Schadenfreude In The Hunger Games

Speaking of Taste: The Hunger Game Trilogy

The bestselling trilogy series by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, is considered as trash and reading it indicates bad taste for serious moral and ethical questions and controversial debates it has raised. And is was listed as the No.5 most frequently challenged book in 2013, according to American Library Association. “Challenged” here is defined by American Library Association as official requests to schools and libraries to remove the book. This essay is aimed at analysing key elements of typical critical responses to this book. They are schadenfreude, feminism and violence as listed below.

To begin with, “schadenfreude”, by its definition, means pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. In The Hunger Games, we see schadenfreude in its extreme form and the book is dismissed as it presents tributes’ suffering as mass entertainment. (Galek) In the battle, mostly by fighting

and killing, the more tributes suffer, the more entertaining the game becomes. The gamemakers and the audience enjoy seeing tributes battle and not wanting them to dye too fast, because the game would be not fun enough then. Cato’s slow death in the end of the novel is a telling example, which best exemplifies that principle. Once mutated animals have defeated Cato, they don’t kill him straightaway, rather, the gamemakers want him to remain alive as it creates a remarkably grisly spectacle. And in the finale of the game, the gamemakers even prolonged the suffering for they wanted the audience to keep watching. What’s more, the suffering is not necessarily purely physical, it could be psychological as well. For instance, the most drawing romance of Katniss and Peeta, which is called “star-crossed lovers”, meaning ill-omened, add much more fun to the game because it is so fascinating but to be doomed. (Galek) Critics argued that “Even to read The Hunger Games Trilogy is to indulge in schandefreud. […] Let’s be honest: Would the books be as fun to read if the stakes weren’t so high?” (Shaffer 87) Though, I think the response---“Schadenfreude seems to be an inescapable part of human nature.” --- alone can’t be enough to answer the reason why it appears like it is so easy for people to enjoy watching innocent tribute, especially children, suffer. What makes easier for people to give free rein to people’s shadenfreude is the sense of superiority. In the novel, tributes come from Districts are regarded as savages in the eyes of Capitol’s citizens because they are poor and because of their barbaric appearance. Take people from Districts as an example, they are mostly miners, with hunched shoulders, broken nails, swollen knuckles and sunken faces. Besides, they are extremely hairy compared to Capitol citizens, which makes them much more like animals--- “nonhuman”. Before Katniss go into battlefield, the prep team does a lot shaving, waxing, cleaning and dressing to her body so as to make her appear less barbarian. (Shaffer 81) And after that one member of the prep team even exclaims that “Excellent! You almost look like a human being now!” (Collins 62) So by this kind of dehumanization, a victim is identified as less than human, the “human beings” in the Capitol feel strongly superior and enjoy watching them suffer with little shame. This reveals the configuration of the dominant values in modernity that human beings are superior to animals.
Secondly, when it comes to discourses of feminism, taking the following characteristics into consideration, many critics read the trilogy as taking a feminine stance. As the protagonist of the film, Katiniss embodies everything the weak female stereotypes lack. (Burdine) She is the head of the family and outstandingly expert at a bow and arrow while hunting. Moreover, she is physically strong, athletic, independent, self-confident and courageous. Above all, she is not interested in romantic endeavors. (Loobeek 8) As Katha Pollitt suggests, “Katniss has qualities usually given to boys: a hunter who’s kept her mother and sister from starving since she was 11, she’s intrepid and tough, better at killing rabbits than expressing her feelings, a skilled bargainer in the black market for meat”.
Nonetheless, as mentioned before, before Katniss enters the game, she is forced to receive a lot of cleaning and dressing.

And the dressing here is related to feminine beauty norms. Katniss has to appear beautiful so as to gain support from patrons to get life-saving resources in the games. So here, The Hunger Games “convey messages about the importance of feminine beauty not only by making 'beauties' prominent...but also in demonstrating how beauty gets its rewards”. (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 722) In the novel, Katniss's appearance as a heteronormative object of desire, with how she looks and is desired often viewed as more important than who she is (Woloshyn et al. 155), actually reinforces emphasized feminity. The contrary ways Katniss is characterized, as heroic or say feminine yet a sexual object submissive to male norms actually reveals “the transformational and yet deeply conservative character of American ideals of feminine strength, sexuality, and agency" (Hager 62). And that is the overwhelming ideological values in modern

society.
Thirdly, the debate over the violence in the book is also a main concern among readers and critics. Challengers argue that teenage is a time of innocence and protection--- a stage guardians and mass media should offer them optimistic things excluding “those harmful things” like sex and violence---and they think The Hunger Games obviously contains too much violent scene for teenagers to watch. For example, in one scene, a man is lashed and thrashed by the soldiers, with his injured and bloody back. And later on, a senior man is battered by the soldiers and they execute him by a gunshot to the head in public. However, defenders are saying that teenage is a time for young people to prepare for the adversities in the real world and they should be cultivated to question social mores and develop individual standard of values. The Hunger Games Trilogy actually falls into dystopian genre which mostly depicts some worst-case apocalyptic scenarios caused by government autocracy or environmental catastrophe. And a notable feature of novels of this genre is that there is a typical heroic protagonist typically struggling for a better world. Many defenders maintain that for centuries western culture are presenting young audience with violent material and this prominent feature of dystopian fiction is positive for didactic purpose. A child and adolescent psychiatrist at St. Joseph Hospital, DeSilva comments that “adolescents are particularly attuned to this sort of media because it helps them define their own ethical boundaries.” So in conclusion, the challengers’ response functions ideologically to reinforce elements of social structure, the idea that young people are unable to think on their own and can be easily brainwashed. The dominant social power distrust teens’ strength, always considering them as innocent, vulnerable, sacred little things who know nothing about “perilous and detrimental” things and are supposed to be protected. Our society simply doesn’t believe that teens indeed actively look for a better way to do things.
All in all, with the analysis of discourses of “Schadenfreude”, “feminism” and “violence”, The Hunger Games Trilogy, being dismissed as ‘trash’ and ‘bad taste’ essentially reveal the configuration of culturally ideological social values such as human beings’ superiority, women’s being subservient object of male norms, and teenagers’ innocence and vulnerability.