Abandoned train station (by varlamov)
this is the most notes i’ve gotten on anything ever
and we can all see why
(via sowelayedbeneaththestars)
I just need to say all this, because I think too much.
Grant and I celebrated our six-month anniversary by going to see The Hunger Games last night. I read the books a couple of years ago and loved them, and Grant read them last summer. We both felt like the books— especially the first— were solid and relevant additions to cautionary dystopian literature. It’s been exciting for me to see such an excellent book appreciated by the public, surpassing in popularity even *opinion moment* mindless pulp fiction like the similarly-film-franchised Twilight series.
That being said, this movie is something I have looked forward to for a long time. I haven’t been very involved in fandoms of any kind for the past couple of years, and I had particularly avoided the fast-growing community surrounding The Hunger Games. I saw in it what’s typical in mass fan appreciation— more marvels over attraction to characters than depth of character, more graphics that focus on perfect features than well-discussed cultural implications. This is a simple difference in preference, and I don’t condemn anyone who enjoyed the book for those reasons. However, I didn’t want the brilliance these books had been cheapened for me.
After seeing the movie, that is how it feels— cheapened. As we drove home, heatedly bantering over the pros and cons of what we had seen, I felt like this movie had been a Games within the Games— an entertaining, if gruesome, distraction from the chilling truths buried underneath. The strongest lie is one that is mostly truth, and I feel that this movie ended up a very effective deception.
This is not a rant about deviations from the original plot structure, or how this actor or that actor was all wrong/right for the part, or how they left out a detail that was super important to me. There are plenty of people writing about these things, and honestly, no one really cares what I think. This is about things that need to be said regarding our attitude as a culture toward the line between entertainment and lessons learned. This is about what The Hunger Games tried to tell us in the first place.
Spoilers follow.
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I cannot be alone with the mistakes I’ve made,
or they’ll drown me—
and I cannot share them with anyone at all for fear of judgement (or worse, a call to compensate)
And these are the times that I miss you and your deep listening eyes.
(via fairycastle)
