Catching Fire Bonus, Part 2
Jul. 1st, 2011 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast time on Farla explains why your English degree is worthless, a guy with an English degree proved they will hand those suckers out to anyone.
Unlocking ‘The Hunger Games’: The Surface, Moral, Allegorical, and Sublime Meanings takes us in ever deeper.
In the introduction, he offhandedly mentions that some embraced and some objected to his theory, by which he means people pointed out that he'd completely misinterpreted the bit about the wife going to the capital.
"Dante and The Hunger Games
The first premise of my argument about the layered meaning of The Hunger GamesTrilogy is that Suzanne Collins is a brilliant writer whose novels are simultaneously inspired and deliberately crafted"
Wait let me count out eight of these.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
He explains that the haters just won't admit it because it's a kids' book.
"I’ve been through this same bit of denial when I’ve explained the popularity of Harry Potter and Twilight by examining the artistry and meaning of these books by Joanne Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. Much of the denial, sadly, is class bias and misogyny"
I don't even like Rowling that much, but that was just harsh. No one deserves to be set next to Meyer like that.
(Fun side fact: both of those authors can more easily be accused of misogyny than one can find evidence their critics are acting from misogyny. Though again, there's no question of which is orders upon orders upon orders of magnitude worse.)
Other denial, he guesses, comes from people who think reading is brainless funtimes and won't read critically. I think this whole set of reviews does a great deal to contradict the idea it's the haters who aren't paying attention.
And if it's not that, then it's "doubt about the intelligence and craft of the series’ author." That's pretty much spot on, except he goes on to qualify he means doubt based on if they have a lit degree.
"When writing about the Austen elements in Harry Potter and the Shakespeare echoes in Twilight, I was laboring against the pigeon-holed perception many readers have that non-academic writers like Ms. Rowling and Mrs. Meyer, who though well educated do not have advanced degrees in English or teach writing, cannot be familiar with or be using the tools from the Greats’ toolbox."
I agree, this is ridiculous. As these essays show, having a lit degree does not in any way mean you can use those tools.
Then he says that this isn't an issue here, since the author has Masters of Fine Arts, which proves my point again. I'm just totally lost as to what his point is.
He admits that the degree doesn't prove anything, for "we all know, too, that you can skate through any degree program". I'm sure he knows that better than most, especially since he goes on with "As with the Hogwarts and Forks Sagas, the test is in the text. Does the Panem Trilogy have the literary guts and substance reflecting that Ms. Collins got anything out of her advanced studies in dramatic writing?
I think even the most superficial look at her books says that it does."
To remind everyone: Eight published books of literary analysis.
But oh, it can get worse. He says that he means that just by looking at the numbers you can tell. Remember my ranting about how the books are of three sections of nine chapters? How it's a pointless conceit and I suspect is behind a lot of the pacing issues?
He thinks this "this clever use of threes...could be meaningless or just an affectation. Even if so, it is also, nonetheless, a marker or red flag for Dante’s influence. " Yup, even if it's meaningless it's still a marker. See, Dante had a trilogy where each book had 33 chapters with three line rhymes. So a trilogy with 27 chapters broken into thirds is clearly trying to reference him.
All this means, like every time three shows up a lot, is that the books are going hell/purgatory/heaven. Under this interpretation apparently purgatory sucks more than hell. I have only read Inferno, so I can't say with certainty, but...pretty sure it shouldn't work that way.
For other common reasons someone might choose the first odd prime as an important number, I point you to human history or, for the Cliff Notes version, Wikipedia.. There's also her actual explanation, which is that her television background makes her like to structure everything as three acts. Fucking television ruining everything.
But most importantly? IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. If she did actually fuck up her storyline and pacing like this just because she's a huge Dante fan and wanted to force it into a pretzel for the sake of a meaningless shout out to the guy, then she's a bad writer.
We then reach the title bit about four senses. First is the surface meaning, which is about how Katniss is "a brilliantly conceived character with whom readers identify profoundly and almost immediately. Her first person narration absorbs us to the point that we identify with her view, which has repercussions at the moral and anagogical levels. " and " The post-apocalyptic setting of the trilogy with its oppressive authoritarian regime and its nightmare to-the-death competition between District tributes is an engaging cross of 1984 and Rollerball. "and "that hybrid story from nightmare futures powerfully delivers Ms. Collins messages, most obviously her critique of our addiction to television and its soul corrosive influences, but also a call for a change within us, a revolution against the regime’s shadow-casters and myth-makers via our choosing a counter-narrative of love and sacrifice. "
Or in sum: Hunger Games, THE BESTEST MOST WONDERFULEST BOOKS EVER.
Next is moral. Apparently, the moral of the book is about the evil metanarratives, despite how the book plays perfectly into our existing metanarratives. "The real trick in understanding story morality is that it is the very rare story that tries to teach us anything that we do not already accept as a core value", he says blithely, and goes on to insist that this book does exactly that by...telling him a narrative he accepts, the deeply counterculture idea that the oppressed districts are really the good ones. You might as well argue Twilight is all awesome and counterculture for getting her barefoot and pregnant right out of high school, in defiance of traditional norms.
Of course, for all I know he did exactly that.
He actually diagnoses the whole chosen one thing as being bad, he just seems to think the book is rebuking it instead of wallowing. "The core message is that the metanarrative itself is the fount of evil because it distorts everyone’s ability to see the world as it is. The Big Bad Cultural Myth makes us prejudiced " Right. Unless they're career kids, in which case they're just naturally psychos.
"Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, even age discrimination, any perceived mental preconception, bias, or intolerance is something, ironically, our tolerance and fairness fixated age cannot tolerate. "
I know he's been giving page numbers but it's really hard to believe he actually read these books.
He says he could explain why "Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games (did I mentionRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?) are all stories conforming to this type. " but he figures the post is long enough. I think we're all on the same page with Twilight, so can I point out that Harry Potter is utter shit when it comes to those things as well? Except I guess in age discrimination, and there's something pretty close in how Rowling felt she had to kill off the generation that lived through the earlier, worse war because they were all damaged goods or something.
" Suffice it to say that Ms. Collins’ trilogy, as counter-cultural as it is in several important ways, has its evil metanarrative (“Capitol, good; Districts bad”) and its oppressive and quite literal marginalization of the District-Others from the Capitol-Chosen. "
I guess this is true if we keep changing between different meanings for metanarrative. Because from the perspective of the books, the capital folks are Other, the district is normal, and, of course, Katniss is a Chosen One deserving of sparkle text. We're barely aware of the capital's side of things. And honestly, not much Othering going on there either - at least with the tributes a big deal is made of making sure the kids come off as just like capital people. I mean, if race was an issue they'd be bleaching everyone's skin white before they got to the place. Fucked up, yeah, but I really don't think you try to turn people into clones of your own culture if your point is that they're fundamentally different and nonpeople. (A good point can be made about how it doesn't make that much sense the capital would do this instead of Othering the kids, but going by the text, they do.)
Anyway, then he repeats that Katniss is angry about her being a pawn in the narrative, when as I said, that's not what she was angry about. You know who was angry about that? Peeta. He's devastated at the end of the first book when he realizes she was playing a part, and then throws a fit at the beginning of the second book when they try to keep him out of the loop again.
And then we reach allegorical. He repeats the bit about her getting the idea from TV and, I think, gives her far too much credit by insisting that the moral is that TV is evil and must be destroyed. He also insists "corrosive effect of the medium" is present in all shows, even ones people think are good. Because he says so.
Anyway, he says that the Capital = America and the districts = the rest of the world. "Katniss probably would have been a lot less sympathetic if she were written into the story as a Palestinian refugee or Thai factory worker but I have to think this is closer to Ms. Collins’ political indictment. " I think I covered the issue of how strongly the books avoid exactly that. Also, shut the fuck up. Why would someone whose life legitimately sucked be less sympathetic?
"The oppressed are, depending on how you want to frame it, everyone outside the US or everyone here not in the power-rings of New York, DC, and Hollywood, the moguls of money, military, and movies. "
Oh, because we're thinking Palestinian refugee is exactly as bad as not being a CEO. It's so hard being a rich white American, world. YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND, THERE ARE THESE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE EVEN RICHER AND LIVE IN AN EVEN NICER MANSION.
ALL THE FACTORY WORKER HAS TO WORRY ABOUT IS CRIPPLING POVERTY AND DYING DUE TO THE NUMEROUS HEALTH HAZARDS THEY'RE SURROUNDED BY. WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THE RICHEST PEOPLE DON'T INVITE ME TO THEIR SPECIAL SUPER RICH PEOPLE PARTIES? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH IT HURTS THAT MOVIEMAKERS DON'T TAKE MY PERSONAL OPINION INTO ACCOUNT BEFORE THEY MAKE MOVIES? YOU CAN'T IMAGINE MY PAIN!!!!!!!!
And then he mentions spirituality. This can only getworse better.
We've reached anagogical. "If the moral and strictly allegorical (tit-for-tat) senses of a text are best understood as transparencies through which we see and understand other things, people, or events, the anagogical sense is more of a translucency through which a greater reality shines on us." Which means that Katniss is undertaking a journey where she starts as one thing and ends up another. Wow, you mean like basically every story ever, insightful! But it's different because, uh, it's an alchemic transformation and pearls and Katniss' pure heart.
Now, by this point it's really hard to say what's the stupidest thing so far. I can't really say what comes next is, because the scale is a broken mess by now. I will say it is shitty apologism for shitty writing, though: he says it's badly down and somehow that makes it mythic:
"First on the list, for me at least, is the uninterrupted if not easy progress of Katniss’ journey from “District 12 nobody” to the focus of all Panem, even the cause of a Revolution. " I don't even see what's so wrong with this, actually. Each kid picked for the games is the focus of the whole country, and the berry thing makes her a focus for the revolution. It's completely wrong to talk about is as a journey. Now, the fact everyone thinks the berries mean she's in charge of the revolution, that's where it gets dumb.
Then he says the boyfriends are badly characterized: "Their relationships with her are ideals or archetypes rather than anything like what young men in love with an attractive young woman are like. " Yes, the writing is terrible.
"But if the center-piece characters and relationships of the trilogy are more ‘true myth’ than realist fiction" then you've defined "true myth" as "bad writing". There's no explanation for why this has to be mythic instead of that she can't write.
Anyway, apparently the answer to everything is in the boys' names. They have girly names, for starters.
Gale's "relationship with Katniss is platonic despite their spending years in each other’s company and both leading lives deprived of touch and love. He fosters rather than challenges Katniss’ purity, freedom, and individual strength or identity. " Platonic suggestions they run away to have kids, then platonic, purity-fostering kissing. And what better fosters her freedom and identify then when he chews her out for wanting to rescue her and Peeta's families from being murdered, then demands she support his half-baked revolution instead?
