there's a scene in the last Hunger Games
movie that I remember being mad about
when it came out in 2015
here's the setup it's the final stages
of a civil war between the authoritarian
capital and the thirteen rebellious
districts the main character Katniss
Everdeen abandons her original mission
of filming propaganda clips to instead
lead a small group of soldiers behind
enemy lines to assassinate the leader of
the capital President Snow an enormous
amount of time is dedicated to this
plotline it takes up nearly 1/3 of the
book and most of the final movie to get
to the presidential palace they fight
through booby traps genetically modified
monsters and dozens of soldiers
major characters died on this mission
and the only reason we think it's
worthwhile is because every sacrifice is
getting the group one step closer to
ending the war and then in the climactic
scene Katniss is nearly at the palace
when the rest of the rebels show up and
Katniss gets knocked unconscious and the
rebels win the war off screen wait what
so this whole plotline was a waste of
time we didn't have to do any of that
this would have happened anyway but
coming back to it now I see things very
differently not as some kind of
oversight or mistake but as a deliberate
and meaningful choice a statement that
entirely fits into the worldview of this
story and one that is sorely needed on a
broader scale it's a statement that
rejects the aura of the chosen one trope
that we see in so much John were fiction
in favor of collective action
you're the one the prophecy spoke up
you're the special me you found the
piece of resistance and the prophecy
states that you are the most important
most talented most interesting and most
extraordinary person in the universe one
of the most common tropes in fiction is
the chosen one you've seen it a million
times
the main character is special in some
way they've been chosen by prophecy to
do something important or are
supernaturally powerful something
external has made them this way and now
they are the only person capable of
doing the plot but even the stories
where the character isn't explicitly
singled out as of the one the
conventions of storytelling you make the
protagonist feel as if they might as
well be a chosen one most stories have a
singular protagonist the story is about
them because they are going to do
something notable if that wasn't the
case the story would be about a
different character so the audience
expects the main character to have some
skill or talent that will make them
uniquely capable of doing the plot there
is an element of pandering to the
audience's desire to feel important that
is inseparable from this trope the
audience identifies with the protagonist
and every time someone tells them
they're the smartest handsome is good
little boy the audience gets a warm
little feeling in their tummies because
they feel like it's being said about
them this is why the trope is so useful
to writers and so common in media but
there is a negative side to the idea
this isn't to say that the trope is
entirely bad or that stories that use it
are bad it's the fact that the trope is
so common that its underlying ideology
that we need one extraordinary person to
come and save us is so deeply rooted in
the ways we think about social change
this is why it's really weird that the
trope is so central in stories about
rebellion
the plots of mr. robot the matrix and
the most recent season of West world are
basically Mad Libs versions of one
another in mr. robot the protagonist
believes the ultra-wealthy are
oppressing the rest of humanity in the
matrix machines are oppressing humanity
in West world the ultra-wealthy and a
machine are oppressing the rest of
humanity and the rest of the machines
but for all the talk the stories do
about the need to rise up against their
oppressors achieve a more equal society
or exert their own autonomy the rebels
as an organization accomplish very
little through collective action in all
of these stories in the matrix the
rebels job is to just not die long
enough for neo to save them all they
have a little more to do in West worlds
and mr. robot in West world season 3 an
AI has a predictive algorithm that
determines what people can and cannot do
it's Dolores's mission to expose this
reality and when she does this it
immediately causes spontaneous rioting
but the rioting merely provides
background noise to the main plot which
is that Dolores has chosen one man Caleb
to make the decision about the future of
humanity in mr. robot Elliot is the most
brilliant computer hacker in the world
in the first season with the help of
like four people he destroys the
financial records of the world's most
powerful corporation this causes all
sorts of riots but that rebellious
energy is again always off to the side
the closest the show gets to depicting
actual organizing is in season two when
Darlene is leading a group of rebels but
they are quickly splintered and
annihilated for the rest of the show
it's almost entirely the story of one or
two people versus the world pulling off
all sorts of daring heists collective
action is not only not necessary for
their final victory against the
ultra-wealthy
but is constantly depicted as a
destructive obstacle so we've got three
extremely popular fictional revolutions
all stories I either love or at least
enjoy where almost everything of
importance is handled by a singular hero
they all conform to the idea that what
we need is a great man or woman to come
along and liberate us and then there's
the Hunger Games
[Music]
so like the previous examples The Hunger
Games depicts a class war the people in
the capital are rich in authoritarian
the people in the districts are poor and
subjugated the centerpiece of the
injustice in this society is the Hunger
Games itself which is a kind of
ritualized slaughter of the poor that is
entrenched into the political structure
of the country while the film's really
only depict the class divisions between
the Capitol and the district's the book
spend a lot more time explaining how
poor people are disadvantaged by
capitalism I mean The Hunger Games in
both the books and the films we're told
that capital citizens are exempt from
being entered into the Hunger Games but
the book also tells us repeatedly how
contestants from poor districts are
unlikely to ever win because the
contestants from rich districts are able
to prepare for the games their entire
lives
the only reason Katniss has any chance
at all is because she was illegally
hunting before being chosen and even
within the poor districts the wealthier
citizens are less likely to get picked
for the games if you're poor you can get
food if you enter your name extra times
into the reaping ceremony where the
contestants are chosen so the people in
the hunger games themselves are usually
not just the poor but the poorest of the
poor due to class differences between
