I suppose Joel Stein thinks he’s being rather clever and sophisticated in his riff for the New York Times about why grown-ups shouldn’t read literature aimed at young adults (something he conflates with picture books). He sniffs:

I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains. Books are one of our few chances to learn. There’s a reason my teachers didn’t assign me to go home and play three hours of Donkey Kong. I have no idea what “The Hunger Games” is like. Maybe there are complicated shades of good and evil in each character. Maybe there are Pynchonesque turns of phrase. Maybe it delves into issues of identity, self-justification and anomie that would make David Foster Wallace proud. I don’t know because it’s a book for kids. I’ll read “The Hunger Games” when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.

Where to begin? First, with a bit of history. Adolesence as we understand it is a rather new invention, and more to the point, the idea of literature aimed squarely at children or at young adults is a relatively new phenomenon in narrative fiction. The first picture books begin trickling out in the 1600s as a combination of instructional or pleasurable reading. And the distinction between children’s, young adult, and plain literature doesn’t come until 1802 when British critic Sarah Trimmer proposed two categories of books, one for those younger than 14, another for literature specifically aimed at those between the ages of 14 and 21, a time when children transitioned into formal adulthood. In other words, those 3,000 years of fiction include an awful lot of writing intended for audiences of mixed ages, whether it’s Jane Austen’s novels or lives of saints, which can be decidedly R-rated.

Second, the ideas that children and young adults are only capable of digesting mush, or that the only way to discuss sophisticated themes is to include explicit sex and violence are pure hogwash. Young people are capable of fairly sophisticated reasoning, of empathy, and even of significant evil, and many of them can rise to meet fairly high bars as readers. A series like the Hunger Games franchise can keep Katniss a virgin throughout the majority of the three books and still communicate the horror of surrendering your sexual and romantic autonomy. Harry Potter may be the first encounter a generation of readers has with the evils of torture and nasty class bias. Tamora Pierce’s Provost’s Dog series is an unflinching exploration of crime and poverty. Simply because these novels are also appropriate for younger readers doesn’t mean the ideas in them are stupid or the prose is unworthy. Not all things written for younger readers are masterpieces, of course. But there’s plenty of bad trash, insipid prose, and deeply stupid ideas in books written for adults. Joel Stein is welcome to it.

The bridge is yours.

-This new James Brown biography looks pretty good.

-Modern Family‘s cast would like all the money, please.

-Could The Hunger Games get a Best Picture nomination?

-Gamers have bigger reward centers in their brains.

-One more day until Community day!

Jennifer Lawrence is tiny—even before Lenny Kravitz, playing stylist Cinna to her post-apocalyptic teen reality contestant Katniss Everdeen, cinches her into a corset to put her on display before the decadent residents of the Capitol—so why did critics and fans alike start discussing whether she looks famished-enough to play the lead role in The Hunger Games? Rue and Thresh, the Tributes from District 11 who face off against Katniss in the 74th Hunger Games, are clearly described as dark-skinned in Suzanne Collins novels, on which the movie is based, so why did fans react to the casting of black actors in those roles with racist outbursts and claims the casting “ruined the movie”? Along with making an enormous amount of money, The Hunger Games seems to have brought out the worst in a whole bunch of people.

Julian Sanchez has a great post on why, even beyond the reading comprehension issues involved, it’s so disturbing that readers would assume all the characters depicted in the franchise are white:

The book doesn’t dwell on this, though, and a reader skimming along at a fast clip could be forgiven for missing the two quick references. The deeper stupidity here is the assumption that the default race of any character is Caucasian when it’s not stated explicitly, and that casting a person of color in this case would represent some kind of deviation from the book’s implicit characterization. This would be wrongheaded for an adaptation of a book set in the present, but at least quasi-understandable: The social realities of people of color in contemporary America are different in a variety of ways, enough so that we do generally expect authors to make at least passing reference to a major character’s minority status.

It makes no sense at all, however, in a dystopian sci-fi novel (implicitly) set two or three centuries in the future. First, we have no real idea what the racial dynamics of Panem are like, so there’s no particular reason to think Suzanne Collins would need to make note of it if Katniss were of (say) Korean or Chicana descent. Second, and maybe more to the point, non-Hispanic whites are already projected to constitute less than half of the U.S. population in 2050, long before the earliest possible date for the events of the book.

The weird bodysnarking of Lawrence, exemplified by Manohla Dargis, of all people (she wrote “A few years ago Ms. Lawrence might have looked hungry enough to play Katniss, but now, at 21, her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission.”) reveals both ignorance of the text and another kind of problematic default. Katniss is better-fed than her District 12 peers in part because of her ability to hunt, and she gorges herself during her time in the Capitol so she’ll have energy to burn in the arena. But more importantly, Dargis and the other folks who questioned whether Lawrence who was too thin to play Katniss forget how dramatically Hollywood actresses restrict their diets in order to look the way they do. Lawrence and company may not be starving, but their bodies aren’t exactly a naturally-occurring default, either.

