[Content Note for violence.]
Judd at Think Progress: "ABC News reports that the lead investigator in Trayvon Martin shooting wanted a manslaughter charge against the shooter George Zimmerman. The lead investigator, Chris Serino, stated he was unconvinced by Zimmerman's version of events according to an affidavit he filed the night of Feb. 26. His recommendation for a manslaughter charge was overruled by state attorney Norman Wolfinger, who subsequently removed himself from the case."
Talk about selective details. The police have shared with the press details like "at least one witness says he saw Martin attack Zimmerman," but failed to mention that their lead investigator wanted a manslaughter change. Huh. Interesting.
Relatedly, Eric Boehlert has a good piece on how the this story has confounded the conservative press, because it "simply [does] not fit the right-wing's preferred narrative about guns and minorities and how white America is allegedly under physical assault from Obama's violent African-American base."
Well, Well, Well
Promoted from Comments
Every time a conservative says "freedom", all I hear is "privilege".
"They want to take away ourfreedomprivilege!"
"They hate us for ourfreedomprivilege!"
"It's a matter of religiousfreedomprivilege."
I suspect the two are listed as synonyms in the conservative lexicon.
lol your apology
Geralda Rivera, apologizing for his victim-blaming anti-hoodie nonsense, in an email to Politico earlier today:
I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.LOL FOREVER!
"I'm sorry for trying to help you people in a way that my black friend says was awesome!"
Apology accepted, I'm sure.
The Smartest Thing the Mitt Romney Campaign Has Done Today and Possibly Any Day
Followed me on Twitter.
Welcome to my feed, which you will definitely not like!
Quote of the Day
"Let me answer why I think Americans just instinctively understand that this law shouldn't go forward. It's because they realize...that what's at stake here is our last shred of freedom."—Senator Ron Johnson (R-Eeally?!), on why the Supreme Court, currently debating the constitutionality of the President's healthcare reform legislation, should rule in favor of "freedom."
I can't even imagine what it's like to be so undilutedly privileged that you earnestly believe socialized medicine stands to eradicate "our last shred of freedom."
Yikes.
Daily Dose of Cute
Every once in awhile, we give the dogs this moist dogfood from the local feed store that's all organic and fancy la-dee-da. They love it, so it's a huge treat for them, even though it's good for them. (We couldn't afford to make it their regular food, since Dudley alone would need five cans a day, lol.) Anyway, here's a little video of the monsters going wild when Iain's about to give them their special dinner.
Video Description: Iain stands in the doorway of the kitchen; Dudley and Zelly sit in front of him, looking up at him expectantly. "Do you know what's wrong with these dogs, babe?" he asks. "I have no idea," I reply. I pan down to Zelly's tail wagging against the floor. "What's up, you guys? You guys hungry?" Iain asks. I gasp excitedly. "Are you hungry, puppies?!" I ask. Zelly turns and looks at me. "You guys want food?" Iain asks. Dudley collapses to the floor dramatically. "Is that what it is, hmm?" Dudley grumbles and wags his tail. I laugh. "All right, well, I'll think about it," Iain says, then turns and walks into the kitchen. Zelly follows him in; Dudley goes to the door, looks in, runs back to the rug on which they're fed, runs back to the door, back to the rug, and playbows with a bark and a windmilling tail. Iain walks back in holding two bowls, Zelly behind him. Dudley leaps up to sniff the food. "Waitwaitwait!" Iain says, as he walks to the other side of the rug. I laugh. Dudley can hardly contain his excitement, and again flops onto the floor into a lie position. Zelly sits down politely beside him. They look up at Iain. "All right," he says, "are you both sitting? Are you both good puppies? You both want some food?" They look up at him eagerly. "You ready?" He makes a sound like a releasing slingshot and quickly bows, putting the food on the floor. The dogs hop up and dig in. "Go! Eat! Fast!" he says. (Which is a joke, because they are not quick eaters.) I laugh as, after all that drama, the dogs eat calmly and slowly.
And here are some still images of the monsters in the garden, on another unseasonably lovely day care of global climate change:
Dudley, tall and proud and two-dimensional next to his newest digging experiment.
Zelda, checking things out to see if there are any squirrels who need herding.
