Overall, I like “In a World,” actress Lake Bell’s comedy that indicts sexism in the voice-over industry, but it contains one problematic scene. In it, a studio bigwig played by women’s rights activist Geena Davis critiques a thinly disguised version of “The Hunger Games” films. “Let me level with you,” she says. “This pseudo-feminist, fantasy-tween, chick-lit bullshit is a devolution of the female mission and a cancer to the intelligence of young women.”
As “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2,” the final (and hyper-punctuated) installment in the four-film series adapted from Suzanne Collins’s best-selling book trilogy, hits theaters this week, I thought about how much I disagreed with these words. To usurp Bell’s titular phrase, in a world in which young girls – everyone who identifies as female, really – are routinely condescended to and manipulated by popular media, the “Hunger Games” franchise stands out as a shining exception. More than that, it charismatically instructs a new generation (one for whom the activism of the 1960s is but a twinkle in their grandparents’ eyes) that hegemonies can be toppled if we behave courageously and selflessly. Continue Reading →