Peeta, of course, is Jesus. "As artist, actor, and self-less lover, he is Culture and Faith that are fostering without challenging Katniss’ purity, vision, and individual will. " Same bit here as Gale. God, the men in Katniss' life really suck.
Then we get into Katniss' name, and things get really crazy. He says that she's a fusion of things in that she's got a town and wild boyfriend and stuff. Then of course her name is a plant with a tuber. "That she is named for a tuber is important on two levels. First, the moly plant. The moly is a tuber..." that has nothing to do with katniss tubers beyond that they're both tubers, and the mythological moly was important for rescuing Odysseus by curing any poison, just like katniss tubers are important for feeding Katniss. Because that's practically the same thing.
Anyway, it turns out moly is another name for rue! Uh, kind of. Actually it's just a guess. His description of the moly as having white flowers doesn't match rue, which has yellow ones, and certainly no real plant is "ungraspable as a whole except by a divinity". Also, googling gets me no references to using any tubers of rue for things, it mostly revolves around the leaves. I can't even verify it has any. Also, if the point was supposed to be moly? Could have named the girl Molly. Juuuuust saying.
Then he says rue is used to cure blindness, just like how Rue showed Katniss the truth! I wouldn't put it past the author to have actually intended that, but this is Meaningful Names bullshit in that case.
"Does Rue cure Katniss of blindness? Does she protect her from enchantment? Does she in her death draw out the saving feminine quality from her masculine front?" Yes, we here on the internets call it "fridging" and it's not actually a shocking new development.
Anyway, he rambles and repeats himself on the subject of how Rue causes Katniss to rebell and blah blah "root".
"note that Haymitch had a parallel moment of remorse at Maysilee Donner's death in his Quell (Katniss notes the similarity: Catching Fire, page 201) waking him to conscience." Not really. The only parallel is they both mourned the death of their partners. Haymitch, and this apparently needs repeating, played the games when it came down to it.
"Katniss must “find herself” to “never starve” or die; she learns in the Games that this light of conscience orlogos is what she is most and, having found it and identified with it, because it is the fabric of reality and cause of all things, just as dad said, she can never die. " This would be great if Katniss had anything resembling a real conscience. Also, if people who supposedly have a fucking lit degree could remember that it's got to be either "her dad" or "Dad".
And we haven't even gotten into the alchemy bullshit yet!
There's some sort of alchemic structure he thinks is awesome and he wrote about it in his books that I'm not even going to bother torrenting because I can barely handle these essays, if I tried to read actual chapters of this I would kill myself and resurrect as a undead monstrosity guided only by hate.
He won't tell us everything (I guess that's in the books you couldn't pay me to touch) but he says he will give us five markers of this.
One: "three key stages marked by the use of specific colors and story events, namely, black, white, and red, which stages reflect, in sequence, the dissolution or break down of the subject character or main characters (nigredo) usually by heat, the purification or purgation of same (albedo) usually with water, and the revelation of the transformation undergone in the process in the story crisis (rubedo). " You know, this is sort of why I never had an interest in actual English classes. When a teacher starts saying this I just start screaming WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS EVEN MATTER. Why can't it go white red black? Why does the first part have to be fire and the second water? How does this actually make for a better story if you do it that way?
Two: "There will be story contraries that must be resolved by the principals’ transformation" Translated from English degree to English, that means "there's a problem and the main character has to change before they solve it." Or in other words, "it is a story".
Three: A pair of characters who are different and quarrel, pulling the character in different directions. See Two, but this time with some stuff about solar/lunar masculine/feminine. I'm not sure why he didn't just say yin and yang. I can't decide if it's because he wants all his references to be by old white Western guys or because yin and yang would be a clear and concise way of saying it. Both seem equally likely. Anyway, it has to do with alchemy because those two are the "alchemical mercury and sulphur " who are taking part in turning the character into gold. Or possibly because two characters with different viewpoints is an easy thing to write.
Four: "Between the white and red stages, there is an Alchemical Wedding of the Red King and White Queen that prefigures the conjunction of opposites signaling the golden moment of the Philosopher’s Stone creation, i.e., the divinization of the main character and birth of the Philosophical Orphan or story savior joining contraries as a Rebus. " I don't even.
Five: Resurrection imagery. Not even a character specifically being resurrected, but anything at all referencing the concept, like for example a rose. You know, for a guy who can't go two lines without shoehorning in some unnecessary reference to philosophy or literature, he doesn't seem to be all that well read if he doesn't realize that's kind of a common thing in stories.
"If this is all new to you, I’m sure you’re profoundly skeptical that such a tradition exists or, if it does, that these bizarre sequences, symbols, and story points are anything but a conceit shared by egg head writers."
The only skepticism I have is at the idea any of this is bizarre.
Anyway, he then says he'll list evidence: the first book was nigredo and the second albedo (okay, see, evidence is explaining why you think that, not just saying it is.), there's conflict between the different areas in the book (no shit, Sherlock), Gale and Peeta are different, "the alchemical wedding of Katniss and Peeta we’ve been to (almost) and the orphan they have conceived are the spiritual conjunction of alchemical transformation" what the fuck seriously what the fuck, and there's phoenix imagery. An airtight case!