It’s frightening to think we’re still stuck in a place where white is the default for characters and that choosing otherwise provokes such extreme anger, and that even an actress’s carefully maintained, tiny body isn’t starved enough to satisfy some people: she has to look like death, and still be a powerful huntress, too.

Well, it looks like somebody‘s campaign staff figured out that The Hunger Games was going to be a massive hit. Rick Santorum’s campaign dropped an ad over the weekend that borrows heavily from the worn Appalachian iconography that dominates the early scenes of that movie in its efforts to suggest that just two more years of an Obama presidency could produce a dystopian America:

And though the ad doesn’t mention abortion directly, focusing instead on a blown-out candle to represent the loss of freedom of religion, it repeats a quick but ominous image of a baby in a cradle bathed in red light twice. Santorum may, by this point, trust that his pro-life supporters have gotten the message and only feel like he needs to provide indirect reinforcement.

Given the tagline at the end, it looks like the Santorum campaign might run more of these ads like a web TV series. It would be a creative move for a campaign that doesn’t have a ton of money, and is never going to attract the kind of Hollywood support that let President Obama make a 17-minute long campaign documentary narrated by Tom Hanks.

But Santorum might want to think twice before embracing dystopian storytelling in his effort to position himself as the strongest challenger to the sitting president. After all, there’s already a great dystopian story about the logical consequences of his social policies and restrictions on women’s reproductive rights:

The Obama campaign doesn’t even have to worry about cutting new ads if Santorum’s the challenger. They can just take some of their ridiculous campaign war chest and buy time to air The Handmaid’s Tale instead.

Score one for the Districts against the Capitol.

Lionsgate, which is set for a record-breaking opening weekend with its movie adaptation of the dystopian young adult novel The Hunger Games, has reconsidered the takedown notice the company sent to imagine Better, an organization running an anti-hunger campaign inspired by the franchise.

The takedown notice, exclusively reported by ThinkProgress yesterday, targeted the Hunger Is Not A Game campaign, which is building support for Oxfam’s GROW program aimed at making food aid more efficient and less wasteful. The entertainment company accused Imagine Better of “causing damage to Lionsgate and our marketing efforts” — even though Lionsgate had previously wished Imagine Better luck while declining to sign on as a formal partner.

But now Lionsgate has reconsidered in the wake of widespread fan outrage. The company will not pursue legal action to back up the takedown notice. And Kate Piliero, the vice president for corporate communications for Lionsgate’s film division, emailed me to say that the company’s main concern was that their official charitable partners for the film have exclusive use of the film’s official images and logo (Imagine Better had created its own, separate set of images and branding).

“Lionsgate’s partnership with the United Nations’ World Food Programme as well as Feeding America, both tied to the release of The Hunger Games, is helping to generate awareness of and funds for this global issue,” she wrote. “We absolutely support and encourage the efforts of organizations battling world hunger and would encourage fans to join our efforts by visiting www.hungergames.com.”

In America, if not in Panem, it seems, fans and corporations can co-exist without a legal fight to the death.

This review contains some spoilers for folks who haven’t read the books.

Like many of our most popular cultural artifacts, The Hunger Game is a Leatherman of a series, a multi-purpose tool for discussing everything from war and insurgency (as always, read Amy Davidson) to an increasingly brutal college admissions process. But on the occasion of the movie adaptation’s arrival in theaters, it’s worth returning to the franchise’s title: this is a story about a country in which the unimaginably rich manipulate the desperately poor with incredible cruelty, and where a fossilized class system treats people who want to survive it, much less rise from one class into the next, with violence and sadism. The Hunger Games begins in a world where roses are imaginable, and bread is a commodity so valuable that its arrival is a symbol from the heavens and it can create emotional ties that last a lifetime. The Hunger Games is also about war, and democracy, and torture, and personal autonomy, but all of those consequences and conversations are offshoots of a basic setup: a world where a few people have anything and many people have almost nothing.

A movie about savage inequalities is almost absurdly timely, even if we don’t live in a world where the citizens of subject states each much send two children between 12 and 18 to fight to the death in a televised competition for the amusement of the vastly wealthy, and the temporary economic elevation of a lucky survivor and his or her family. And The Hunger Games is at its best when it puts the rich and their victims in contact, though it falters when it comes to portraying the competition between those who are desperately hoping to rise.

