The Hunger Games: Action-film feminism is catching fire Lisa Schwarzbaum
Burning up
Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen is both strong and vulnerable – a new kind of action heroine who has powered The Hunger Games: Catching fire to a $158m US debut. (Lionsgate)
Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen is a new type of female action film icon, and moviegoers should be very excited about that, writes Lisa Schwarzbaum.
As Catching Fire ignites on movie screens around the world, this is what we know about the 21st Century heroine called Katniss Everdeen: she is strong but also soft. She is brave but she has doubts. She is a phenomenal fictional creation, yet is real enough that moviegoers can draw inspiration from her values, her resourcefulness, and her very human inner conflicts. And she is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who appears not only to be handling her current duties as Hollywood’s finest model of well-adjusted millennial female stardom but doing so with charm. Everdeen and Lawrence: golden girls both.
Personified in Lawrence’s lithe movements and cool, focused gaze, Katniss is a brave, resourceful and independent-minded fighter; but she is also a troubled and vulnerably guilt-ridden human being. Nina Jacobson, the producer of the Hunger Games film franchise, puts it this way: “She is a singular heroine in that the burden of survival weighs on her. She has a ton of survivor’s guilt. And she keeps surviving.”
Girl on fire
It is strange that behaving like a well-adjusted and responsible young woman counts as movie-star news – or that the popularity of a female lead character who is strong and feminine, brave even when scared, compassionate even when imperfect, and respectful even when breaking with tradition counts as feminist heroism. But it does. There is a reason we delight equally in seeing Katniss dressed up (those pretty gowns!) and dressed down (that