Primarily Horrendo
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is shown blurred by the zoom lens of a camera as he addresses employees at the medical company NuVasive during a campaign stop in San Diego, California March 26, 2012. [Reuters Pictures]Y'all, I think even the news photographers are starting to lose interest in this campaign. They're just fucking with us at this point.
For the record: I am totally okay with that.
The BIG NEWS today is that Mitt Romney is a terrible candidate! Ha ha I know—that is not news. But he's being an EVEN WORSE candidate than usual! And he is usually a very bad candidate!
Exhibit A: Mitt Romney explains that his policies lack specifics because the details would be unpopular.
One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don't care about education," Romney recalled.LOL! That dastardly Ted Kennedy and his sneaky liberal army, saying that Mitt Romney doesn't care about education just because he wanted to eliminate the Department of Education! How dare they, the wretched scamps! OF COURSE Mitt Romney cares about education! He wants every American to be able to send all of their many children in their very large families facilitated via the denial of access to contraception and abortion to extremely expensive private institutions—or, failing that, to Newt Gingrich's Juvenile Janitor Institute, sponsored by Halliburton.
[...]
"So will there be some [departments and agencies] that get eliminated or combined? The answer is yes, but I'm not going to give you a list right now."
How dare you say Mitt Romney does not care about education!
If we lived in a country where no one had any education or skills, who would install the car elevator in his California beach house, hmm? ANSWER ME THAT!
Speaking of Newt Gingrich, he's now charging $50 for photos at campaign events. Great candidate! Cool fundraiser! You might think that $50 for a photo is a lot of money, but that's probably because you don't know that Newt Gingrich's smile makes flowers grow.
See?
In other news, something something Ron Paul. I heard that both Andrew Sullivan AND Glenn Greenwald were on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday. That sounds like a GREAT episode! Do you think that it was just an hour of Sully and Greenwald masturbating while talking about Ron Paul? I bet it was. Freedom boners for everyone!
(Not so fast, ladies etc.)
Finally! Rick Santorum is still a human person being horrible in the world. He is a terrible person who hates nothing more than queer men and uppity ladies except for himself, and, when you think about Rick Santorum, just remember that he is living in a torturous hell of his own making where to be fully human is to be garbage, and thus is anything resembling authentic self-esteem or true contentment not merely elusive but fundamentally incompatible with maintaining his fucked-up perspective on the world and its human inhabitants.
...Oh, did you think I was going to add something about how he deserves our sympathy for that? Ha ha no.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
[H/T to Deeks for the Romney stories.]
Whooooops Your Paper Trail
(Content note: Homophobia, Racism)
Guess what? The "National Organization for Marriage" is as horrible as you think. But why just think that when you can see it all laid out in detail?
The Human Rights Campaign has posted documents that have been released as part of the state's investigation into NOM's campaign finance activities. There's a lot of awful to go through, but here are some key excerpts they highlighted:
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…”Because there are no gay black people, right? But hey, it's always a good thing to create a national dialogue that would force people to divide their identities, not to mention potentially "drive a wedge" between individuals and their families. How very pro-family of you, NOM!
"The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.""Inappropriate assimilation." Well how nice of you to make those choices for people.
Not only that, there is no such thing as a monolithic "Anglo culture;" that's just a huge dogwhistle for White Supremacy; the only thing that all White people have in common is being White.
On PDF page 12, it talks about “sideswiping Obama,” painting him as a “social radical” and talking about “side issues” like pornography.Not much talk about, well, marriage yet, is there? It's almost as if this is purely about politics and defeating Democrats and Obama, and nothing to do with same-sex couples getting married...
Funny, that.
Aphra's Reading Room: Women's History Month Edition, Part IV
(This is the fourth in a series of four posts recommending books and films on the history of women, gender, sexuality, feminism, and related topics. This series is in honor of the U.S. commemoration of Women's History Month. For background, you can read the first post here, the second here, and the third here.
Welcome to the fourth installment! You are hereby invited to commit the deeply feminist act of looking at 20th century history from women's points of view. These lists are necessarily limited by my own areas of teaching and research; they are not meant to be comprehensive, particularly in the 20th century, where there is a relative wealth of historical materials about women's experiences. But rather, these lists are supposed to help start conversations about women's history. You're invited to share your own recommendations in comments.