"An unwrapping of the alchemical artistry of tyhe story so far will require a longer post than this one" Okay, so I'm going to go on a tangent here. My tangent is that these essays are a fucking mess of tangents. He said the same thing earlier about it being too long. Maybe this wouldn't happen if it didn't take him most of the post to get to what the post is supposedly about.
Anyway, instead he's going to quote an email someone else sent, which, may I just say, is vastly better written and makes a far better argument in a few paragraphs than he has in his god knows how many pages of verbal diarrhea. And it's still pretty shaky.
He says the arrival at the arena is the black/hot stage. Sorta? It's also, you know, freezing cold every night. The cold is far more extreme than the warm weather during the day. And this requires ignoring the fact the games only even start in the second act of the book, and not even the first chapter of that. "Even once she finds water, then there is the wall of horrific heat/fire/smoke descending *down* on her", the email says, but actually, as I ranted at the time, Katniss is moving uphill to escape the flames, and also just generally all those things involved rise. I mean, I wouldn't yell at someone for using this turn of phrase casually, but if you start reading deeply into word meaning like this, I'm going to do the same.
"We move from that to a clear albedo phase when she finds the pool and cleans her burns. After the Feast at the Cornucopia, she and Peeta are subjected to downpours, and cold rainy weather."
Of course, between those two points in time, Katniss gets stung by torturedeath wasps, hallucinates a while, plots with Rue, builds some fires, sets fake fires with hot black smoke to trick people, Rue gets gutted, and then she lights one of the smokey fires to cook her food. None of those things seem especially wet or cleansing.
And then the story ends on the gold cornucopia, because of course the only reason is to symbolize the final red stage and not because cornucopias are traditionally that color and the metal makes the whole thing that much more decadent.
"Black and hot — to wet White — to Red and Gold and something very much like a sacrificial death and miraculous resurrection as Love defeats Power.
Accidental? C’mon."
Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with accidental. That or she really sucks at keeping to a theme. It's honestly really easy to find a pattern somewhere if you're willing to ignore everything that contradicts it.
"If your patience were indefinitely long, I could explain here why in the albedo or “purification by water” novel of the series, Catching Fire, the story opens in snow that is used extensively in healing (with a visit from President Snow, no less), "
I mean, really, is he just free associating here? Snow is used in healing therefore President Snow what the fuck? Also, what about the part where the peacekeepers start lighting shit on fire?
"and how the story is largely a story of Peeta’s and Katniss’ alchemical wedding of Spirit and Soul, Christ and Seeker."
Why hello there vaguely misogynist assumptions I hadn't missed you feel free to go away again.
"Which brings us to the point of this post" The post is nearly over by now. Seriously, didn't whatever place he bought his degree at at least explain how to organize essays?
Anyway, it's Pearl Plot 2: Fail Harder time.
" A pearl is a symbol of three things, all of which are relevant to understanding the Pearl Plot. "
1) What he says is "Effie’s otherwise incomprehensible gaffe about coal under pressure becoming pearls, we can see a beautiful alternative metaphor with the same meaning as lead being changed to gold, hard darkness being illumined and becoming solid light or “gold.” " Because the lead to cold darkness to light thing wouldn't work at all with diamonds, since unlike pearls diamonds are worthless and not bright at all.
"a pearl’s beauty is in its whiteness, certainly, or purity" Again. Diamonds. Especially because technically, pearls are kind of not pure. Hell, they're not even pure white.
2) "A pearl, traditionally, has the meaning, too, of “genius in obscurity”". And again. See the phrase "diamond in the rough".
3) There's a reference to pearls in the bible.
Matt 13:44 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field.”
Matt 13:45,46 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a merchant seeking fine pearls, who having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”
Mostly it just reminds me that Jesus was kind of shit about parables. It's actually really consistent, so I think maybe this is a lost in translation issue and the whole point was that when it comes to god things work differently than you'd expect normally because Grace and Ineffability or whatnot. That or it's a sign of his divinity that Jesus is able to give these horrible parables and still be considered a great speaker.
"These parables of hidden treasure and singular pearl of value are the teachings of Christ Who is this Kingdom of Heaven within you (Luke 17:21), the hidden light we all experience to varying degrees as conscience." Ooooooookay we seem to have drifted into evangelism somehow. Also, no.
"Katniss’ spiritual transformation, even her theosis, is dependent on her “finding herself” and it is this “pearl of great price” she has been given by the Boy With Bread that is her “hidden treasure” and the pure light that will save her. " This is starting to read like it's talking about her vagina. Thank god this is the end of the essay and it can't keep going in this direction. Also, thank god these books are so sexless so they can't invoke Peeta's healing cock themselves.
Yes, that's the end. You may have noticed it didn't actually get to anything much about the pearl plot. That's because, in addition to all the other things this guy can't do, he can't write. He says that he'll actually get around to that next time.
Unlocking ‘The Hunger Games’: The Surface, Moral, Allegorical, and Sublime Meanings takes us in ever deeper.
In the introduction, he offhandedly mentions that some embraced and some objected to his theory, by which he means people pointed out that he'd completely misinterpreted the bit about the wife going to the capital.
"Dante and The Hunger Games
The first premise of my argument about the layered meaning of The Hunger GamesTrilogy is that Suzanne Collins is a brilliant writer whose novels are simultaneously inspired and deliberately crafted"
Wait let me count out eight of these.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
He explains that the haters just won't admit it because it's a kids' book.
