haymitch, suggests
that this hand-holding could be construed as an act of rebellion:

'Whose idea was the hand holding?' asks Haymitch.

'Cinna's,' says Portia.

'Just the perfect touch of rebellion,' says Haymitch. 'Very nice.'

Rebellion? I have to think about that one for a moment. But when I remember the other couples, standing stiffly apart,

never touching or acknowledging each other, as if their fellow tribute did not exist, as if the Games had already begun, I

know what Haymitch means. Presenting ourselves not as adversaries but as friends has distinguished us as much as the

fiery costumes. (Collins, 2008, p. 96, my emphasis)

By publicly claiming each other's hand, Katniss and Peeta demonstrate that the mistrust or even hatred
the tributes feel for one another- and by extension that the district residents feel- is a construction
designed by the Capitol to maintain its system of power. The Capitol later manipulates this act so that it
forms part of a romantic narrative the Hunger Games crew weave around Katniss and Peeta, and in so
doing they make patent the flexibility of power, its capacity to adapt and change. Indeed, the 'perfect
touch of rebellion' is qualified as 'very nice', that is, acceptable in that it is not risky and does not
directly challenge the system. The flexibility of the system is such that the media engine of the Capitol
co-opts this minor act of 'rebellion' to further its own agenda of fostering the entertainment aspect of
the Games by promoting their bond as a heteronormative love story. While, as the quotation about hand-
holding suggests, the idea that two tributes could be anything but enemies is something of a disruption
to the system, it quickly recovers and converts the narrative into a commodity for its own use, 'to
guarantee the most dramatic showdown in history' (ibid., p. 416). To this effect, even though for Katniss
'the romance has been fabricated to play on [the audience's] sympathies' (ibid., p. 360), the Capitol
reinscribes the potential for disruption within the limits of commodity culture.

In a disconcerting and somewhat contradictory fashion, the tributes in The Hunger Games must first be
made to look 'human'- specifically, what is deemed 'human' by residents of the Capitol- before they can
be converted into objects of slaughter. After their debut presentations on television for the districts, but
before their presentation to the Capitol residents, the tributes are intensely groomed so as to meet
Capitol standards for beauty. For Tan, this process is bound up within the televisual discourse that
objectifies the tributes for visual consumption:

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 Indeed, as the ceremonies of the Games elevate the tributes and then reduce them to items of sport, Panem emerges as

a posthuman world in the most terrifying of ways: where humanity is to be given and taken away. On stage, Katniss can

be a compelling figure, an object of admiration and desire. But, in the arena, she is nothing but a source of bloody
spectacle. (Tan, 2013, p. 61)

Tan's definition of the posthuman as 'where humanity is to be given and taken away' is somewhat
problematic, for it suggests that 'humanity' is easily recognisable and a state of being that can be
conferred by someone or something, and that the less palatable aspects, such as cruelty and killing, are
not part of being 'human'. However, a very intriguing notion in her argument is that the demarcation and
differentiation between the 'stage' and the 'arena' comprises the fundamental aspect determining
Katniss' humanity. Even though the role of the tributes in the arena is to be reduced to objects of 'bloody
spectacle', it is in the Capitol, while she is subjected to corporeal manipulations and re-imaging, that
Katniss is only nominally human: she is, in this context, emptied of inferiority and is reduced to her
image. Guy Andre Risko (2012, p. 83) reads this moment, through Giorgio Agamben (1998 [1995]), as
Katniss becoming homo sacer, as 'she suddenly becomes completely devoid of political and legal value'.
In the arena, when she is supposedly stripped of her humanity by the necessity of taking the 'inhuman'
action of killing others for sport, Katniss begins her metamorphosis into the Mockingjay, the posthuman
subject that fills the void left by becoming homo sacer with an alternative political subjectivity.

