BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 5: Panem's Next Top Model

Last time Katniss's paranoia about Peeta reached ridiculous new levels, and our heroes reached the Capitol city. Today we travel very quickly with them through the opening ceremonies of the Hunger Games. I mean, seriously, there is so little detail! In a way, that's a good thing: Katniss is familiar with the ceremonies and the people and is kind of bored with it, so when the President gives a speech she can't be bothered to tell us what he says. But we would kind of like to know what he says! Or what stuff looks like! Suzanne Collins is building up Katniss as a character at the expense of building up Panem as a tangible, believable world.

My Twilight bonafides aside, I am generally speaking a novice in the world of current YA fiction. This wave is all sci-fi and fantasy, and when I was a YA myself all the books were about kids our age surviving in the wilderness. Hatchet, My Side Of The Mountain—we loved that survivalist shit! Until the Branch Davidians. But the point is you can picture a kid on a raft in a river pretty easily. I never really thought about the difficulty of writing huge set pieces until recently, and what I've been coming back to is the Quidditch World Cup. That's the best example of this kind of thing being done right that I can think of. JK Rowling has a huge leg-up in that her main character isn't world-weary and hardened; Harry is all “I love magic, gee willikers!” for the first four books. But Suzanne Collins could have found a way to split the difference—Katniss just kind of staring at the floor and dismissing shit while Peeta genuflects out loud? I'm just spitballing here. Maybe she'll get to filling in the details of the world we're in later. In the meantime, there's this.

Chapter 5

Katniss is in the “Remake Center” getting a full body wax. You read that right, they're removing all of her body hair. All of it? ALLLLL OF IT. So apparently that hasn't gone out of fashion a few hundred years from now. Sorry ladies. Katniss doesn't like it, she says her skin feels “sore and tingling and intensely vulnerable.” That sounds kind of hot to me, but whatever.

“You're doing very well,” says some guy named Flavius.

“Some Guy Named Flavius” is my new band-name. Flavius and the others in the room are not Katniss's stylists, as it turns out—they're just interns or something. And here we get an idea of what Capitol residents look like. Ever heard of the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island? Take that and multiply it by a gay pride parade and then divide it by a purple Teletubby: Flavius has orange hair and purple lipstick, Octavia has dyed her skin green, and Venia has “aqua hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows.” They also have a highly affected manner of speech where they barely move their mouths and the end of their sentences go up like they're asking a question. Is that what mumblecore is?

They leave Katniss totally naked in the middle of a room and Cinna, her stylist, arrives. She says she was expecting someone “flamboyant,” but he is in a simple black shirt and pants with “close-cropped” brown hair. She was expecting mid-90's gay and got mid-aughts gay, in other words. Cinna tells her to put a robe on and they have lunch; he presses a button on a table and it appears. Katniss eyes at her fancy meal and wonders how much work it would take to prepare it herself. Get ready to feel guilty:

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button?

This is why Mark Zuckerberg kills all of his own meat. Trader Joe's has, somewhat ironically, spiritually disconnected me from the earth! Anyway I'm liking this class consciousness stuff that keeps popping up, and I'm interested to see where it goes. Cinna watches Katniss looking at the food and says, “How despicable we must seem to you.” Well, yeah. In Panem the rich profit from the literal death of poor people, there isn't even the kind of abstract distance we have here where a factory worker's labor contributes to the inflated salary of an executive who gives money to a politician who starts a war for the executive's friends and the factory worker's son gets drafted and the factory worker dies of a heart attack at 55. It's a much more direct line, and I think the dispicability of Panem's upper class is not in dispute at all. Not that Cinna mounts a defense of The Hunger Games, yet, but his sentence suggests that Katniss isn't seeing the big picture. I think she's seeing it just fine, Cinna.

Also, it's a little weird that Katniss has all these intense, vague moments with Cinna since I can't possibly imagine how he'll be involved in the story later. She assumes he got stuck with District 12 because he's a new employee. He says he requested it specifically. She notices that his manner of speech is mostly free of Capitol affectations. OK, what of it? It doesn't add up to much because pretty soon the only important thing is the fire suit.

Katniss tells us that every year the tributes are outfitted in costumes based on the industry of their respective districts. Coming from the coal city, D12 is kinda screwed because mining outfits are deeply unsexy. So past stylists have generally throw a mining helmet over a skimpy outfit a la a slut with some bunny ears on Halloween. Yes! My favorite. Sometimes it's even better: we're told that one year contestants were naked except for strategically placed coal dust. I get how that would work for a girl—it would sort of be like Ashley Greene's bathing suit. But for Peeta what's the deal? Would he tuck it back like a coal-dusted Buffalo Bill? Would they paint it like two pieces of coal and a log?

So Katniss dreads whatever kind of bondage-gear she'll but dressed in, but it turns out (again) that Cinna is different. He (and his partner assigned to Peeta) puts our heroes in black jumpsuits and then gives them a cape that is later ignited with synthetic fire. So Katniss and Peeta appear to be burning like lumps of coal. Unattractive as this sounds, it's apparently breathtaking—we get a very brief description of a parade/opening ceremony in which people go crazy for the kids from D12, throwing roses and shouting “Katniss! We love you baby!” or whatever. And Katniss sees herself stuntin' on the jumbotrons and indeed finds it hard to be humble. She starts blowing kisses to the crowd.

I can hear my name being called from all sides. Everyone wants my kisses.

The other thing is Katniss and Peeta are holding hands, per Cinna's instructions. Katniss holds on tight and worries she'll fall off the chariot, and Peeta later confesses to feeling the same way. SYMBOLIC.

I can't help feeling strange about the way Cinna has linked us together. It's not really fair to present us as a team and then lock is into the arena to kill each other.

Right! That's what I have been SAYING! They pull away from the crowds and into the “Training Center” and Peeta and Katniss have the aforementioned “I was so nervous but you were great,” “No, I was so nervous but you were great” conversation. And right on schedule, Katniss realizes this semi-romantic interaction was actually deadly subterfuge. Peeta is only trying to get her panties off so he can CHOKE HER TO DEATH WITH THEM!

Because two can play at this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on the bruise.

These two are headed for one hell of a hatefuck, am I right?

Stray Notes & Questions

• Talk to me about the themes you are seeing so far, five chapters in. We've got threads about government and corruption, class warfare, parental issues. In this chapter we even get a brief foray into reality television.
• We don't hear what the fighters from most of the other districts are wearing, but it's fun to imagine. Maybe District 6's industry is information technology and they just put microchips over their nipples!
• How do you think the waxing scene will be depicted in the film version of this? Will they do it for real, like Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin?
• What if Cinna's last name is Bonne? I will laugh forever.
• Katniss & Peeta: Which one is Kanye and which one is Jay-Z? Discuss.