Meera Kumar, Daily Arts Writer: Hi, everybody! Today we’re talking about modern love as portrayed in “The Hunger Games.” We’re really interested to see how “The Hunger Games,” although it was written maybe more than a decade ago, predicts certain facets of love in our time. I read this Vox article a while ago, a couple years after “Mockingjay” came out. And it started out by saying it doesn’t really seem like Katniss likes either of the guys (Peeta and Gale). What do you guys think?
Swara Ramaswamy, Daily Arts Writer: I think of that New York Times interview where Suzanne Collins discusses that Peeta and Gale aren’t really just Peeta and Gale. They’re representative of ideologies and perspectives on life. And so maybe the reason why she doesn’t seem like she likes either of them is because she knows what they come with if she chooses one or the other.
MK: Wow. Intriguing. Love it. And that was one of the very few interviews Suzanne Collins has done. She talks about how Peeta and Gale don’t just symbolize love interests, but you know, just war theories with Peeta symbolizing diplomacy and Gale symbolizing more violent approaches to conflict resolution. And you know, Suzanne Collins says you need both — not just one of them can win the war. So yeah, read the interview. It’s amazing. We’ll link it.
Lillian Pearce, Daily Arts Writer: At the end of “Mockingjay,” Katniss overhears the two of them talking about which one of them she’s going to choose. And Gale is like, “Oh, she’s gonna choose whichever one of us she can’t live without, not who she loves the most.” At first she was upset, but then she reflected and thinks it’s kind of true; what she needs is not Gale, who at this point, wants to blow everything up and have everyone be treated like how his people were treated.
MK: She talks about Peeta being who she ends up with, and how after she sees him she sees a dandelion as the first symbol of hope (and it’s almost like his yellow hair — he’s almost similar to Prim in what he symbolizes). The whole point of this is that she’s this very traumatized character who has literally been through some of the worst things imaginable and she’s filled with so much pain, the idea of war theories and also love interests aren’t on her mind. Like, that’s not what she’s concerned about. She’s concerned about staying alive for Prim. But at the same time, I also think of that scene in “Catching Fire” where Finnick realizes that Katniss actually loves Peeta. Finnick (like everyone else) discovers her love before Katniss even processes how much she cares about Peeta.
SR: I think the reason why she doesn’t end up with Gale is because he’s too much like herself. And even in the books they are described as looking almost identical to each other. And I think they’re just too similar — in “Mockingjay” she was like, “I have enough of that rage against people who have wronged me inside of me and I don’t need to be with someone who facilitates that further.”
LP: Gale provided for Katniss’s family, which was obviously very important for Katniss, especially considering Prim. But once she was able to do that herself (like when she got back from the Games), there was really no need for Gale — which I think he knew, given his earlier comment. A part of me was always so mad at Gale because he kept making everything about him. And I felt like she just came back from like, literally, a manslaughter tournament. And he was upset.
SR: It was so ridiculously unserious.
LP: I was like, oh my god, get a grip. How can you expect her to be able to think about anything at all? Especially a romantic relationship? I felt so bad for Katniss because she’s well — I don’t want to belittle her character by being like, “oh, she’s like a 16-year-old girl,” but like, she is a 16-year-old girl who never got to experience love as love! It was a survival tactic.
MK: That reminds me of what Swara said a while ago about Peeta making Katniss desirable; Gale was never like, “Oh my god, marry me,” at the beginning of the first book. He didn’t really give a shit. And seeing Peeta want her and viewing the Hunger Games, he began to have this perception of Katniss as a commodity.
SR: I think that also warped her perception of love. Because it seemed as though all of the instances where she was experiencing love for someone else was conditional, and very heavily linked to important things like her survival.
I think it also goes back to the whole media perception of love. Because when you see, for example, TikTok, which feels like the most “real” media, videos of couples doing cute things and the comments are always like, “This is so cute. I’m gonna go die now.”
MK: Right, people feel implicated in this video — in a relationship — that’s not about them.
SR: You don’t know anything about this couple. You don’t know if they even like each other. You know what I mean?
MK: It’s something that I see on TikTok all the time. It’s frightening (that) people see videos of TikTok and they see it almost as a challenge or a message to them just because it’s on their For You page. Comments like, “ha ha ha so cute … gonna go lie down on a highway” or like, “God, I see what you do for others.”