Brian McDonald (2012, p. 14) astutely notes that ' [f ] or Katniss, one's looks shouldn't be fodder for
remaking, any more than one's body devoured in the arena shouldn't be fodder for entertainment'.
Curiously, at a moment when she is most vulnerable to the dehumanisation inherent in the aesthetic
'remaking' process, Katniss Others her team of stylists in much the same way that she is Othered by those
of the Capitol:

I stand there, completely naked, as the three circle me, wielding tweezers to remove any last bits of hair. I know I should

be embarrassed, but they're so unlike people that I'm no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly coloured birds were

pecking around my feet.

The three step back and admire their work. 'Excellent! you almost look like a human being now!' says Flavius, and they
all laugh. (Collins, 2008, pp. 75-76)

The process of Othering, in this case through the evaluating lens of bodily discipline, is clearly at play
here, where Katniss views her styling team as 'a trio of oddly coloured birds' and turns them into
something strange much in the same way that they can only concede that she has become 'almost' a
human being. Significantly, Katniss likens her team to birds, the very animal she herself will 'become' by
the third novel, thus partially explaining why she feels such sympathy for them despite the part they play
in the Capitol's spectacle.

Katniss has no illusions about her own power or even about her role within the community of rebels in the
districts. In Catching Fire, when Peeta and Katniss face returning to the Games, Katniss reflects on the
way in which her desire to save Peeta is not entirely at odds with her desire to rebel against the Capitol.
She decides:

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 If I can make it clear that I'm still defying the Capitol right up to the end, the Capitol will have killed me ... but not my
spirit. What better way to give hope to the rebels?

The beauty of this idea is that my decision to keep Peeta alive at the expense of my own life is itself an act of defiance.

A refusal to play the Hunger Games by the Capitol's rules. My private agenda dovetails completely with my public one.
And if I really could save Peeta ... in terms of a revolution, this would be ideal. Because I will be more valuable dead.
They can turn me into some kind of martyr for the cause. (Collins, 2009, p. 243)

Katniss imagines that she will be 'more valuable dead'; however, the impulse to turn herself into a
'martyr for the cause' is not a self-aggrandising reflex. After her experiences in the Capitol, Katniss
is well aware of the power of the screen and the image in constructing public opinion. Clearly
articulating that her 'private agenda' and her 'public one' are coextensive is what is most powerful
in the above statement.

In privileging Peeta's life over her own, Katniss solidifies a relationship with those in the districts that
began when she took her sister Prim's place in the reaping. She deepened this relationship by
demonstrating her capacity to care through her short-lived but intense relationship with Rue and through
her non-romantic love for Peeta in the first novel. Through these acts of affection, Katniss generates
affect in those around her, and it is the fact that 'Katniss cares' (Issow Averill, 2012, p. 163, emphasis in
original)- when the Games are engineered specifically to punish tributes and spectators who form bonds
of affection- that is most subversive. Through caring for Peeta, Katniss enacts the feminist dictum of 'the
personal is political'. Indeed, these bonds of caring work to join bodies together, albeit symbolically, in
what I read as a posthuman gesture that privileges connectivities over isolation.

Tan (2013, p. 63) asserts that '[b]y offering her body as sacrifice, and willingly making herself vulnerable
to physical destruction, but on her own terms, Katniss inspires her world to take action'. Although I agree
that the people in the districts are inspired by Katniss' willingness to protect her sister and those she
cares about, regardless of the cost this might have, I would point out that Katniss does not simply agree
to sacrifice herself, nor does she willingly submit to physical destruction. She may accept death as a
potential outcome, yet she is not merely waiting for it. Katniss cares, but she also fights back.

During the televised interviews that the tributes undergo prior to entering the arena in the first novel
(ostensibly so that the audience can learn about them, but functioning more as a showcase through
which tributes must garner favour from Capitol residents), Peeta declares his romantic love for Katniss.
However, Katniss does not trust Peeta's story, viewing it as a mere ploy to garner sympathy and sponsors
from the Capitol audience, and she rejects the constructed narrative of 'star-crossed lovers' that it
generates:

'But we're not star-crossed lovers!' I say.

