Reading comprehension sure is a thing

[farla]

Oh my god, I barely made it through the first post before getting fed up with inane pseudopedantry — like in order to be upset at Katniss hiding a bow beneath a berry bush, they assume that all berries are edible, which they're not. Or being unable to comprehend clauses like, "but carefully, carefully." For every moderately reasonable point, they go off on five idiotic tangents due to either their inability to correctly parse a sentence or their presumption that they understand the economics and ecology of dystopic Appalachia. Add to that some crazy Von Mieses bullshit about how the kids are morons to eat a strawberry (which do actually grow wild in much of America, including the Virginia Strawberry that is native to Appalachia) instead of selling it… Ugh. That's exactly the sort of shit that needs to be quarantined in LiveJournal so that no one outside of bitter fanficcers ever reads it.

I wonder what it is that makes about saying how wrong I am without daring to tell me I'm wrong so appealing? BEARS ATTACK PEOPLE guy was pretty into that too.

Comments

[wintersheir]

I still haven't been able to get through the Hunger Games past the part where she shoots the roast pig and runs off crying. Just. Can't do it. Too stupid. My sisters looooooooove the book though, especially the one who loved Twilight because "Edward is so hot".

My theory (your theory? am I cribbing off your posts here?) is that Katniss is poor enough of a character and the book exciting enough that the reader can sort of paste themselves into her place and imagine themselves being intensely heroic and desired (re: Peeta-Gale) while ignoring everything she actually does. Thus why people ascribe to Katniss qualities she doesn't actually have, but rather the ones they're imagining in themselves in the same situation.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I don't think I said that, so you get the credit!

And yeah, that sounds right. It's very good for imagining "what would you do if..." and actually a lot of ways Katniss fails as a character just further enables it. None of us have ever been sent off for childmurder games, but we can easily identify with being ignored by people when we're actually super awesome. So you shoot the pig and not the people.

Out of curiosity, did your sisters like Bella? Because I've heard the same theory floated about Twilight, but unlike Katniss, every Twilight fan I ever encountered directly said that Bella sucked but that the rest of the book was awesome, so they evidently weren't interested in Bella as the vehicle for self-insertion.

[wintersheir]

Hmm, I can't remember them saying much about Bella. I can kind of see it being the same thing for Twilight, but Bella never gets to be the hero like Katniss does. Actually it probably says something positive about the people who don't like Bella-- Bella is annoying and inertial enough that it's actually harder to paste yourself in there (although certainly some people manage it), and while people want the attention and protection of Edward, they don't want to be Bella, Bella is lame. But Katniss is (imagined to be) a fierce, maternal, survive-at-all-costs warrior, so her bad behavior can be ignored? glossed over? whatever thought process is allowing everyone to get past that pig scene.

[(Anonymous)]

"I wonder what it is that makes about saying how wrong I am without daring to tell me I'm wrong so appealing?"

Well that's a pretty easy one. Telling people they're wrong to their faces is confrontational and PERSONAL, but talking about being wrong to other people (even and especially if they disagree) is an INTERESTING DEBATE.

It's for the same reason you wouldn't go up to Vin Diesel or something and say, "Hoo boy, your acting sucks big time. That one part in Chronicles of Riddick where you made that grimace at the sun beast was awful!" while you might tell a complete stranger (who is a obviously a huge Vin Diesel fan) that you think Vin Diesel is a bad actor who can't grimace at sun beasts to save his life.

[farla.livejournal.com]

But it seems like that this should be in the latter category. If someone says they're amazed by Vin Diesel's sun-grimacing ability, you don't tell a third person that they're wrong, do you?

[nijireiki.livejournal.com]

I thought Katniss was a jerk and a brat, but I also interpreted that as being part of her teenager-iness that she would have to deal with/power through eventually (or not)? I thought I was supposed to know Katniss kind of sucked even though Katniss didn't know it yet. At least, that's how I read it. I may be giving the author too much credit, here. *shrugs* I liked that in the third book Katniss was on her way to realizing everyone and everything, including her, sucked all the balls, but I also thought the "happy" ending was kind of a downer, what with the depression, PTSD, and dub-con babies. Even though I'm a girl. I'm weird like that.