SR: Yeah, they’re like, “Why would you do this to me?” And it’s like, this isn’t about you!
LP: It’s so strange. Like on the internet, people aren’t happy for people in love, it’s always as if there’s something at stake, or like it’s a personal attack to see other people be happy.
SR: I think there’s an assumption that whoever makes content and puts it on the internet is doing it for other people to see it, so content creation is taking into account your potential viewers, instead of just as a creative outlet or a form of expression.
MK: For sure. I don’t think what I’m about to say relates to “The Hunger Games,” but I feel especially in terms of the whole idea of a “black mirror,” like, there’s this idea that, “Oh, the algorithm chose this for me. Why?”
LP: I read about how even your casual Instagram post is a form of content creation. In the start of “Catching Fire,” when Katniss and Peeta had to go back on camera, Haymitch was like, “You have a lot of warming up to do,” because the Capitol was expecting a performance. They had to curate their image to be like, “We’re not accidental revolutionaries, we’re just in love!”
MK: By opening things up for media consumption, there is another player in the relationship. It was kind of implied that President Snow was the third person in Katniss and Peeta’s relationship — which has some pretty interesting implications about modern love and couples content. When you’re creating content, the gaze of the viewers becomes a part of your relationship.
I think of the Capitol and how easy it was to convince them; it makes me think of social media fan edits and fanfiction and shipping. People are able to take details out of context and build so much around it and become very parasocially attached and feel like they’re a part of it. I’m thinking of Peeta’s classic “if it weren’t for the baby” line and how in the Capitol audience, there are people screaming, crying, begging for the Games not to happen.
SR: It’s interesting that that was the point at which they — the Capitol — broke. It wasn’t the fact that Snow called Victors back to fight again, or even when the Victors were clarifying on stage that they didn’t want it to happen. It was like, “Oh, my favorite celebrity’s unborn child is now at stake,” and that’s why they were upset … It’s always about them. It’s similar to how we view relationships, too. We only really care enough to do something if it impacts us.
MK: Like, if it impacts our emotional well-being.
LP: I was thinking about how people piece together all of these things, like the Sally Rooney Cinematic Universe. After there was speculation that Phoebe Bridgers broke up with Paul Mescal, it went up in flames. It’s crazy how much that was trending because the internet was so invested in that relationship. And I think because it was like a relationship that fits into this diagram, quite literally, but also fit into this — I don’t even know what to call it — like a puzzle that people enjoyed; people liked Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal together because it allowed for X, Y and Z. But when they broke up and it disrupted this image, I wondered how it would affect their careers, which can hinge on the relationships they make public or private.
MK: 100%. I literally remember when someone texted about the Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal breakup. The first thing I said without even thinking was “I need to go lie down.” Why?
SR: I think it’s our fundamental need to make up stories about people or things? Like, that’s why we’re invested in it, right? It’s a story. You want to know every detail about it. You can fabricate images of it in your head. Going back to “The Hunger Games,” that’s exactly what Peeta was trying to do on stage: walk the Capitol through their relationship, so they feel like they’re in on the story.
MK: Like, once again, “if it weren’t for the baby!”
SR: Even in the first one where he was like, “The girl I have a crush on came here with me.” Brilliant.
MK: Truly. From the second Peeta started, he was playing those cameras, and people were obsessed with their relationship, even the parts that were completely fabricated. And in 2023 this is having a resurgence on TikTok, with people being like “Peeta forever!” … modern love.
SR: Peeta’s ability to play the crowd … Snow took that and used it against him when they hijacked him and set him in front of the camera again to convince the districts to stop fighting. But even so, you could see it on his face that he didn’t believe in what he was saying.
I think the whole book to movie adaptation, that’s why we have edits, right? Because they cast hot people as Katniss and Peeta, and Gale and Finnick. And, yeah, Finnick is supposed to be hot, but the other three genuinely didn’t need to be. That furthers the whole idea that like the Capitol, we reduce things to aesthetics — like when people were choosing “Team Gale” over “Team Peeta” because Liam Hemsworth is hotter. That’s not the point!
