Gender Roles In Hunger Games

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For the past few decades, women’s positions improve significantly due to feminist movements, which can be presented through contemporary films. Instead of focusing on male-only heroes, an increasing number of filmmakers tend to create female heroines. Nevertheless, women have not yet achieved reproductive rights. In other words, different from men, who can freely express themselves, female’s actions are still limited by societal norm. Thus, female characters, as a reflection of contemporary females in society, demonstrate the fact that females are attempting to challenge gender stereotypes under societal pressures. Katniss, the heroine in Hunger Games, is presented as a role model. However, Marieme, the working class girl in Girlhood, seems …show more content…

From some perspective, Katniss indeed challenges gender stereotypes. After the death of Katniss’s father, she takes his role as a breadwinner. As a great hunter, she breaks the stereotypical roles that require female to be submissive and passive. Moreover, Katniss can be considered as aggressive comparing with her sweet sister due to her impatience; she has no tolerate of being disrespected, and can hardly control her emotion while being angry. When Haymitch Abernathy ignores her words, instead of patiently repeating one more time, she throws her knife to catch his attention. In addition, she does it again in the scene where she presents her abilities to the judges. These two scenes highlight the hegemonic masculinity within her, which challenge gender stereotypes that require females to be well …show more content…

Without being portrayed as a loving and caring girlfriend, Katniss can hardly survive. According to the film, the controllers set a fire purposely, which has large possibility of killing Katniss. If Katniss continues to be “boring”, which means she doesn’t kill anyone but hiding, it has large chance that the controllers would set another fire until they hear the term of “young love”. “In terms of narrative progression, this project of ‘feminization’, launched in part as a strategy to enhance Katniss’ chances of survival in the Games, is complete at series’ end where Katniss’ main role is that of wife and mother.”(Guanio-Uluru ,123) Therefore, she has to take advantage of her sexuality and behave in the way that others want to see. Even though she preciously fights with Peeta for putting her into a “weak spot”, she follows Haymitch’s advice and behaves like a little girl who is madly in love. “Katniss is put under pressure by several male characters to perform emphasized feminity and the male characters are not required in the same way to appear physically attractive to the audience, prevailing rather through displays of strength and physical prowess” (Connors, 150) Thus, regardless of the fact that Katniss’s dress on fire does somehow show their rebellion by not following the rule of dressing like their district, the most important purpose is to be remarkable and to impress

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