Katnis links with independent girl characters in books

The Hunger Games pulls together many threads in contemporary culture and literature -- including the appeal of the strongKatnis in The Hunger Games young woman character of Katnis. She's clearly linked to similar protagonists in earlier popular books for YA readers, such as Jo March in Little Women, Julie in Julie of the Wolves, and Pippi Longstocking.

Thanks to Monica Hesse, of The Washington Post, for interviewing me for her article "There’s room for both Katniss and Bella as heroines, but who’ll be remembered?"

There are many types of female protagonists.  Katniss is certainly a strong, independent, spunky, non-conformist girl.  This type of character has always appealed to many female readers.  Girls like to read, and watch films, about characters who break the mold, or stretch beyond their cultural construction.  Katnis is part Buffy the Vampire Slayer and part Xena: Warrior Princess.  She's also has some similarity to Lisbeth Salander, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There's also the element of a Cinderella-style makeover, too.Katnis restyled by the Capital

But the book, and perhaps the film, raises interesting questions about how American culture deals with violence.  Do we justify violence when it's done by a strong, spunky girl who is following her own path?  Does that make it more allowable?  It's pretty clear that the book is a critique of violence as entertainment.  But can the film carry out that message as well?  It will be interesting to see how the film is able to visually portray the violence, yet at the same time critique it. Is it okay for a young woman to be intelligent, independent, and have desire to kill people?

According to Roger Ebert's review of The Hunger Games, the film has more violence than thoughtful introspection, which is unfortunate since reading about how the characters think about their predicament was what made the books so compelling. Ebert writes that "the film leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism."

Suzanne Collins has made Katnis an interesting, but deeply flawed, character.  Perhaps that's why she's so compelling.

Excitement for The Hunger Games continues

The Hunger Games film opens in a few weeks and we've noticed that several stores are featuring new covers of The Hunger Games in paperback as well as some other books. There's the Official Illustrated Movie Companion, the Unauthorized Guide to the Series, The World of the Hunger Games, and a Guide to the Hunger Games.  Quite a few.

There's also the question:  Is the Hunger Games going to be bigger than Twilight?  The possibility is there, as this article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger proposes, since the series is popular not just with girls and women but also with boys.  There's a bigger audience to draw from.  Still, as this article points out, the clip previews show that the film is going to be significant different from the book. We're still sad that the first Percy Jackson film was so significantly different.  If the Hunger Games films is too different will it alienate audiences? 

But Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters seems to definitely be in production.  And we'll probably see that.

In the meantime, we're disappointed that the Hugo DVD didn't take more advantage of the possibility to including more early film materials and clips in the basic DVD.

Children's Lit does well with Academy Awards ... or were kids and films misunderstood?

Martin's Scorsese's film interpretation of Brian Selznick's award-winning graphic novel The Invention of Hugo Martin Scorsese shows Brian Selznick's book to young cast members while filming Hugo.Cabret received five Academy Awards last night.  Pretty impressive.  Not the big picture of the year award -- that went to The Artist. But both films received the same number of awards.  Actually, Hugo was nominated for 11 awards, the most of any film this year. Curiously, too, both The Artist and Hugo are somewhat wistful film meditations on early cinema.

We were glad to read on School Library Journal that Brian Selznick was in the audience at the (former) Kodak Theater.

"Being on the red carpet, being in the room live as the telecast was underway, hearing the name Hugo called five times..., all of it was an experience I will never forget," Selznick told SLJ. "[I]t was really fun to introduce myself to famous people by saying I wrote the book that inspired Hugo and having them throw their arms around me, thank me for the story, and tell me they've seen the movie more than once... and some of them had even read the book and loved it too!"

In addition, the award for best animated short film  went to William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg's The A still from The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris LessmoreFantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Here's a link to the 15 minute YouTube video. It's also cool that the film was created by a Moonbot, a Shreveport, Louisiana, studio.  Good to see animation developed in the U.S. and from a studio in the south. It is also available as an Apple app.

