Right now? Katy Perry.
I turn on the radio and hear her singing about strength, getting the eye of the tiger, and roaring. Meanwhile Miley Cyrus is grabbing every phallic object she can find and miming blow jobs for the camera.
A couple of years ago? Miley, of course.
Miley was singing about strength and enjoying the journey while Katy Perry was singing about extraterrestrial sex and kissing girls and liking it.
This ambiguity, I think, is the joy of music. I can turn the radio on and off, switch the station, encouraging role model behavior based on lyrics and meaning behind each individual song while making irrelevant the singer and the singer's personal views.
This truth also stands with movies and television. I can watch the remake of The Parent Trap with my daughter and enjoy the content without encouraging her to see Lindsay Lohan as a role model. She can love reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club someday without wanting to grow up to be like Britney Spears.
Unfortunately, this logic does not hold true with literature, which includes literature that is developed into film. I cannot turn off a book. I cannot allow my daughter to read a book that deals with real life, relatable issues (as all literature should) without having a deep discussion about the content and meaning.
Which brings me to the real issue at hand: Twilight versus Hunger Games.
Both of these series of books and films have sparked a teenage craze. Many of my students, and even my family members, have read both series and seen all the films.
But if you think about it, these stories teach strikingly contradictory lessons.
Bella is lost, alone, dark, depressed, tragic. She is inherently weak, only finding strength in men throughout the first three books. If one were to argue that she stands up and fights at any point in these first three books, it can only be said that she sacrifices herself for romantic love. She is willing to die for love. Blah blah blah. In the fourth book, Bella only becomes strong once she has been turned into a vampire, i.e. upended her life and all of its meaning for a man.
I knew long before I even thought about the dichotomy between these two series that I could not possibly encourage Celaya to someday read Twilight. What message does it deliver to little girls? Life is only worth living if you are hopelessly tied to a man whose everlasting loves requires your entire existence and identity? No thanks.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we have The Hunger Games heroine, Katniss. She is quite the reluctant heroine, too. She hunts, illegally, for food to feed not only her own family but also the families of those she loves. She sacrifices herself for her helpless and innocent sister. She declares that she never wishes to marry, never to have children, because the world is far too bleak and damming to curse a child with its burdens. When push comes to shove Katniss rises to the occasion every time. She shows real ingenuity against a brutal and harshly fearsome government entity, not because she is arrogant or prideful, but because she has a clear sense of right and wrong and refuses to buckle under even the harshest pressure.
The messages within Hunger Games are legion. Is there a love story? Sure. Life is full of love. It would be ridiculous to expect a three book series not to include love. But even here the reader does not have to bear with unending weeping and heartbreak because of a bad breakup, the heartbreak in these books is much more serious in terms of real decisions about what love even means and who a woman should choose in all practicality (as opposed to pure sexual attraction) to spend her life with. And the answer to that question, as Katniss realizes, is quite complex (and also, thankfully, not the primary point of the story).
In mentioning my feelings about these two series to my boss, he nodded his head, agreeing with my sentiment, and said, finally, "But they both have to look good, don't they?" Well, duh, it's Hollywood. He was of course referring to the films. And that is a completely separate discussion. The point I am making here is about the actual works of fiction.
To that end, I have donated my Twilight books to the local bookshop so that I can stand by my declaration to make all books on my shelves available to Celaya as she becomes interested in them.
As for the Hunger Games series, I will not display it on my bookshelf.
I will put it on hers.
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