Haymitch grabs my shoulders and pins me against the wall. 'Who cares? It's all a big show. It's all how you're perceived.
The most I could say about you after your interview was that you were nice enough, although that in itself was a small

miracle. Now I can say you're a heartbreaker. Oh, oh, oh, how the boys back home fall longingly at your feet. Which do

you think will get you more sponsors? (Collins, 2008, p. 164)

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 Although she initially thinks that the 'romance' angle will make her appear weak, Katniss eventually
comes to accept that the romantic love narrative is just another tool, another way to manipulate her
image for the camera.

While Katniss regards the love story as a tool, critics offer differing opinions on how to read the
romantic love narrative set-up for the viewers in the Capitol (and to a lesser extent in the districts).
For June Pulliam (2014, p. 179), Katniss' involvement in the heterosexual love narrative
'recontextualizes her ability to fight in the arena', as this is no longer linked to 'a violent masculine
pragmatism' but instead becomes 'part of her conventionally feminine public persona due to its
association with her fierce ability to care'. Pulliam points to the way in which violent acts committed
by women are frequently represented by mass media- in this case, specifically for Capitol audiences-
as stemming from an essentialised feminine identity that sanctions women's violence when committed
in defence of loved ones; because the spectators see Katniss as being in love, they view her
subsequent acts of violence as an expression of a normative femininity. And yet for Miranda Green-
Barteet (2014, p. 41), the fact that 'Katniss performs as a young woman in love to save herself, her
family, and Peeta actually serves to reinforce the many ways she flouts gender stereotypes'. Both
Pulliam and Green-Barteet's arguments are compelling, and help locate the 'conventionally feminine
public persona' Pulliam identifies as that which is created more for the Capitol viewers than for either
Katniss or readers of the text, for whom the 'girl-in-love' is explicitly a performance.

Troublingly, after the first film of The Hunger Games (2012) was released and continuing until well after
the release of the fourth film, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 2 (2015), media outlets- many aimed
primarily at teenaged girls- conducted surveys entitled 'Team Peeta or Team Gale?' (Boon, 2015) to help
readers ascertain 'which District 12 man is more [their] type' (Block, 2015). Although undoubtedly part
of the media machine that promoted the films (one that arguably has much in common with the Capitol's
own), this focus on the heteronormative love triangle draws attention away from Katniss' role as a
potentially revolutionary figure, presenting her as the lovelorn teenager the Capitol would have her be. If
Katniss' love for Peeta is questioned throughout the three novels, Peeta's love for her is never
scrutinised. While Peeta is presented as even more vulnerable than Katniss because he does not have
either her hunting skills nor her experience of fighting to stay alive, his proclaimed love for her is never
considered a strategy.1 Only before entering the arena and before Peeta declares his feelings for her,
does Katniss question his motives: 'A warning bell goes off in my head. Don't be so stupid. Peeta is
planning how to kill you, I remind myself. He is luring you into make you easy prey. The more likeable he
is, the more deadly he is ' (Collins, 2008, p. 88; emphasis in original). Once they are reunited in the arena,
however, Katniss comes to accept that Peeta's feelings for her are genuine. Given that the girl-in-love is
presented as a strategy but the boy-in-love is taken at face value, Peeta becomes a sympathetic
character whose steadfast love for Katniss and apparent lack of guile contrast sharply with Katniss'
apparently manipulative and calculating personality. I read this as a reflection of the subtle privileging
of men's speech over that of women's. With his claims of loving Katniss accepted without question, Peeta
is afforded the right of being believed, while Katniss must consistently prove her love for Peeta. Katniss
never claims, at least for readers of the text, to romantically love Peeta but does insist on platonie
feelings for him; by not following the heteronormative storyline, she disrupts dominant narratives that

ll would like to thank the peer reviewer who offered this valuable insight.

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position women as more romantically inclined. In the second novel, Katniss recognises the way in which
situating romance as a goal for women can serve to derail political activity, realising that President
Snow's insistence that she perform her love for Peeta 'was obviously just a ploy to distract me and keep
me from doing anything else inflammatory in the districts' (Collins, 2009, p. 149). The supposed love plot
not only distracts Katniss but also is employed by President Snow as a means of keeping those in the
districts and the Capitol from focussing on the emerging social unrest.