If you have been doing some great reading (or viewing) in women's history, this is your chance to share! If you've been thinking you'd like to learn more about women's history, these posts should give you some ideas!
Part IV: The 20th Century
BOOK: The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan by Barbara Sato. Examining Japan between the two world wars, Sato traces the rise of a Japanese "New Woman" in media stereotype, one shaped by consumerism and the new media. Although not entirely revolutionizing gender roles, Sato argues that middle-class Japanese women used the guide of modernity to re-define femininity in new roles such as "professional woman," "housewife" and modern girl. Not surprisingly, these changes also provoked extreme anxiety among the male-dominated political elite--changes that Sato also explores.
DVD: American Experience: Flygirls. Maybe you've heard of the Women's Air Service Pilots, or WASPs, who took to the skies in the Second World War in order to free male pilots to fight in the U.S. forces. This excellent documentary, which makes use not only of footage from the time but of later interviews with surviving pilots, chronicles their ups and downs as ferry and training pilots. Riveting!
BOOK:Holding our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community by Brenda Child. Child's new book examines the role that women play in traditional Ojibwe culture and society, and then expands that analysis to consider the ways that women have been key to maintaining community from the days of the fur trade through the reservation era and beyond. I found the last chapter, which examines the way Ojibwe women built community in the face of urbanization programs that took their families to Minneapolis in hopes of 'mainstreaming" them to be especially interesting. Sometimes a difficult read, but a good one.
DVD: American Experience: Sister Aimee. Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the first non-actors to become a media star. Born Canadian, she became famous as a Pentecostal preacher in the postwar United States. Preaching a theologically conservative message, she circulated a magazine and rose to fame as a radio preacher, one of only a handful in the U.S. Hollywood-glamorous and charismatic, her life was marred by scandal and ended in sudden death. For anyone interested in women and the media, this is a must-see.
DVD: Chisholm 72:Unbought and Unbossed. If you have never seen or heard the U.S. politician Shirley Chisholm, prepare to be wowed. This documentary traces her 1972 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm (sadly now deceased) was an uncompromising fighter for the rights of the downtrodden, who in turn experienced constant intersectional oppression from those who felt that, as a Black woman, she was not a "real" contender. Chisholm's passion for economic and social justice is inspiring, her insightful analysis clear and convincing. Warning: after watching this you may find the 2012 U.S. elections even more of a letdown.
BOOK: Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico edited by Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, and Gabriela Cano. This collection of essays brings together a wide range of women's experiences in Mexico between 1915 through 1950. Catholics and communist activists, women seeking divorce rights, and a trans* Zapatista soldier are just a few of the Mexicans you will meet in this book. Since my acquaintance with Mexican history was/is nodding at best, I'd not previously been introduced to the rich roles played by women in this key period. Great stuff!
BOOK: Our Mother's War by Emily Yellin. This book weaves together accounts of U.S. women from the Second World War in many different arenas: the military, as housewives, as volunteers, as entertainers, as scientists, as journalists, and more. Covering a wide range of topics, it's a terrific all-around reference for women's participation in the Second World War. It centers straight white women's experiences more than I like, but it does include strong coverage for lesbians, African-American, and Asian-American women. Good to get a grasp of the many different ways that women experienced the war.
BOOK: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins. Journalist Collins brings us this readable and even entertaining account of the way that the women's movement grew from a world where women needed their husband's permission to get a credit card to one where Hillary Clinton can run for president (which is where she ends the book). Far from a narrative of pure progress, however, Collins does a terrific job of paying attention to the manifold different ways that women experienced these changes, and the women who helped drive them. If you've been looking for a basic introduction to the problems that spurred the women's movement, its movers and shakers, and the backlash against it, this is an accessible place to start.
DVD: Obachan's Garden. (Also available for online viewing at the link. Asayo Murakami came to Canada as a "picture bride," a woman pledged to a husband who had seen only her picture. In Canada, she experienced opportunity and oppression, living through the forced relocation of Japanese-Canadians during World War II. But she also had a secret that she kept from her Canadian family, one not revealed until decades after the close of the war. In this film, her grand-daughter Linda Omaha teases out her grandmother's identity through her personal history. The participation of multiple generations of family in the project makes this film a very unique documentary experience.