"I’ve been through this same bit of denial when I’ve explained the popularity of Harry Potter and Twilight by examining the artistry and meaning of these books by Joanne Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. Much of the denial, sadly, is class bias and misogyny"
I don't even like Rowling that much, but that was just harsh. No one deserves to be set next to Meyer like that.
(Fun side fact: both of those authors can more easily be accused of misogyny than one can find evidence their critics are acting from misogyny. Though again, there's no question of which is orders upon orders upon orders of magnitude worse.)
Other denial, he guesses, comes from people who think reading is brainless funtimes and won't read critically. I think this whole set of reviews does a great deal to contradict the idea it's the haters who aren't paying attention.
And if it's not that, then it's "doubt about the intelligence and craft of the series’ author." That's pretty much spot on, except he goes on to qualify he means doubt based on if they have a lit degree.
"When writing about the Austen elements in Harry Potter and the Shakespeare echoes in Twilight, I was laboring against the pigeon-holed perception many readers have that non-academic writers like Ms. Rowling and Mrs. Meyer, who though well educated do not have advanced degrees in English or teach writing, cannot be familiar with or be using the tools from the Greats’ toolbox."
I agree, this is ridiculous. As these essays show, having a lit degree does not in any way mean you can use those tools.
Then he says that this isn't an issue here, since the author has Masters of Fine Arts, which proves my point again. I'm just totally lost as to what his point is.
He admits that the degree doesn't prove anything, for "we all know, too, that you can skate through any degree program". I'm sure he knows that better than most, especially since he goes on with "As with the Hogwarts and Forks Sagas, the test is in the text. Does the Panem Trilogy have the literary guts and substance reflecting that Ms. Collins got anything out of her advanced studies in dramatic writing?
I think even the most superficial look at her books says that it does."
To remind everyone: Eight published books of literary analysis.
But oh, it can get worse. He says that he means that just by looking at the numbers you can tell. Remember my ranting about how the books are of three sections of nine chapters? How it's a pointless conceit and I suspect is behind a lot of the pacing issues?
He thinks this "this clever use of threes...could be meaningless or just an affectation. Even if so, it is also, nonetheless, a marker or red flag for Dante’s influence. " Yup, even if it's meaningless it's still a marker. See, Dante had a trilogy where each book had 33 chapters with three line rhymes. So a trilogy with 27 chapters broken into thirds is clearly trying to reference him.
All this means, like every time three shows up a lot, is that the books are going hell/purgatory/heaven. Under this interpretation apparently purgatory sucks more than hell. I have only read Inferno, so I can't say with certainty, but...pretty sure it shouldn't work that way.
For other common reasons someone might choose the first odd prime as an important number, I point you to human history or, for the Cliff Notes version, Wikipedia.. There's also her actual explanation, which is that her television background makes her like to structure everything as three acts. Fucking television ruining everything.
But most importantly? IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. If she did actually fuck up her storyline and pacing like this just because she's a huge Dante fan and wanted to force it into a pretzel for the sake of a meaningless shout out to the guy, then she's a bad writer.
We then reach the title bit about four senses. First is the surface meaning, which is about how Katniss is "a brilliantly conceived character with whom readers identify profoundly and almost immediately. Her first person narration absorbs us to the point that we identify with her view, which has repercussions at the moral and anagogical levels. " and " The post-apocalyptic setting of the trilogy with its oppressive authoritarian regime and its nightmare to-the-death competition between District tributes is an engaging cross of 1984 and Rollerball. "and "that hybrid story from nightmare futures powerfully delivers Ms. Collins messages, most obviously her critique of our addiction to television and its soul corrosive influences, but also a call for a change within us, a revolution against the regime’s shadow-casters and myth-makers via our choosing a counter-narrative of love and sacrifice. "
Or in sum: Hunger Games, THE BESTEST MOST WONDERFULEST BOOKS EVER.
Next is moral. Apparently, the moral of the book is about the evil metanarratives, despite how the book plays perfectly into our existing metanarratives. "The real trick in understanding story morality is that it is the very rare story that tries to teach us anything that we do not already accept as a core value", he says blithely, and goes on to insist that this book does exactly that by...telling him a narrative he accepts, the deeply counterculture idea that the oppressed districts are really the good ones. You might as well argue Twilight is all awesome and counterculture for getting her barefoot and pregnant right out of high school, in defiance of traditional norms.
Of course, for all I know he did exactly that.
He actually diagnoses the whole chosen one thing as being bad, he just seems to think the book is rebuking it instead of wallowing. "The core message is that the metanarrative itself is the fount of evil because it distorts everyone’s ability to see the world as it is. The Big Bad Cultural Myth makes us prejudiced " Right. Unless they're career kids, in which case they're just naturally psychos.
"Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, even age discrimination, any perceived mental preconception, bias, or intolerance is something, ironically, our tolerance and fairness fixated age cannot tolerate. "
I know he's been giving page numbers but it's really hard to believe he actually read these books.
He says he could explain why "Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games (did I mentionRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?) are all stories conforming to this type. " but he figures the post is long enough. I think we're all on the same page with Twilight, so can I point out that Harry Potter is utter shit when it comes to those things as well? Except I guess in age discrimination, and there's something pretty close in how Rowling felt she had to kill off the generation that lived through the earlier, worse war because they were all damaged goods or something.