In the movie trailer, of course, Katniss is ~perfect~, and District 12 is very clean, and everybody looks well-fed and healthy (even the antisocial, filthy alcoholic...), so it would have earned my frustration even without the weirdness of Suzanne Collins's oddly racially distinct & segregated districts (excluding the Capitol, I guess, because CINNA, SASSY GAY FRIEND EXTRAORDINAIRE is Lenny Kravitz).

[farla.livejournal.com]

That seems unnecessarily charitable, yes. We had three whole books for Katniss to get a proper denouement. And we even get a denouement, but it's just "I suck because Peeta is so perfect and wonderful while I'm a lying slut", which is also never properly called out as bullshit before the end of the book.

And yeah, the movie trailer looks very sterile. I guess everyone dresses up for the reaping, but all I see is stuff being a bit faded, which just doesn't convey the idea that they're actually starvation-level poverty. And like you say, no one looks malnourished. But then, that's actually relatively true to the books, Katniss' thinness is referenced but Peeta and other characters are big.

(It's actually the same problem as with the Captain America movie. Steve doesn't just happen to be tiny and weak, he's tiny and weak because there wasn't much food or medical care or heat for kids during the Great Depression. He should be on the far end of the curve, but he shouldn't be the only guy who isn't in perfect six-foot health.)

[nijireiki.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, yeah, that was my big issue with Captain America. I didn't worry about it too much, because of course the Hollywood adaptations needs 6+ft buffed-up Chris Evans to make Steve Rogers "heroic"-looking enough (and some comic fans wanted him EVEN BIGGER), but at the time the comic was written, like with Superman, it was very much self-insert wish-fulfillment fantasy. The American comics industry was largely comprised of an immigrant population, often poor, and of course the workers stateside during the war would have been ineligible for service in some way or another. The audience was also American, so children of both genders, women, and men who were turned away from enlisting would have been part of the reader market.

There also wasn't the same level of mandatory education, child labor laws, or general workers' rights, like unionization or protection from workplace injury (the face model for "Rosie the Riveter" actually quit her machining job shortly after being "discovered" for the propaganda art because too many women's hands were being crushed and she felt uncomfortable with the prospect of losing her fingers, go figure), not to mention the agricultural devastation of the Dust Bowl affecting availability of nutrient-dense food even if you weren't going hungry. And WWI and WWII both highlighted a lot of chemical warfare, and most people's first instinct isn't to check their genitalia after exposure in the factory or in the foxhole, but all I'm saying is reproductive side effects are both 1) real and 2) a bitch.

TL;DR: Tall and/or healthy men would not have been the norm among the general populace of Brooklyn by any stretch of the imagination.

[(Anonymous)]

Say, Farla, what did yoou think of the HG trailer? I thought it was kind of epic, and it looks as if it might be better than the book. Especially considering that we won't be stuck in Katniss's head, and the did-not-do-research stuff will be less apparent.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Like I said above, kind of sterile and I think people should look more starving, scrawny, and otherwise showing the physical signs of poverty. But it doesn't look bad. My main issue was how ridiculous Effie looked (that is, I feel making her look objectively terrible instead of just odd and imposing undermines what should be the message there, and also none of the men seem to look stupid even though the explanation for her appearance is that it's Capital fashion) and that's how it was in the book.

I would definitely assume it'll be an improvement, since the books seemed like it's what they were being written for in the first place.

Chap

[(Anonymous)]

Escapism is the foundation of fiction. People voluntarily read books because they want to learn interesting facts or imagine living more interesting lives. There aren't any books about accountants who spend their lives treating their kids and wife well, are there? But maybe if the accountant got possessed by a demon and starting blowin' shit up.

But I digress.