In re-watching and analyzing what made The Hunger Games a blockbuster book and, subsequently, movie franchise, I stumbled upon a surprising answer: Katniss Everdeen is a drama queen.
Her sister is randomly selected to participate in Panem’s annual juvenile cage match to the death? Girl volunteers on the spot with a cry of desperation “I volunteer as tribute!” Disrupting the entire ceremony like a lovesick ex at a shotgun wedding.
A boy she barely knows is the only thing standing between her and death at the end of the aforementioned cage match. Does she take him out with the poison berries so she can get back to her family that P.S. was the whole damn reason she’s in the games to begin with? Nope. Our girl offers to Romeo-and-Juliet that scene all because the boy shared some bread with her back in the day.
Now, I’m a fan of bread as much as the next carb-lover, but that shit is dra-ma-tic. But do all blockbuster protagonists need to be a little bit dramatic?
The important element to Katniss’s particular brand of drama that elevates her to be not just a run-of-the-mill drama queen but a Blockbuster Drama Queen is that she stirs up all this extraordinary drama for very ordinary (and relatable) reasons. She faces off with a fascist regime that regularly sentences its own people to death basically to save her little sister.
Drama queens get a bad rap for their over-the-top antics, but when there's relatable motivation behind those extreme actions, being a drama queen becomes very human and very admirable.
Don’t we all want to be the kind of person who would risk our own lives to save someone that we love? Hasn’t everyone attended a wedding we full-well knew we should’ve stood up at and cried “I will not hold my peace!”? Anyone with a divorced bestie knows that uncharted hero’s journey. But on the page and on the screen of a blockbuster, we get to experience that dramatic level of bravery vicariously through the protagonist.
This dramatic revelation about the kind of character a blockbuster needs at the helm makes me think of a character like Harry Tasker from True Lies. How the hell does a Schwarzenegger movie from the 90s connect back to The Hunger Games, you ask? Well, simply, Harry is a drama queen too.
I mean at one point he commandeers a police horse to chase down a terrorist through a town square. He rides said horse through a hotel lobby, into an elevator up to the top floor of a skyscraper, then ends up dangling off the roof because the horse refused to leap across the 50-odd-foot expanse to the next building where the terrorist got away to. Oh, and the horse also delicately pulls him back up to the roof by its own reins only to be reprimanded by Harry for not making the death-defying leap.
Now, some of this dramatic flair can be choked up to James Cameron’s budget and hubris. That said, it’s still the character of Harry acting out Cameron’s dramatic fever dream. Harry is a Blockbuster drama queen, and that’s one of the reasons why True Lies was a huge blockbuster.
Katniss might not be as funny or buff as Harry Tasker, but they share a reason for all their drama: protect your family. My previous post about The Shining also points back to that ever-universal theme of familial safety. Perhaps that is a common component all blockbusters share. We shall see…
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LOL I never thought I'd hear an argument claiming Katniss is a drama queen, but I agree. I suppose a part of her being a drama queen stems from the fact that she's a teenager, but it's a valid reason as to why. Death can make a person frantic, hence the drama and extremely emotional scenes. I can't help but wonder if anyone else in District 12 thought she was a drama queen, but in a bad way. She's now a hero in the games, gaining attention and praise. Granted, it's unwanted, but others may see that with envy.
ReplyDeleteZoe, when I was reading Ch. 2 of Zuckerman's book, he mentioned blockbuster protagonists make bizarre choices & that's when it hit me.
DeleteEvery character leading a blockbuster makes bizarre decisions that no real life person could/would make without being called a drama queen. Another fun epiphany about blockbusters.
HAHA!! That made me laugh. They did tell her to be memorable in the intro, and she set the games on fire.
ReplyDeleteKatniss is Regina George for the people!
DeleteOkay, I LOVE this. Katniss is 100% a quiet drama queen. You know the ones, more likely to quietly cry in the corner (with enough sniffles for everyone to notice) rather than bring down mountains to get what she wants. I think the scene with the berries was to give us a little more empathy for her situation, but I agree that she should have just let him eat them. He may have apologized in a moment of mortal weakness, but he threw her BREAD in a puddle...on purpose. Wet bread != love in any stretch of the imagination. Eww.
ReplyDeleteThere are obviously other reasons to save Peeta & I'M being dramatic about the whole drama queen thing, but it's true that her bizarre decisions are what made this series block so many busters.
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