" Suffice it to say that Ms. Collins’ trilogy, as counter-cultural as it is in several important ways, has its evil metanarrative (“Capitol, good; Districts bad”) and its oppressive and quite literal marginalization of the District-Others from the Capitol-Chosen. "
I guess this is true if we keep changing between different meanings for metanarrative. Because from the perspective of the books, the capital folks are Other, the district is normal, and, of course, Katniss is a Chosen One deserving of sparkle text. We're barely aware of the capital's side of things. And honestly, not much Othering going on there either - at least with the tributes a big deal is made of making sure the kids come off as just like capital people. I mean, if race was an issue they'd be bleaching everyone's skin white before they got to the place. Fucked up, yeah, but I really don't think you try to turn people into clones of your own culture if your point is that they're fundamentally different and nonpeople. (A good point can be made about how it doesn't make that much sense the capital would do this instead of Othering the kids, but going by the text, they do.)
Anyway, then he repeats that Katniss is angry about her being a pawn in the narrative, when as I said, that's not what she was angry about. You know who was angry about that? Peeta. He's devastated at the end of the first book when he realizes she was playing a part, and then throws a fit at the beginning of the second book when they try to keep him out of the loop again.
And then we reach allegorical. He repeats the bit about her getting the idea from TV and, I think, gives her far too much credit by insisting that the moral is that TV is evil and must be destroyed. He also insists "corrosive effect of the medium" is present in all shows, even ones people think are good. Because he says so.
Anyway, he says that the Capital = America and the districts = the rest of the world. "Katniss probably would have been a lot less sympathetic if she were written into the story as a Palestinian refugee or Thai factory worker but I have to think this is closer to Ms. Collins’ political indictment. " I think I covered the issue of how strongly the books avoid exactly that. Also, shut the fuck up. Why would someone whose life legitimately sucked be less sympathetic?
"The oppressed are, depending on how you want to frame it, everyone outside the US or everyone here not in the power-rings of New York, DC, and Hollywood, the moguls of money, military, and movies. "
Oh, because we're thinking Palestinian refugee is exactly as bad as not being a CEO. It's so hard being a rich white American, world. YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND, THERE ARE THESE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE EVEN RICHER AND LIVE IN AN EVEN NICER MANSION.
ALL THE FACTORY WORKER HAS TO WORRY ABOUT IS CRIPPLING POVERTY AND DYING DUE TO THE NUMEROUS HEALTH HAZARDS THEY'RE SURROUNDED BY. WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THE RICHEST PEOPLE DON'T INVITE ME TO THEIR SPECIAL SUPER RICH PEOPLE PARTIES? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH IT HURTS THAT MOVIEMAKERS DON'T TAKE MY PERSONAL OPINION INTO ACCOUNT BEFORE THEY MAKE MOVIES? YOU CAN'T IMAGINE MY PAIN!!!!!!!!
And then he mentions spirituality. This can only get
We've reached anagogical. "If the moral and strictly allegorical (tit-for-tat) senses of a text are best understood as transparencies through which we see and understand other things, people, or events, the anagogical sense is more of a translucency through which a greater reality shines on us." Which means that Katniss is undertaking a journey where she starts as one thing and ends up another. Wow, you mean like basically every story ever, insightful! But it's different because, uh, it's an alchemic transformation and pearls and Katniss' pure heart.
Now, by this point it's really hard to say what's the stupidest thing so far. I can't really say what comes next is, because the scale is a broken mess by now. I will say it is shitty apologism for shitty writing, though: he says it's badly down and somehow that makes it mythic:
"First on the list, for me at least, is the uninterrupted if not easy progress of Katniss’ journey from “District 12 nobody” to the focus of all Panem, even the cause of a Revolution. " I don't even see what's so wrong with this, actually. Each kid picked for the games is the focus of the whole country, and the berry thing makes her a focus for the revolution. It's completely wrong to talk about is as a journey. Now, the fact everyone thinks the berries mean she's in charge of the revolution, that's where it gets dumb.
Then he says the boyfriends are badly characterized: "Their relationships with her are ideals or archetypes rather than anything like what young men in love with an attractive young woman are like. " Yes, the writing is terrible.
"But if the center-piece characters and relationships of the trilogy are more ‘true myth’ than realist fiction" then you've defined "true myth" as "bad writing". There's no explanation for why this has to be mythic instead of that she can't write.
Anyway, apparently the answer to everything is in the boys' names. They have girly names, for starters.
Gale's "relationship with Katniss is platonic despite their spending years in each other’s company and both leading lives deprived of touch and love. He fosters rather than challenges Katniss’ purity, freedom, and individual strength or identity. " Platonic suggestions they run away to have kids, then platonic, purity-fostering kissing. And what better fosters her freedom and identify then when he chews her out for wanting to rescue her and Peeta's families from being murdered, then demands she support his half-baked revolution instead?
Peeta, of course, is Jesus. "As artist, actor, and self-less lover, he is Culture and Faith that are fostering without challenging Katniss’ purity, vision, and individual will. " Same bit here as Gale. God, the men in Katniss' life really suck.
Then we get into Katniss' name, and things get really crazy. He says that she's a fusion of things in that she's got a town and wild boyfriend and stuff. Then of course her name is a plant with a tuber. "That she is named for a tuber is important on two levels. First, the moly plant. The moly is a tuber..." that has nothing to do with katniss tubers beyond that they're both tubers, and the mythological moly was important for rescuing Odysseus by curing any poison, just like katniss tubers are important for feeding Katniss. Because that's practically the same thing.