BOOK: Women in Power: The Personalities and Leadership Styles of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher by Blema S. Steinberg. Less a traditional history rather than a comparative psychological study, Stenberg offers fascinating comparisons in a book that could only have been written recently: the leadership styles of female Prime Ministers. All three women were described as "masculine" in their political styles, and Steinberg offers some very interesting observations as to how this affected their leadership. (Note that I make no claims about the validity of her psychological analysis, as that is outside my field, but I did find this of great historical interest.)
BOOK: Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program by Margaret A. Weitekamp. When the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into space, the United States launched a half-hearted attempt to keep up with this milestone. Weitekamp's careful research details the story of 13 "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees" (as the women dubbed themselves) who were recruited as potential astronauts, and then denied the chance to actually enter space. Theirs is a fascinating story of the intersection of Cold War gender retrenchment with women's postwar participation in the fields of aviation and science.
BOOK: Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South,1865-1960 by Rebecca Sharpless. Shakesville contributor elle has previously written in this space about the deeply racist and inaccurate portrayal of the history of black women domestics found in "The Help." In addition to the resources she listed, here is one more about the real lives of African-American domestic workers in the U.S. South. Its use of primary sources helps to recover and center the voices of black women who navigated a world that was not-quite slavery, but hardly freedom.
[Commenting Note: In addition to our usual commenting standards, I ask that we be respectful of others' experiences in discovering women's history. A work that is helpful to one person may have its flaws, and it's fine to talk about that. If nothing else, research does get out dated. But please respect that this work was important to the commenter for a reason. Also please note that while not every recommendation must be flawless by social justice standards, works in which anti-trans*, heterocentrist, racist, and/or other marginalizing material are central are not welcome.]
Trayvon Martin Updates
Above: Twitchy.com, a new website run by conservative asshole Michelle Malkin, ran a "motivational poster" juxtaposing an image of George Zimmerman in a suit with an image of Trayvon Martin, shirtless and giving the finger. Only whoooooooops that is not Trayvon Martin—at least not the Trayvon Martin murdered by George Zimmerman. And instead of being tremendously mortified by this gross compound racism, Malkin's outfit just crosses out a few lines and adds a casual correction, no big whoop. Just the totally common mistake of using a picture of the wrong young black man to make the point that another young black man who'd been murdered is a thug that deserved it. Happens to everyone!
My contempt for Malkin is cavernous.
In other news, the new meme is that Martin attacked Zimmerman, because we should definitely trust the account from the police force that still has not accounted for the whereabouts of Martin's phone, and that he was a troublemaker with multiple suspensions from school, because that definitely justifies killing him.
The national dialogue about this case is so fucking sick. After years of writing about the rape culture, you'd think I'd be used to this sort of reprehensible victim-blaming, but I never get used to it. I'm not surprised by it; I just never get numb to the incredible urge to try to find a reason why someone deserved to be victimized by violence.
Think Progress has a list of What Everyone Needs To Know About The Smear Campaign Against Trayvon Martin, which Judd ends with this: "Clearly, there are two different versions of the events that transpired on February 26, the night Trayvon was killed. There are conflicting statements by witnesses and conflicting evidence as to who was the aggressor. Zimmerman has the right to tell his side of the story. But his opportunity to do this will come in a court of law after he is charged and arrested. In the meantime, Zimmerman's supporters should stop trying to smear the reputation of a dead, 17-year-old boy."
For fucking real.
Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave additional links and recommendations in comments.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 1, page 10: "All of us have worth. We're all made in the image of God. We're all equal in God's eyes."
From George W. Bush's inaugural address when he assumed the Texas governorship. Because we live in the United States of Jesus.
One of the many, many, many things I do not miss about his garbage presidency is the incessant, aggressive god-talk.
Question of the Day
Since I'm not-really-blogging A Charge to Keep, I've got Bush on the brain. [Insert ALL the jokes here.] It has put me in mind of one of my favorite QotDs, gifted unto us in the Jan. 2006 State of the Union address, during which President Fumblenutz pulled out of his ass one of his greatest non-sequiturs ever, requesting that Congress pass legislation to ban the creation of "human-animal hybrids." My god, that was a thing of beauty. We had fun with human-animal hybrids for months. Remember the Cheneyshark and the mangaroo? Good times.
