The Hunger Games: transmedia, gender and possibility

ABSTRACT

Can the democratizing power of transmedia facilitate positive changes for women as media producers, consumers and audience-members? We discuss this question with reference to the transmedia intellectual property, The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008ff), first examining how it functions as a transmedia property, then considering the ways in which the critical literature has addressed its potential for positive change. We identify two key strands within the critical analysis of this transmedia property, the ‘failure of agency’ and the ‘cop-out ending’ arguments, which we suggest do not fully account for Collins’ text. Although we find that The Hunger Games book series offers positive roles and opportunities for women, we conclude that its progressive potential is constrained and diluted as it enters the transmedia world, as a consequence of commercial imperatives, exemplifying how transmedia offers some definite but limited opportunities for change.

KEYWORDS:

• Transmedia
• Hunger Games
• gender
• agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Currently the most prominent and detailed fan site is The Hunger Games Wikia (n.d.). See also Curwood (2013) for an analysis of Hunger Games ‘Online Affinity Spaces’.

2. For further examples in relation to gender roles and performance, see Hansen (2015), Oliver (2013), Kirby (2015) and Oliver (2014). Other critical pedagogical utilizations of The Hunger Games include topics such as media literacy; the promulgation of an ethic of care and compassion: collectivism as an ‘antidote’ to capitalism (e.g. Aitchison 2015; Burke 2015; Fisher 2012; Hand 2015); an ethics of process and openness (e.g. Jansen 2015); social justice and peace education (Layfield 2013; McEvoy-Levy 2017); and even lesson plans for science teachers regarding bioethical principles around genetic engineering (Cook, Keller, and Myers 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Baker

David Baker teaches Screen Studies in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at Griffith University. Recent publications on popular culture topics include essays on Jim Jarmusch and Memphis’ musical legacy, Jean Rollin’s vampire cinema, 1950s Jukebox Musicals, David Bowie’s cover versions and Elvis Presley on screen. His recent publications include Letting the Wrong One In: Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture, co-edited with Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bienkowska and Stephanie Green, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Elena Schak

Elena Schak is a film maker and senior research officer at the Centre for Environment and Population Health at Griffith University. Her research interests include gender and feminism, particularly in politics, law and cultural studies. She has just released the film, Dealing with Disasters: the Silent Achievers in Public Health, about public health and disaster management in a climate-changing world.