Anyway, it turns out moly is another name for rue! Uh, kind of. Actually it's just a guess. His description of the moly as having white flowers doesn't match rue, which has yellow ones, and certainly no real plant is "ungraspable as a whole except by a divinity". Also, googling gets me no references to using any tubers of rue for things, it mostly revolves around the leaves. I can't even verify it has any. Also, if the point was supposed to be moly? Could have named the girl Molly. Juuuuust saying.
Then he says rue is used to cure blindness, just like how Rue showed Katniss the truth! I wouldn't put it past the author to have actually intended that, but this is Meaningful Names bullshit in that case.
"Does Rue cure Katniss of blindness? Does she protect her from enchantment? Does she in her death draw out the saving feminine quality from her masculine front?" Yes, we here on the internets call it "fridging" and it's not actually a shocking new development.
Anyway, he rambles and repeats himself on the subject of how Rue causes Katniss to rebell and blah blah "root".
"note that Haymitch had a parallel moment of remorse at Maysilee Donner's death in his Quell (Katniss notes the similarity: Catching Fire, page 201) waking him to conscience." Not really. The only parallel is they both mourned the death of their partners. Haymitch, and this apparently needs repeating, played the games when it came down to it.
"Katniss must “find herself” to “never starve” or die; she learns in the Games that this light of conscience orlogos is what she is most and, having found it and identified with it, because it is the fabric of reality and cause of all things, just as dad said, she can never die. " This would be great if Katniss had anything resembling a real conscience. Also, if people who supposedly have a fucking lit degree could remember that it's got to be either "her dad" or "Dad".
And we haven't even gotten into the alchemy bullshit yet!
There's some sort of alchemic structure he thinks is awesome and he wrote about it in his books that I'm not even going to bother torrenting because I can barely handle these essays, if I tried to read actual chapters of this I would kill myself and resurrect as a undead monstrosity guided only by hate.
He won't tell us everything (I guess that's in the books you couldn't pay me to touch) but he says he will give us five markers of this.
One: "three key stages marked by the use of specific colors and story events, namely, black, white, and red, which stages reflect, in sequence, the dissolution or break down of the subject character or main characters (nigredo) usually by heat, the purification or purgation of same (albedo) usually with water, and the revelation of the transformation undergone in the process in the story crisis (rubedo). " You know, this is sort of why I never had an interest in actual English classes. When a teacher starts saying this I just start screaming WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS EVEN MATTER. Why can't it go white red black? Why does the first part have to be fire and the second water? How does this actually make for a better story if you do it that way?
Two: "There will be story contraries that must be resolved by the principals’ transformation" Translated from English degree to English, that means "there's a problem and the main character has to change before they solve it." Or in other words, "it is a story".
Three: A pair of characters who are different and quarrel, pulling the character in different directions. See Two, but this time with some stuff about solar/lunar masculine/feminine. I'm not sure why he didn't just say yin and yang. I can't decide if it's because he wants all his references to be by old white Western guys or because yin and yang would be a clear and concise way of saying it. Both seem equally likely. Anyway, it has to do with alchemy because those two are the "alchemical mercury and sulphur " who are taking part in turning the character into gold. Or possibly because two characters with different viewpoints is an easy thing to write.
Four: "Between the white and red stages, there is an Alchemical Wedding of the Red King and White Queen that prefigures the conjunction of opposites signaling the golden moment of the Philosopher’s Stone creation, i.e., the divinization of the main character and birth of the Philosophical Orphan or story savior joining contraries as a Rebus. " I don't even.
Five: Resurrection imagery. Not even a character specifically being resurrected, but anything at all referencing the concept, like for example a rose. You know, for a guy who can't go two lines without shoehorning in some unnecessary reference to philosophy or literature, he doesn't seem to be all that well read if he doesn't realize that's kind of a common thing in stories.
"If this is all new to you, I’m sure you’re profoundly skeptical that such a tradition exists or, if it does, that these bizarre sequences, symbols, and story points are anything but a conceit shared by egg head writers."
The only skepticism I have is at the idea any of this is bizarre.
Anyway, he then says he'll list evidence: the first book was nigredo and the second albedo (okay, see, evidence is explaining why you think that, not just saying it is.), there's conflict between the different areas in the book (no shit, Sherlock), Gale and Peeta are different, "the alchemical wedding of Katniss and Peeta we’ve been to (almost) and the orphan they have conceived are the spiritual conjunction of alchemical transformation" what the fuck seriously what the fuck, and there's phoenix imagery. An airtight case!
"An unwrapping of the alchemical artistry of tyhe story so far will require a longer post than this one" Okay, so I'm going to go on a tangent here. My tangent is that these essays are a fucking mess of tangents. He said the same thing earlier about it being too long. Maybe this wouldn't happen if it didn't take him most of the post to get to what the post is supposedly about.
Anyway, instead he's going to quote an email someone else sent, which, may I just say, is vastly better written and makes a far better argument in a few paragraphs than he has in his god knows how many pages of verbal diarrhea. And it's still pretty shaky.
He says the arrival at the arena is the black/hot stage. Sorta? It's also, you know, freezing cold every night. The cold is far more extreme than the warm weather during the day. And this requires ignoring the fact the games only even start in the second act of the book, and not even the first chapter of that. "Even once she finds water, then there is the wall of horrific heat/fire/smoke descending *down* on her", the email says, but actually, as I ranted at the time, Katniss is moving uphill to escape the flames, and also just generally all those things involved rise. I mean, I wouldn't yell at someone for using this turn of phrase casually, but if you start reading deeply into word meaning like this, I'm going to do the same.