The popularity of the romance narrative for viewers in the Capitol is such that the Gamemakers revise the
rules part way through the Games. This unprecedented alteration allows for both tributes from the same
district to be crowned winners if they are the final two to survive (Collins, 2008, p. 300). While Katniss
has spent her time in the arena up to this point focussed on her own survival (and for a short time on
that of Rue), she immediately seeks out the ailing Peeta and joins with him, in the hopes that they might
both return home. However, this requires her to work to maintain the 'love' narrative. Clearly this is not
something that comes easily to her, and she must make a concerted effort to interpret the role:

I'm not really sure how to ramp up the romance. The kiss last night was nice, but working up to another will take some

forethought. There are girls in the Seam, some of the merchant girls, too, who navigate these waters so easily. But I've

never had much time or use for it. (ibid., pp. 364-365)

While Capitol viewers may interpret Katniss' actions as those of a girl in love, readers can hardly ignore
that they are the result of calculation, a precise attempt to lramp up the romance' in order to receive
gifts of food or medicine. Interestingly, there is some ambiguity as to whether or not Katniss views
displays of affection and intimacy as inherently performative. It is not clear whether she thinks all
romance is a performance, and that the girls 'who navigate these waters so easily' are simply more adept
at interpreting the role of young-woman-in-love, or if she believes their actions stem from an impulse
she herself does not feel. Katniss is aware that she must 'act for the cameras in the way a girl in love
would act, whether that means tender kisses, gentle caresses, affectionate glances, or fighting
desperately to keep her lover alive when he is grievously injured' (Miller, 2012, p. 156). The performance
of romantic love- Katniss' ability to interpret it- also points to the existence of a cultural consensus on
what love looks like. The majority of the Capitol residents accept Katniss' performance at face value,
while those in the districts and President Snow are far less credulous, indicating that while love may have
a script, Katniss is not an accomplished actor.

However, by making explicit that Katniss is acting 'for the cameras', Collins highlights the way in which
romantic love is a constructed narrative: if it is so easy for her to convince audiences that she loves
Peeta merely by acting as though she does, then these actions become denaturalised. However, while the
Capitol audience may be convinced (and Peeta also comes to believe Katniss loves him), Katniss herself
has difficulty separating 'out [her] feelings about Peeta. It's too complicated. What [she] did as part of
the Games. As opposed to what [she] did out of anger at the Capitol. Or because of how it would be
viewed back in District 12. Or simply because it was the only decent thing to do. Or what [she] did
because [she] cared about him' (Collins, 2008, p. 435). Despite the turmoil Katniss feels, the novels
resist falling into a narrative that privileges the romantic plot and highlight just how constructed it is,
and also maintain that although she may not be in love with Peeta, she certainly does love him. Jessica
Miller (2012, p. 158) notes that 'Katniss subversively uses the tools of femininity to control how her story

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 is interpreted'. She is convinced that the 'romance' between herself and Peeta is a survival mechanism;
to stay alive, she must pretend to be in love. However, while she is indeed drawing attention to the
constructed nature of heteronormative romantic discourse, she is also enacting an ethics of caring which
suggests that non-filial, non-romantic love can also be powerful, especially when it is the result of a
conscious choice to care.

By highlighting both the way in which love can take many forms- e.g. platonie, filial, non-filial- and by
manipulating the heteronormative love plot against the Capitol, Katniss demonstrates the potential for
love and affect beyond the heterosexual paradigm. I read Katniss' insistence on a community of mutual
caring that extends beyond the heteronormative family as a disruption of postfeminist neo-liberal
ideologies, because it extends Katniss' sphere of action beyond herself, the individual and those
immediately related (by biology or through marriage) towards a wider and more inclusive understanding
of kinship and disrupts ideas surrounding 'humanist individualism' (Braidotti, 2013, p. 39). As such,
Katniss challenges postfeminist ideals not only through her affective networks but also through her
burgeoning posthumanity throughout the trilogy.