LP: It’s how they appeased the audience though, because we would be repulsed to see literal kids fighting to the death. Like how Rue was cast as a young girl? Everyone was that young and innocent, fighting to the death, which is what made it so scarring. But in the movies, you’re less disgusted with the Hunger Games than you were supposed to be. What struck me most about the books when I was rereading them was that they’re so young. The first time I read “The Hunger Games,” I was younger than Katniss. But now that I’m older, I’m like, “Oh my god, she’s literally 16!” I was losing my mind.
SR: When I was rereading the series over break, during the part where her first kiss is in the arena … awful.
MK: It’s terrible. I feel like it’s easy to hate on the movie and be like, obviously, you erased all of these things, to make it super sensationalized and sexy. But the fact that it was able to grow into the story that it did … that totally would not have been possible if it weren’t made to look captivating, mesmerizing, almost fun to the point where people were taking quizzes online like “What Hunger Games district are you?” This idea was used in “Catching Fire” marketing material. The same images (that) were used in the story to advertise the Games to the Capitol were the same images used to promote the movie to real-life audiences.
SR: Which is a huge slap in the face to a lot of people … but it was fantastic.
MK: It’s amazing.
SR: Suzanne Collins deserves a Nobel prize. And a knighthood.
MK: She said in an interview with the New York Times that she got the idea for “The Hunger Games” based off of flipping channels between reality TV programs and the Iraq War coverage, and she was thinking about how those two things fit together. That gives some clarity towards the impetus of “The Hunger Games.”
SR: It’s like the Hunger Games-ification of war because that’s the only way to make people care.
LP: Out of the edits that have been made, most of them revolve around romantic images from “The Hunger Games” … There are no edits about Katniss volunteering or in the arena itself. It’s the romance that we cling to, I think, as spectators, which makes so much sense why that was the angle Peeta pulled — because that’s what people like to see. I think that’s still true now. What we remember from the books and movies is what we see in the fan edits of Peeta and Finnick, not the war or the revolution.
MK: The absolute erasure of context and nuance, like, there’s very much this idea in “The Hunger Games” that the Capitol audience doesn’t know anything about us. In reality, they don’t know us, but they are die-hards for this idea of a relationship that they’ve built up in their head. And I think that was a really good predictor of how readers also reacted to “The Hunger Games”; people didn’t really care what “The Hunger Games” had to say, but they were like, “Oh, Liam Hemsworth is hotter.”
MK: It’s like, when someone has a certain image in the media, their body becomes a public commodity. Their self isn’t their own anymore — in a very literal way with Finnick, but in a very metaphorical way with a lot of celebrities today. And so it reminds you that you don’t really don’t know anything. Like you don’t know anything about these celebrities, except what their PR team has put out and what Twitter has said.
SR: Also, with the edits that you see on TikTok … At this point, people know Finnick’s entire story, right? They’ve read the books, or they’ve watched movies, and they’re still choosing to gloss over the awful parts of his life because he’s hot.
LP: He was literally taken advantage of because of how he looks.
SR: He says at one point, “I haven’t dealt with anything as common as money in years.” Like, they always use that line in that edit, because he says it in a very flirty way. But you’re completely missing the point of what that line means.
MK: He was forced into dealing in secrets because he was forced into prostitution. So many people are telling him their secrets to feel like they know him.
SR: They were telling him things because they felt guilty about being with him (and essentially buying him from Snow). They would just tell him things and try to mimic that interpersonal relationship.
LP: One last thing when we’re talking about desire is the fact that each tribute plays up some aspect of their personality in order to make themselves appealing. Katniss struggles to do that — she can’t pretend to be sweet or sexy or innocent. She’s too uncomfortable. But this concept of desire is how you win the Hunger Games.
SR: This manipulation of desire reminds me of when Snow says something about never letting others “see you bleed.” It’s about creating this false pretense of who you are, so you can hide who you really are.
MK: That’s amazing. This has been the equivalent of us being that guy pinning up pushpins and red string.
SR: Mike’s Mic has “Hunger Games” recaps on his channel. I highly recommend watching them, they are so funny. I will ride and die for “The Hunger Games.”
Daily Arts Writers Meera Kumar, Swara Ramaswamy and Lillian Pearce can be reached at kmeera@umich.edu, swararam@umich.edu and pearcel@umich.edu.