"We move from that to a clear albedo phase when she finds the pool and cleans her burns. After the Feast at the Cornucopia, she and Peeta are subjected to downpours, and cold rainy weather."
Of course, between those two points in time, Katniss gets stung by torturedeath wasps, hallucinates a while, plots with Rue, builds some fires, sets fake fires with hot black smoke to trick people, Rue gets gutted, and then she lights one of the smokey fires to cook her food. None of those things seem especially wet or cleansing.
And then the story ends on the gold cornucopia, because of course the only reason is to symbolize the final red stage and not because cornucopias are traditionally that color and the metal makes the whole thing that much more decadent.
"Black and hot — to wet White — to Red and Gold and something very much like a sacrificial death and miraculous resurrection as Love defeats Power.
Accidental? C’mon."
Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with accidental. That or she really sucks at keeping to a theme. It's honestly really easy to find a pattern somewhere if you're willing to ignore everything that contradicts it.
"If your patience were indefinitely long, I could explain here why in the albedo or “purification by water” novel of the series, Catching Fire, the story opens in snow that is used extensively in healing (with a visit from President Snow, no less), "
I mean, really, is he just free associating here? Snow is used in healing therefore President Snow what the fuck? Also, what about the part where the peacekeepers start lighting shit on fire?
"and how the story is largely a story of Peeta’s and Katniss’ alchemical wedding of Spirit and Soul, Christ and Seeker."
Why hello there vaguely misogynist assumptions I hadn't missed you feel free to go away again.
"Which brings us to the point of this post" The post is nearly over by now. Seriously, didn't whatever place he bought his degree at at least explain how to organize essays?
Anyway, it's Pearl Plot 2: Fail Harder time.
" A pearl is a symbol of three things, all of which are relevant to understanding the Pearl Plot. "
1) What he says is "Effie’s otherwise incomprehensible gaffe about coal under pressure becoming pearls, we can see a beautiful alternative metaphor with the same meaning as lead being changed to gold, hard darkness being illumined and becoming solid light or “gold.” " Because the lead to cold darkness to light thing wouldn't work at all with diamonds, since unlike pearls diamonds are worthless and not bright at all.
"a pearl’s beauty is in its whiteness, certainly, or purity" Again. Diamonds. Especially because technically, pearls are kind of not pure. Hell, they're not even pure white.
2) "A pearl, traditionally, has the meaning, too, of “genius in obscurity”". And again. See the phrase "diamond in the rough".
3) There's a reference to pearls in the bible.
Matt 13:44 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field.”
Matt 13:45,46 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a merchant seeking fine pearls, who having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”
Mostly it just reminds me that Jesus was kind of shit about parables. It's actually really consistent, so I think maybe this is a lost in translation issue and the whole point was that when it comes to god things work differently than you'd expect normally because Grace and Ineffability or whatnot. That or it's a sign of his divinity that Jesus is able to give these horrible parables and still be considered a great speaker.
"These parables of hidden treasure and singular pearl of value are the teachings of Christ Who is this Kingdom of Heaven within you (Luke 17:21), the hidden light we all experience to varying degrees as conscience." Ooooooookay we seem to have drifted into evangelism somehow. Also, no.
"Katniss’ spiritual transformation, even her theosis, is dependent on her “finding herself” and it is this “pearl of great price” she has been given by the Boy With Bread that is her “hidden treasure” and the pure light that will save her. " This is starting to read like it's talking about her vagina. Thank god this is the end of the essay and it can't keep going in this direction. Also, thank god these books are so sexless so they can't invoke Peeta's healing cock themselves.
Yes, that's the end. You may have noticed it didn't actually get to anything much about the pearl plot. That's because, in addition to all the other things this guy can't do, he can't write. He says that he'll actually get around to that next time.
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Date: 2011-07-04 12:08 am (UTC)And it's actually worse than that. The blind guy is a traitor who sold out the village to protect his daughter. He's one of those characters who loves one person so much they would be willing to sacrifice anything for them, so whether they turn out to be villainous or heroic is mostly a product of circumstance. The bad guys predictably betrayed him and his daughter and brutally mutilated him, hence the blindness, though not the daughter, because in this series girls are only ever tortured in ways that don't make them less pretty. So Eragon rescues them both separately, tells the daughter that her father is dead, and then goes to confront him. The father is basically completely awesome in this scene, all, "Yeah, I fucked up. You're not exactly a paragon of kindness either, so go ahead and kill me like we both know you're going to." Instead of killing him, Eragon decides to ~let him try his own fate,~ but first casts a spell on him that will prevent him from ever coming in contact with his daughter again, even if he survives.. This is done through really mind-rape-like magic and the dad, who up to this point has been so strong, just completely breaks down. It's awful.
*Specifically, he "strive[s] for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf." Which actually makes it sound like he's trying to write better than Tolkien, and I'm not sure whether his less-than-stellar command of English language or his arrogance is the culprit.
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Date: 2011-07-05 04:12 am (UTC)Also those lines are beautiful. Not in the way he meant it, but still! I mean the full spectrum of colours enlivened the previously drab world? Most people wouldn't even write that, and those that did would do their best to erase all sign of their error from existence, possibly by fire. He put it in a book with his name on it and did his best to make everyone read it.