I tell him, "Real."

Many people in the world of pop culture are ramping up for the premiere of The Hunger Games movie by comparing the upcoming franchise to the Twilight Saga. While comparisons are inevitable, they’re also focused on all the wrong stuff. Let me tell you why.

Critics think Bella is weak and passive. This may be because she is absolutely in love with her partner and agonizes over how her choice to be with him, and to take on a dramatically different life for herself, will affect those others she loves.

Critics think Katniss is strong and assertive. This could be because she is a hunter by trade and because she is not originally in love with her eventual partner, at least not assuredly or with full consciousness.

http://silivrenstar.deviantart.com/art/Bella-Swan-98917113

In the major character arc of Twilight, Bella achieves relative self-actualization through a series of life choices, including but not limited to her choice to marry a man, her choice to have a baby, and her choice to reconcile those she loves from her old life with her new one. In The Hunger Games, Katniss is a survivalist throughout. In order to ultimately find a measure of balance in her life, she marries a man who can provide her with the warmth, optimism and sense of security that she herself lacks. Critics will go on and on about how Katniss is independent and how Bella is codependent, but on the last page of both epics, neither women are less than an arm’s length away from their lovers.

I think Katniss and Bella are both potential role models for young women, and young people in general, who are developing their senses of self. I also think at times that both of them stink as role models. Both are hideously selfish at times, but at other times, downright self-sacrificial. Both are warrior women, who hone their own talents, and stand up for what they believe.

But Katniss is lauded and Bella is shamed in a world where strength is often defined using the wrong terms. Bella’s strength is her ability to make her own decisions and to pave her own way. She decides to move to Forks. She decides to remain loyal to Edward. She decides to become a vampire, and she decides to keep and defend her child. To say that Bella’s love and focus on relationships throughout her journey of self-actualization are inescapable weaknesses (like so many critics do) is to discount the forces of love and relationship in life, and that’s just bogus. Love is the most powerful force of creation, and relationships are the most powerful way to give and receive love. It is love that makes Bella keep her child, love that draws her to bring warring factions to peace, and love that causes her to create a destiny that pulls together the most important people in her life.



http://patsie.deviantart.com/art/Katniss-Everdeen-209831277

I contest too that Katniss is in love with Peeta throughout the entire book series, but that she suppresses that love out of fear of vulnerability and fear of dealing with the consequences of that emotion. This is not a particularly healthy example for young people. Instead, I believe that Katniss is strongest not in the ways critics are talking about – when she uses a bow and arrow and becomes the face of a revolution – but when she stops acting like a conniving contestant on Survivor and is also moved by love. When she sacrifices herself for her sister. When she mourns Rue. When she comforts Peeta and allows him to give her his comfort. We see Katniss moved overtly by love less often than Bella is, but it’s with love as strength that the people who think they have a handle on these stories aren’t too comfortable.

I adore both of these series. They are both creative, moving stories about women that were both so much fun to read. Both cause me to think about the world in different ways, despite having read them purely for recreation. I think both Bella and Katniss are new and interesting and positive forces in the literary world. So while the comparisons will not stop, I wish they would take on a tone that grants both characters their unique personhood without judgment. Because these two women do not need to compete with each other. They are both warriors. They are both mothers. They are both wives. And they both, in their own ways, define who they are for themselves.

A note on silliness:

Some might think it is stupid to review tween fiction and even stupider to attempt to provide a critical analysis of the pop-culture drama surrounding tween books made into mainstream movies. I disagree.

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” - Jessamyn West

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.” - Simone Weil

“You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.” - Rita Dove