This piece is good in itself, but it got me thinking about and noticing something else.
If someone is over 35 or so, they tend disdain anything and everything to do with The Hunger Games. If below 35, they probably like it. (I am over 35, but as usual I am an outlier.)
Why causes this divergence of views? It’s not quality; Catching Fire was a great film, one of the best released in 2014. And the books are quite a bit different than the films.
It’s not maturity, as that just doesn’t map very well to age in my experience.
The split views about the works comes I think from culpability and its denial. The over-35ers realize the books and films are aimed at them – even if subconsciously — and that the works are allegorically holding them rightly accountable for the world they’ve created and are going to create. We are, after all, living in the early stages of a slow-motion climate apocalypse.
No one likes being blamed, even if the blame is placed rightfully.
My contention is that almost all of the over-35er antipathy toward those works stems from their correct realization that they are the villains portrayed in the works.
And they do not like it one bit.
By this reasoning, the further 35 is behind you, the less likely it is that someone would like the series. I don’t quite identify with either the adults or the contestants. It’s not like people from my moment in time are in actual power in any great numbers. “Everything is so fucked and there’s no way to unfuck it because dinosaurs rule the earth,” is not something you think if having kids is an option.
I think Mockingjay, especially, is difficult to read because Katniss is obviously traumatized the entire time, and in the postscript she sounds miserable in her happy ending. The way it’s written I have no doubt she’s going to have a major freak out when her kids turn 14.