Incredibly perceptive take on The Hunger Games as a comment on media as understood by millennials and ‘social media’ generation of tweens that made the book - and movie - a blockbuster. Glynnis MacNicol draws an amazing analogy between Sandra Fluke & HG heroine Katniss Everdeen that actually is not contrived in the least. The timing is perfect, almost uncannily so.
Unlike those of us who agonize over the ever-shifting privacy concerns of social-media sites like Facebook, Katniss is not only constantly aware of the public gaze, but is so reconciled to its realities that is does not even merit any sort of reflection. …Equally telling is that Katniss does not devote any energy agonizing over her appearance or attempting to improve it—especially striking in a story centered around a teenage girl. Instead it is like a secondary character in the storyline. One of the most scathing criticisms she offers of Panem—the rich capital city where the Games take place—is that they are grotesquely obsessed with their appearance. Katniss, meanwhile, coldly delegates these image duties to her “makeover team.” …Katniss sees that her perceived image, so long the backbone of successful advertising campaigns everywhere, no longer has anything to do with value or self-worth; it is simply an individual power play. Whoever is best at image-making gets the power, and in the battle for power there are no good guys. There are simply the power-hungry and those who suffer at their hands.