Some of the most biting work in The Hunger Games comes from the adult actors, and from a series of scenes that illustrate how excess can be as anaesthetizing as it is rewarding. “You two are in for a treat,” trills Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), the noxious MC of the District 12 Reaping, after Katniss and Peeta have been separated from their families and boarded the luxury train that is sweeping them off to their likely deaths. “Crystal chandeliers! Platinum doorknobs!” It’s more likely that the young people in her over-manicured care will appreciate regular access to food than the post-apocalyptic equivalent of the Restoration Hardware catalogue. But Effie can’t possibly acknowledge the immiseration that creates her elaborate outfits, powers the bullet train on which she travels, and covers the tables at which her charges can eat only once they’re marked for slaughter.

Later in the movie, Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), Katniss and Peeta’s drunken but not un-savvy mentor, blanches watching a Capitol family gives their children play toys for a battle they’ll never have to fight. For them, the Hunger Games are another opportunity to consume, to place bets and to host elaborate parties, rather than evidence of their own investment in injustice. The pageantry leading up to the Games distances the viewers from what they’re actually watching. The public coffers supply Katniss and Peeta with a sumptuously-furnished apartment, designer training tracksuits, gorgeous outfits to wear to pre- and post-competition interviews with the fantastically unctuous Ceaser Flickerman (Stanley Tucci). The movie doesn’t make this as clear as the books do, but the traumas of the games themselves are an opportunity for further personal consumer spending. If you give good show, as Katniss and Peeta do, their mentors can persuade sponsors to buy Tributes necessities ranging from a cup of hot soup to antibiotic creams that arrive, like everything else considered a luxury in this world, in hues and textures that make them look plucked from a Wet ‘n’ Wild line of eye glitter.
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There’s a long tradition of pop culture fans banding together to raise money for or take action on good causes, whether it’s the Browncoats, fans of Joss Whedon’s Firefly series raising money for charity, or the Harry Potter Alliance, which has done everything from send medical aid to Haiti to campaigning for marriage equality in Maine.

And fans of Suzanne Collins dystopian young adult series The Hunger Games are no different. Pegged to the opening of the film adaptation of the first book in the series, a movie that could be the most profitable film release of 2012, Imagine Better, an umbrella group of multiple fan franchises spearheaded by the Harry Potter Alliance, partnered with Oxfam to launch a campaign called “Hunger Is Not a Game.” It’s a multi-pronged effort, but the main thrust is in support of Oxfam’s GROW campaign, which aims to make food aid more efficient by encouraging local cultivation to reduce shipping costs and waste from spoilage.

These are noble goals, and you’d think Lionsgate would welcome the good publicity that stems from them. It should be a gift to the studio that The Hunger Games isn’t just poised to be a massive blockbuster, but that it’s getting young people to think and act critically, so much so that they’re getting written up in the New York Times for it. And a month ago, that appeared to be the case: a Lionsgate representative emailed Andrew Slack, the executive director of the Harry Potter Alliance which is the organizing force behind Imagine Better, in February to say that while Lionsgate couldn’t join Imagine Better as a partner, they wished Imagine Better “the best of luck.”

Apparently no longer. Lionsgate’s senior vice president for business affairs and litigation, Liat Cohen (who’s been rather vigorous in defense of the project in the past), has issued a takedown notice to the campaign through Oxfam, accusing them of “piggy backing off of our motion picture” and “causing damage to Lionsgate and our marketing efforts.” The full text of the email is here:

Hello,

This morning I left 2 phone messages for your CEO Mr. Jim Daniell regarding your campaign “Hunger is not a Game” piggy backing off of our motion picture “The Hunger Games” and using Lionsgate’s fans and fan internet sites to promote your cause.

As I mentioned in my phone message, Lionsgate has formed a partnership with two large organizations fighting hunger, the UN’s World Food Program and Feeding America. We are encouraging fans to support this effort by going to www.wfp.org/hungergames.

What is not a part of the Lionsgate plan is the distortion of our Motion Picture title. That is what Oxfam has done with your “Hunger is not a Game” logo. And with the many website you have incorporated into your campaign. This is causing damage to Lionsgate and our marketing efforts.

We understand and support your cause and mission. We are on the same side. We are looking for an amicable resolution. For a start we request that you immediately remove any mention of “Hunger is not a Game” from all of your websites and its affiliates and stop using the slogan in your interviews and publicity or press releases. Additionally, please contact the undersigned so we can work out a mutually acceptable plan to go forward where we do not infringe on each other’s rights.

We are truly making an effort to work with you on this. We have the ability to take down your sites as a violation of our trademark and other intellectual property laws. We hope that will not be necessary as this is too serious a subject.

All rights reserved. Thank you.

Liat Cohen, Esquire
Senior Vice President Business Affairs & Litigation

It’s not clear that the takedown notice would hold up, but it’s still an aggressive move against advocates who are passionate fans of the franchise and have no desire to damage it.