Anyway! The question is: If you could become a human-animal hybrid, with what animal would you be crossed?
I would be half penguin, so I could hold my breath under water for at least a half hour and dive to 1,700 feet. And because I love sushi. Also, I'd always be ready at a moment's notice for a formal party.
When I asked Iain what he would be, he answered that he would be half dolphin, so he could "swim in the ocean, be dolphiny, and emit ear-piercing screeches that would shatter the windows of local shops." Obviously.
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Week in Pictures for 23 March 2012: A double rainbow arches over Denver, Colorado in this picture captured by amateur photographer Greg Thow, 47. He rushed up 20 flights of stairs of an observation tower to bag the photo. He says: The elevator was not operational so to get to the top of the tower you have to take 20 full flights of stairs. The climb was exhausting. My phone was ringing repeatedly but I was determined to get to the top and figured I'd call whoever it was after. When I finally got to the top and opened the door the rainbow was the first thing I saw. I actually did gasp for a second, then rushed to set up my equipment before it faded away. The phone calls turned out to be numerous folks calling me to tell me about the rainbow since I lived downtown and were wondering if I'd seen it." [GREG THOW / CATERS NEWS]
Dratchy Wrote a Book and Stuff
Do you want to read Amy Poehler interview Rachel Dratch about her new memoir? Sure you do. Why wouldn't you? Go read these two funny ladies talk to each other!
Number of the Day
[Content Note: Violence.]
Five: The number of states still debating "Stand Your Ground" laws even after Trayvon Martin's murder. "So far, 25 states have approved Florida-style 'Stand Your Ground' measures, and the NRA is not backing down from its support for such laws even after Martin's tragic death."
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, however, is requesting that the Justice Department to expand its investigation of the shooting to include an assessment of "Stand Your Ground" laws. "I am sending a letter to the Justice Department to ask them to expand their investigation into the general application of these 'stand your ground' laws, whether they actually increase, rather than decrease, violence, and whether they actually prevent law enforcement from prosecuting cases where a real crime has been committed."
Sure, because why would we get answers to that before the laws were passed?
"Stand Your Ground" laws seem to be "Stand Your Ground" legislation—pull the trigger first and ask questions later.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Matilda: I still can't stop thinking about Tony. Wondering where he could be, who he is with, what is he thinking, is he thinking of me, and whether he'll ever return someday...
Zelda: Oh, hey. What's going on?
Matilda: Nothing. I'm just thinking about Tony again, and hovering here around the kitchen door in case Two-Legs goes in there, so I can get my begging game on.
Zelda: Cool. Say, can you do me a solid? Is it just me, or do my feets totally smell like corn chips?
Matilda: It's not just you, girl. You got some Frito feet to match your Dorito ears.
Zelda: I gots Frito feets! Ha-cha-cha-cha!
The Hunger Games Thread
[SPOILERS!!! Please note that there are BIG AND SMALL SPOILERS in this thread, in both the post and in comments, so if you do not want to read any SPOILERS, be advised that you should skip this thread. Because it contains SPOILERS!!!]
So, Iain and I saw The Hunger Games this weekend. Iain had read the book (and really enjoyed it); I had not read the book, although I was familiar with the characters and the plot, because I'd read a great deal about the story as a fan of the Japanese book/film Battle Royale, to which The Hunger Games has been (understandably) compared. So, going in, Iain was already a huge fan, and I was a potential fan—who felt and feels still like there is plenty of room in the world for both The Hunger Games AND Battle Royale—and we both loved it. Like, OMG looooooooooved it.
Before I get any further, let me address the issue of casting, or, more specifically, whitewashing, which has already been covered extensively (and better) in other spaces. A few examples: Why the Casting of The Hunger Games Matters; The Imminent Whitewashing of 'The Hunger Games' Heroine; Why Jennifer Lawrence Shouldn't Play Katniss; and Racebending's typically great coverage is here. I also recommend Ursula K. Le Guin's 2004 essay "A Whitewashed Earthsea," on the general topic.
