I went to see Catching Fire with my sister and some family friends yesterday. My sister loved it, as did I, and it made me rather happy to see her enjoying it so much. She previously stated that she didn't want to read it because "it's about a million kids running around and killing each other" (she didn't care when I corrected her count to twenty-four). But now she likes it, and it makes me happy to see her enjoying a piece of good fiction. I don't know why she likes it (I presume she came to believe that it has a good plot and that it is interesting and engaging), but no matter why she likes it, she likes it, and it makes her happy.
I have two friends (twin teenage girls) who have yet to read or watch The Hunger Games and who were also originally aversive to the idea for much the same reasons that my sister was. However, through conversations with me about it, they found out that it has themes of revolution as well as a love triangle. These things interested them. They like revolutions, and they like love triangles. (They happen to positively love Les Miserables, which features both of these things).
Some people who knew my two friends wanted to read The Hunger Games because of its love triangle might think they were just stupid teenage girls being stupid teenage girls. The love triangle (and the inclusion of romance in general) is a common criticism of The Hunger Games. It's a series associated with teenage girls, a demographic commonly seen as stupid and immature, and anything that "panders" to them is considered equally stupid. Since teenage girls supposedly love romance and love triangles, the love triangle featuring Katniss with Peeta and Gale is often seen as stupid and unnecessary, and people who like it (especially if they're part of a target audience who is often denounced by those who supposedly know better) are shamed for it.
To be honest, that's pretty stupid and unnecessary in and of itself. And when I refer to "that", I mean "shaming people for liking something". A less-mature person might shame my two friends for being interested in The Hunger Games largely because of its love triangle. They'd accuse them of stereotypically conforming to the unintelligent target audience of the series and embodying everything that's wrong with people who read fiction like that. Why would anyone to do that other than to perpetuate snobbery and make themselves feel superior, though? Saying you shouldn't like something for whatever reason shows an astonishing lack of confidence on the part of the person saying that. Sometimes, people have stereotypical interests not because they're stupid or for the sake of conformity but because they genuinely like them.
If my two friends like love triangles, they like love triangles, and that's all there is to that. They like something. The thing they like has a lot of badly-written examples, and these badly-written examples are often used to characterized or stereotype the people who tend to like them (or, rather, the people who are given them in the fiction directed at them), but just because you're a teenaged girl who likes fiction that depicts complex romantic relationships and feelings where three people are involved doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Ultimately, it just means you like something, and if you find examples of it in fiction that you like, then good for you! Awesome! Read those books! Watch those movies! Fiction should make people happy, and if it makes you happy, that's fantastic. If it makes you happy, then it's fulfilling its goal. And if you read and watch things that make you happy, then you're helping the people who wrote such things fulfill their goals as writers, and that's honestly kind of beautiful.
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