“Fans have been changed by this story and have expressed a wish to change the world based on the message of this story,” Slack emailed me. “I would hope that Lionsgate would celebrate fans, not pick on them, for taking the message of their own movie seriously. It’s amazing that they’re working with two great partners already to fight hunger. But why get in the way of fans who are working with a third one?”

Seriously, dude?

Be wary of reviews by female critics, as they’re probably more susceptible to the lore of this young-female-adult-propelled franchise than most. I don’t even know what to make of this declaration by Movieline’s Stephanie Zacharek: “The surprise of The Hunger Games isn’t that it lives up to its hype — it’s that it plays as if that hype never even existed, which may be the trickiest achievement a big movie can pull off these days.” If there’s one thing that defines Gary Ross’s film, it’s a feeling that he and his Hunger Games producers were acutely aware they were adapting a wildly popular literary property, and that they’d best serve the fantasies and sensibilities of its young female readers.

Because if you’re a female critic, and you happen to find art that’s about people of your gender, and about people of your gender being strong, and emotions women sometimes have about choosing romantic partners and being providers, you are just heeding the siren song of your easily-duped ladybits. But if you’re a dude who appreciates stories about, oh, I don’t know, chauvinist advertising executives, or violent automobile drivers, or self-absorbed Hawaiian landowners who happen to have your particular variety of sexual equipment, you’ve got discerning taste.

The bridge is yours.

-R.I.P. Ralph McQuarrie. We are all crying droids today.

-Distract yourself: Yahoo’s original web series debut today.

-If you can’t live without more Katniss Everdeen, you are in luck.

-Jeff Goldblum will break up with Sarah Silverman on her new show.

-If Disney made Game of Thrones:

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, a novel about a futuristic America wracked by poverty and severe energy shortages where most people spend the majority of their time inside an extremely sophisticated video game world called OASIS, and the billionaire inventor of the game who sets off a treasure hunt within it on his death, came out last summer and I finally got around to it last weekend. It’s not a perfect book—Cline does a lot of telling when he should show, as when he introduces us to a blogger and tells us what her style is like at length rather than letting us see it for ourselves in sample posts. But it’s an engaging story, and I think worth comparing to both Reamde, Neil Stephenson’s novel about a similar video game empire though set in a time closer to our own, and The Hunger Games, which features a similar teenaged protagonist—and in a similar way, prioritizes romance over political engagement.

Ready Player One‘s main character is an isolated teenager named Wade, who lives in extreme poverty with his aunt in the stacks—a name for tightly packed and deeply unsteady complexes of stacked trailers. Wade goes to school in OASIS and after the game’s founder dies, Wade becomes a deeply dedicated participant in the scavenger hunt that the man left behind—and that guarantees the winner access to his fortune. As Wade advances further in the quest, a corporation that wants to take control of OASIS starts stalking Wade and his counterparts, killing his aunt and one of Wade’s fellow gamers in an effort to coerce them into turning over the clues that lead to the treasure. In that respect, the book is a lot like The Hunger Games—both books feature a poor teenaged protagonist struggling to maintain his or her integrity in the face of a murderous and seemingly unalterable system, whether it’s a corporation that’s more powerful than any government, or a government that’s taken control of the economy. And like Reamde, Ready Player One features a game founder with a near-unkillable avatar who is an unpredictable free agent in the game.

But all three books have slightly different perspectives on how their main characters should engage with the world outside of the games they’re playing. At the end of The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen, who has been turned into a political symbol and used for purposes contrary to her values, quits altogether: she commits a symbolic act of political violence and returns home, marries, starts a family, and gets as far away from engagement as possible. At the end of Ready Player One, Wade’s victory ensures him not just tremendous wealth but tremendous political power—the reward for winning the scavenger hunt isn’t just the billionaire’s fortune, but his OASIS avatar and the ability to self-destruct the game, driving everyone back into their real, and very broken, world. But the book treats that power, and the possibility of a massive intervention to change the fate of the American public, raised by another character, as if they’re simply not very interesting, at least in comparison to Wade’s reconciliation with his first love. In Reamde, by contrast, getting out of the game and into a world where they go head-to-head with some very nasty terrorists and a mountain lion, is reinvigorating and rewarding for the characters. They get major personal rewards for acting in the world—there doesn’t have to be a tradeoff.

Now, not all novels have to be social novels. And not all heroes have to change the world—nor is it realistic to expect that all heroes will be in a position to kill the hell out of an Osama bin Laden stand-in while also helping ensure the marital happiness of their favorite niece. But there’s something very odd about setting up very clear dystopian conditions, enumerating how they affect the characters, and then suggesting that engaging with those conditions and working to change them isn’t very differing. Both Ready Player One and The Hunger Games are grounded in more explicit social critiques than Reamde, but Reamde‘s far more interested in engaging with the world than they are.