Before leaving for her first Games, Katniss receives a pin, a 'token', which she takes with her into the
arena. The ornament depicts a 'mockingjay', a hybrid between a bird and a Capitol-created creature.
Throughout the trilogy, this bird becomes the rallying symbol of the rebel movement, linked to Katniss'
own rebellious activity: 'A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. They hadn't
counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic
code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn't anticipated its will to live' (Collins, 2009, p. 91). The bird
becomes not only the symbol of the revolution but also an apt metaphor for Katniss herself. Like the
mockingbird, Katniss too sings her emotions, and like the jabberjay, she possesses the fierce desire to
protect her loved ones. The Capitol intended only to create obedient citizens; as with the mockingjay, it
did not intend for Katniss to exist. By becoming the Mockingjay, Katniss embraces the potential in
becoming-animal and disrupts understandings of bounded, humanist bodies.

By becoming the Mockingjay, Katniss mobilises the posthuman as the movement towards allegiance with
the rebellious army. Her position as the Mockingjay- her taking up of the hybrid position- extends her
bonds of affinity, breaks the strict barriers that enclose each district and separate them from one
another, and offers a means of moving past the ideals of postfeminist neo-liberal discourse that
privilege independence and 'emphatic individualism' (Tasker and Negra, 2007, p. 2) over community and
social change. Throughout the novels, it is clear that Katniss alone cannot overthrow the government and
effect lasting change, but that action must be taken communally.

Collins' trilogy focusses on the rebellion rather than on the society that emerges post-rebellion. Indeed,
readers are given no clues as to what the society Katniss helps to bring about looks like. Offered merely a
pat ending, which sees Katniss and Peeta forming a family,2 the result of the civil war is left largely to
readers' imaginations. In so doing, Collins' text appears to suggest that rebellion itself is the goal, and
that politically motivated action is the means. While The Hunger Games trilogy is certainly dystopic in its
representation of tyranny and oppression, the movement away from merely representing societal ills and

2The implications of the heteronormative ending are myriad and beyond the scope of this paper. It is worth mentioning that at the end of the
novel, Katniss remains deeply ambivalent about the relationship and having children, and it is not represented as a typical romantic
'marriage plot'.

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towards the burgeoning uprising and rebellion in the second novel (which comes to fruition in the third
novel) represents what I read as the most powerful aspect of the texts. As Thomas Moylan (2000, p. 181)
has argued, dystopian texts can 'generate non-narrative spaces of possibilities that can suggest
openings in the system and thereby offer meanings that exceed the pessimism of the plot'. In
concentrating less on what the future looks like and more on what the process of change involves,
Collins' work joins other feminist dystopic fictions in its refusal to argue for an ending, and in suggesting
that resistance, subversion and collaborative action are potentially Utopian visions in and of themselves.

Cruel optimism, according to Lauren Berlant (2011, p. l), occurs 'when something you desire is actually
an obstacle to your flourishing'. Postfeminist discourse, with its emphasis on the individual, consumerism
and a docile, humanist and heteronormatively attractive body, could be recognised as a relation of cruel
optimism, with capitalist desires as directly opposed to what could help us flourish. By embodying ethics
of care, community, love that exceeds and indeed criticises heteronormativity, and a posthumanist
discourse that extends the body beyond the strict boundaries of the human, Katniss Everdeen occupies a
position as a third-wave feminist model. Sonya Sawyer Fritz (2014, p. 22) argues that '[bjecause Katniss
is characterized from the opening pages of the trilogy as a survivor, an intelligent and independent
individual who daily confronts the tyranny of her country's oppressive and opulent Capitol, it is relatively
easy to locate her character within the matrix of girl power'. The 'girl power' movement, a corollary to
postfeminist discourse, can be read as a capitulation to the demands of late capital to commercialise
and render innocuous social rebellion and counterculture, although it is a prevalent and powerful source
of identification within contemporary film and literature.