I'm not putting this issue up front to "get it out of the way," but because it is of prime importance. Much of the criticisms are going to be waved away with some variation on "but Jennifer Lawrence is BRILLIANT!" and she is. But the fact that Lawrence is brilliant as the central character, Katniss Everdeen, does not retroactively justify the casting call for an olive-skinned, dark-haired, grey-eyed character which contained the specifications: "She should be Caucasian, between ages 15 and 20, who could portray someone 'underfed but strong,' and 'naturally pretty underneath her tomboyishness.'"
Actresses of color were not even given a chance. And to argue that's okay because Lawrence is awesome is to implicitly (if unintentionally) suggest that no actress of color could have been awesome, too. Whooooooops your racism.
As if to underline why this stuff matters, approximately ONE ZILLION people who managed to miss that Rue is explicitly an African-American character in the book, are complaining all over the internetz about her character being African-American in the movie. Yiiiiiikes.
And I've really got no great conclusion for this discussion, except to paraphrase what I have said before on the issue of casting: If one cannot get behind a person of color playing a fictional character that one imagined to be white, or has been white in hir previous incarnations, one really ought to consider that there is a line at which "canon" starts to operate in the same way as "tradition" to entrench privilege.
* * *
I mentioned that Iain and I loved the movie. (That is an understatement.) I loved it for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it's a feminist, secular, female-centered film—which, by the way, had the third best opening weekend of all time despite its premiere well outside any traditional blockbuster season.
(Dear Hollywood: Are you paying attention? There is a huge market for feminist, secular, female-centered fare. PLEASE PROCEED ACCORDINGLY. Love, Liss.)
One of the things I said to Iain in the car on the way home, as we feverishly discussed every detail, was that I would have been absolutely wild for The Hunger Games when I was a little girl. It's such a Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs away from Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Arc or Dragonslayer , in which Princess Leia and Marion Ravenwood and Valerian were second fiddle and totally isolated, virtually never seeing or interacting with other women—thus suggesting to me that girls who were smart and tough self-segregated away from other women: Only silly girls hang out together in their giggling little gaggles; smart girls hang out with boys.
Tokenism communicates dangerous things, and Katniss' interactions with Rue and Prim and even Effie are important (even if yet insufficient).
But the thing I loved most about the film was how incredibly moving it is. I blubbed half a dozen different times during the film, which is a lot even for me. I was just gutted watching the kids being selected, and then being encouraged to revel in the abundance of food and wealth and luxury after a lifetime of want, a temporary indulgence before they are shuffled off to a violent end, like a poor man railroaded by the justice system who wears his first suit in an opulent courtroom, which never granted any justice in his direction, before he is sentenced to his death.
I could hardly contain my sobs when Rue's home district erupted into rebellion at her murder, and at the evidence that the state was controlling the games—not only is the game inherently vile, but it is fixed; it's not even a fair game to the death—tears spilled from my eyes again. Here are your bootstraps; now go ahead and try to use them while I deny you access and opportunity.
It was just too easy to see the parallels in our own culture, our own time. The Hunger Games is not so much a dystopian future as an alternate universe to this one—technological advancement moving in inverse proportion and direction to social justice.
It is an extraordinary allegory for modern US culture and its increasingly cavernous class divisions, perfectly drawn down to the costumes, which simultaneously reference the juxtapositions of the gilded fashion of the robber barons' roaring '20s with Depression Era garb, and the high carnivalia of pre-revolution aristocratic France with the laced boot and bow of the Appalachian hunter.
I challenge you to watch the child representatives of their respective districts scrabbling in the earth for weaponry and food and not feel rising within you the rage that millions of USians are pitted against one another for limited resources by their governing elite, in this grand game of social Darwinism, because people are only exploitable when there's only so much food, so many jobs, so much drinkable water, so much access to healthcare to go around.
I read a lot into the film, of the work I do every day, and the film was happy to oblige me.
It is an action film, in a true sense, but it is much more. The film is most powerful in its quiet moments, like the one in the picture above. Katniss vibrates with fear; Cinna can do nothing for her, except to be there with her in that fear. It is a film about empathy; and a film about the lack thereof.
There is more that I loved (bowl of berries!), and very little that I didn't (hand-held cameras!), which I will reserve for comments, lest I ramble for the rest of the afternoon. I will just say this once more: I loved The Hunger Games.