the districts and within each district
so on the set up alone we have a setting
that is stuffed with class conflicts
just like all the other stories
mentioned previously what makes the
Hunger Games interesting though is that
this isn't just a backdrop for a hero
saves the day narrative because Katniss
is a very unique version of the chosen
one trope unlike many chosen one
characters there is nothing inherently
special about Katniss she is not
destined for greatness nor does she have
super powers her importance to the
rebellion comes entirely from the
decisions that she makes so in the first
book Katniss makes two important acts of
resistance that single her out first
she shows empathy for a young girl named
drew in the arena something which is
uncharacteristic for the Hunger Games
competition it's the first instance of
solidarity between districts in the
series the first moment that indicates
that the different sections of the
working class can cooperate at the end
of the games she defies the orders of
the game makers by refusing to kill
Peeta forcing the Capitol to change the
rules of the game again
at the last minute the act shows that
the power of the capital can be
successfully resisted her actions
inspire organized rebellion across the
country and for the rest of the series
her fame is leveraged by various
political players for their own agendas
President Snow uses her to try and tamp
down the uprising and then president
coin uses her to unify the district's so
she isn't quote-unquote chosen in a
traditional sense the way these kinds of
characters usually are but she is chosen
democratically collectively she has
power because everyone agrees that she
has power it's for this reason that all
of the characters in the story treat her
as if she were a chosen one people are
in constant ah of her so Katniss can
only succeed by using her fame to bring
other people into the rebellion as a
result we get to see something that we
don't often see in stories like this
which is a bit of the nitty gritty of
actually building a resistance movement
now this is somewhat undermined in the
films in a way it isn't in the books the
books are told in first-person entirely
from Katniss's perspective which is why
the film's also try to emulate this by
similarly focusing entirely on Katniss
even when that isn't in their best
interest for instance I think the third
movie would be much better if we got to
see Peters perspective while he is
captured in the Capitol rather than
stretching out the scenes with Katniss
yeah that that third movie lags a bit
Katniss is in almost every scene of the
series and the framing of the scenes
she's in are designed to put us into her
headspace emotionally we see things the
way Katniss has seen them sometimes the
camera even gives us a first-person view
of what she's looking at
in contrast the scenes she's not in are
shot more objectively the coverage is
neutral not tilted toward one
character's feelings over another so
there are a bunch of detailed events in
the book that Katniss only hears about
but that the movies exclude or have to
truncate because she's not there and
they don't want to spend that much time
elsewhere so in the second book there's
the scene where Katniss runs into a pair
of rebels from district 8 she learns
that that district is currently in an
uprising and we get a detailed story
about how it was organized how they were
able to coordinate because the noise of
the factories in that district made it
impossible for the capital to surveil
them and how the leaders focused on
seizing strategic locations and then
getting word out to the surrounding
districts this doesn't happen in the
films at all but the first time we see
any kind of uprising is earlier in the
timeline it happens in the first film
after the death of route Katniss's act
of compassion for her sparks immediate
and spontaneous riots in district 11
where rue is from in movies riots are
often all we see of a resistance
movement visually the riots are
shorthand for the general idea that
people are not going to accept the
status quo anymore so a movie like Joker
can end on this moment of apparent
triumph simply because people are in the
street without getting into what happens
the day after the riots the third season
of West world ends with mass rioting and
the declaration that now anything is
possible but again we don't see or at
least haven't yet seen how that
rebellious energy can be transformed
into achievable political goals there is
a persistent and organized protest
movement in mr. robot but it feels like
it exists parallel to everything that
Elliott is doing and so we don't get to
see how the movements are built or
organized either now riots are an
extremely effective tactic and they're
often the beginning of a revolution but
they're also just one tool to force
social change not the complete picture
of what resistance looks like but both
the second and third books in The Hunger
Games are almost entirely concerned with
how to motivate people to organize it
starts with symbolic acts of unity the
three finger salute to have to ruse
funeral or the victors holding hands
before being sent in to the games
then they use media and the narrative
around Katniss to inspire more people to
join the cause it's in this context that
the final climax I was originally upset
about is perfectly fitting with the
ethos of the series it'd be a failure of
the story to spend all of this time
building up a resistance movement only
to have Katniss be the one to do
everything of note instead the Hunger
Games at least gives us a glimpse into a
story where collective action is
necessary within the logic of the story
and not just a sideshow to the heroics
of one person it is harder to tell
stories this way because it is not
crowd-pleasing
it's easy to have the hero and villain
have a fistfight at the end it's hard to
dramatize an entire social movement and
I think there's a significant gap in our
fiction for stories like that The Hunger
Games isn't perfect at this if it had
more point-of-view characters maybe we
could have seen more of the struggles of
the people on the ground but out of any
major piece of genre fiction it gets the
closest at showing us what it takes to
organize a movement and then do we ever
need more stories like that right now
so if you're a writer looking to hone
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thanks for watching everyone
I just like to add that it was a surreal
coincidence to be working on this video
this month considering everything that's
happening right now at the time of
release dozens of American cities are
filled with protesters protesting
against police brutality after the
unjust killing of George Floyd if you
want to do something to help the
protesters then I've left a link in the
description of this video to some places
where you can donate stay safe out there
and keep writing
you