The critique of the Capitol and its modes of power is a critique of the way in which postfeminist practices
produce citizens whose all-consuming 'efforts to keep up with constantly changing styles (such as
stencilled cheekbones and gem-studded collarbones) transform them into "docile bodies'" (Van Dyke,
2012, p. 256) and docile minds that are preoccupied with gossip, heteronormative felicity and
entertainment. The irony is not lost on me, however, that the very systems under critique in Collins'
novels are reproduced in the way that her trilogy has permeated the Western cultural sphere. The novels
have been transformed into films of the same name and enjoy widespread success as objects of
entertainment and consumer culture. The stars of The Hunger Games films,3 Jennifer Lawrence (as
Katniss), Josh Hutcherson (as Peeta) and Liam Hemsworth (as Gale), have become the same sort of
bodies-to-be-looked-at as the characters they play in the novels. The star-machine that operates out of
Hollywood has converted these young people into bodies for public consumption. They are, as is de
rigueur in the entertainment industry, dressed up, subjected to scrutiny, physically manipulated (with
styling, hair and makeup, and exercise regimes) and paraded around to premieres and photo shoots. The
films themselves paradoxically participate in the critique of the body-as-spectacle embedded in the
novels and benefit from its allure for modern spectators. The fact that a series of novels that criticises
this very activity (although it is debatable to what extent Hollywood requires its stars to battle to the
death) should enjoy such widespread popularity with the viewing public speaks to the way in which the
co-optation of rebellion and resistance, of critique and questioning, are fundamental aspects of
capitalist culture. Braidotti's (2013, p. 58) affirmation that 'advanced capitalism is a spinning machine
that actively produces differences for the sake of commodification' appears here to speak directly to the
zThe Hunger Games (2012) directed by Gary Ross and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1 (2014) and
The Hunger Games : Mockingjay-Part 2 (2015) directed by Francis Lawrence.

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 way in which Collins' The Hanger Games trilogy has had at least part of its critique of the entertainment
industry repurposed for capitalist gain.

I would locate Katniss within a discourse that rejects the commodification which 'girl power' has come to
represent. And yet, like those represented by girl power, Katniss is a survivor. Her growth throughout the
trilogy, from one who 'confronts the tyranny' of her country's government for personal reasons to one
with more politically engaged and community-focussed motives, is crucial for understanding her role as
materialising a third-wave feminist politics. Katniss resists the dystopian postfeminist and neo-liberal
demands for individualism in favour of affective bonds and community action. She undermines the
discourse of romantic love, throwing a wrench in the narrative that heteronormative models for romance
are natural and not at all harmful. Furthermore, she takes up a critical posthumanist perspective that
reflects Braidotti's (2013, p. 37) conceptualisation of the term as 'elaborating alternative ways of
conceptualizing of the human subject' arising from a post-anthropocentric ideology, through her
embodiment of the Mockingjay, a hybrid genetically mutated bird that comes to serve as Katniss' avatar
in the rebellion. Furthermore, she dislodges postfeminist notions of the individual by questioning not only
the primacy of heterosexist familial relations as the principle sites for caring, but also the bondedness of
human bodies. With this heroine, Suzanne Collins offers a critique not of what could happen in the future
should the present take a given course, but rather of the contemporary postfeminist moment.

acknowledgements
The research for this paper was undertaken with funding from the Spanish Ministry for Economy, Industry
and Competitiveness for the research project Bodies in Transit/Cuerpos en Trânsito (refs. FFI2013-47789-
C2-1-P).

author biography
Andrea Ruthven lectures in English at Mediterrani College, University of Girona, Spain. Her doctoral
research at the University of Barcelona (2015) considered the ways in which violence and women's bodies
are constructed through representations of the contemporary action heroine in dystopic literatures.
Publications include the co-edited volume Woman as Angel , Woman as Evil: Interrogating the Boundaries
(Oxfordshire: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012) and the essays 'Pride, prejudice and post-feminist zombies'
in The year's Work at the Zombie Research Center (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014) and 'The
woman warrior: rejecting utopia' in Experiencing Gender: International Approaches (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015).

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