The animated film is "a poignant, potent ode to books," according to the Kirkus Review, which seems ironic to incapsulize in an iPhone app.

William Joyce is another imaginative children's picture book author as well as an Emmy-winning television creator of Rolie-Polie Olie and George Shrinks. Disney's 2007 animated film Meet the Robinsons is based on Joyce's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson.

On the other hand...

As YPulse points out today, last night's Academy Award program was not particularly welcoming to tweens or teens.  It began with Billy Crystal putting on Justin Bieber for the "18 - 24 crowd" when, in reality, his core fan base is more 12 - 16 year olds, and primarily girls, too.

Oddly, only two songs were nominated for best song in an era when songs within films, and television shows, are important landmarks to creating a film's environment and atmosphere.  But neither song was performed live.  Why not?  "Man or a Muppet" is such a catchy tune, in an odd way, that even Terri Gross, interviewer of NPR program "Fresh Air," admits she likes it. 

Perhaps Justin Beiber could have performed "Man or a Muppet."  That might have excited Martin Scorsese's daughter, who was sitting next to him during the awards ceremony and looking a bit bored for most of the night.  Or, Why not have Oscar the Grouch present an Oscar?

The final Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 was nominated for three Academy Awards, but did not receive a statue in any of them.  Huffington Post's high school blogger Marissa Piazolla understands Harry Potter fan's sadness when the final film failed to recieve an Oscar this time.  In the categories that Harry Potter was running against Hugo, I actually thought Harry Potter had the better achievement.

On a final note, did you watch closely the preview for The Hunger Games?  Didn't it look like the older sister Catnis is giving the Mockingjay pin to her younger sister Prim before the reaping?  But in the book, Catnis receives the pin from the mayor's daughter when Catnis is about to go off to the reaping.  Catnis isn't familiar with the importance of the Mockingjay pin at that point.  Clearly there are changes afoot.

But we're still going to see the film when it opens.

Hillary Chute lecture on visual memoirs by women Feb. 21

Hillary Chute, a professor at the University of Chicago, will discuss autobiographical comics by contemporary female authors and artists.  Chute’s presentation, “Repetition and Regeneration in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home,” is sponsored by ISU’s English Department.  The lecture will be held Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, room 101, on the ISU campus and is open to the public.

“Comics may be what novels used to be — an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal,” Chute explained in a New York Times magazine article about the importance of graphic narratives.

Chute is a prominent scholar in the field of comics and graphic novels and the author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. 

She is the associate editor for the critical study of Art Spiegelman’s landmark graphic novel MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic.  This spring, Chute and Bechdel, a 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Fun Home, will be co-teaching “Lines of Transmission: Comics and Autobiography” at the University of Chicago.

“I am interested in the ways people address history and understand their lives through cultural invention. My current teaching and research interests lie in contemporary American literature, specifically in how public and private histories take shape in the form of innovative narrative work,” Chute explained.

Chute has published essays about graphic narratives in PMLA, Mfs: Modern Fiction Studies, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Twentieth-Century Literature, The Village Voice and The Believer. She is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of English and a Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

Dickens's 200th birthday celebration begins

Charles Dickens's 200th birthday celebration began this week, but it's destined to last the entire year.  Dickens is beloved in England and all over the world.  As part of the celebrations, I'm teaching a course on Dickens in Fall 2012.  Other events include:

• The celebration began in Westminster Abbey on Feb. 7 featuring his relatives, Ralph Finness and members of the British monarchy.
• Prince Charles and Camilla traveling to the Dickens House to look at where he wrote some of the books.
• BBC's Great Expectations series Christmas 2012
• Numerous conferences throughout the world
• Film celebrations of books adapted into film
• Library exhibits, such as this one at the Morgan in New York.

More details on numerous Dickens celebrations can be found at Dickens 2012.

Gillian Anderson, in center, looking at a book by Dickens with Prince Charles and Camilla

Google named adapted for Dickens 200th birthday