Notice: This essay on the Starvation Video games phenomenon and the rise and fall of YA dystopias was initially printed in 2021. It has been up to date and republished because of the 2023 launch of the prequel film The Starvation Video games: Songbirds & Snakes..
The 2010s noticed the fast rise and equally fast fall of the YA dystopian style, with The Starvation Video games and its followers dominating headlines and in style tradition. It’s been argued that the dystopia increase was impressed by cynicism and anxiousness within the wake of the 9/11 assaults, however for these of us who turned youngsters within the YA dystopia-obsession period, the movies specifically served a special perform: They cultivated a mistrust for the federal government, expressing and amplifying how millennials around the globe have been uninterested in tyrannical leaders.
The Starvation Video games specifically helped popularize what had already turn out to be a thriving literary subgenre, with books from Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel The Giver to Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies sequence shaping the dystopian increase. After which the wave of Starvation Video games copycats oversaturated the market and killed the fad — or so the favored story goes. Creator Suzanne Collins calls again to it along with her novel and now film The Starvation Video games: Songbirds & Snakes, however she’s unlikely to revive the subgenre, even when the film seems to be successful. There are good causes the YA dystopia increase ended, and so they have been constructed into its premises and execution all alongside.
The depth of the fad actually contributed to its finish. In 2014 alone, 4 would-be blockbuster YA dystopian movies hit theaters: The Starvation Video games Mockingjay — Half 1, The Maze Runner, Divergent, and The Giver. However saturation isn’t sufficient to kill a style, because the final decade’s rolling wave of latest superhero movies proves. The YA dystopian style died as a result of it didn’t evolve. E book after e-book and movie after movie laid out the identical tropes, with the identical forms of characters all struggling the identical generic oppression and experiencing the identical teen love triangles. The Starvation Video games struck a chord due to its lurid themes and the best way it intensified its period’s anxieties about capitalism, imperialism, wealth and energy inequality, and expertise, however its followers largely added extra gimmicks and completely different sorts of violence, and referred to as it a day.
Picture: Lionsgate
The Starvation Video games emerged from comparable adults-vs.-youth tales like Battle Royale, however added new layers about media propaganda and the authoritarian construction. Suzanne Collins was impressed by Greek mythology, reality-TV programming, and little one troopers, and she or he used these concepts to provide her books extra texture. Her protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is relatable and all the way down to earth: She doesn’t wish to turn out to be a revolutionary or a hero, she simply desires to maintain her little sister Primrose protected. Her deteriorating psychological well being feels real looking, and it was principally unprecedented in a style stuffed with daring teen heroes who got here via essentially the most horrifying adventures utterly unscathed.
Following the Starvation Video games sequence, subsequent YA dystopia movies weren’t as richly realized, and the creators didn’t appear to care in regards to the traumatic experiences their younger protagonists went via. It’s unrealistic to have a movie about youngsters overthrowing tyrants however little to no concentrate on their feelings. Katniss wasn’t endlessly stoic — Collins permits her to be susceptible, and to study that emotions are an indication of power relatively than a weak spot. Lots of the smash-the-state dystopia tales that adopted averted that form of concentrate on emotions — or simply adopted the Katniss sample of hysteria and anguish, with out discovering new territory to discover.
The Starvation Video games sequence focuses on ending a brutal regime that executes kids for sport, which requires a revolution and a whole restructuring of society. However the tales at all times stopped proper after the most recent oppressive regime fell, as if that might resolve all of society’s issues. Whereas precise youngsters have been battling their very own idealism and a want for a greater world, fiction was telling them that systematic oppression is easy and simply solved with an ordinary good-vs.-evil battle, and that nothing that comes after that battle is fascinating or related. The tales of how these dystopic societies have been rebuilt could be extra novel and engaging, however there was by no means room in YA dystopias for that form of thought or consideration.
Which left nowhere for these tales to go after the injustices have been overturned and the fascist villains have been defeated. All of them constructed momentum and pleasure round motion, however few of those tales ever thought-about what young-adult readers wish to know: After one merciless chief is gone, what comes subsequent? Injustice not often ends with the demise or departure of 1 unjust ruler, however YA dystopian tales not often contemplate the following world order, and the way it might function otherwise, with out stigmatizing its individuals. Revolution, post-apocalyptic survival, and restructuring society are fascinating subjects, however aside from the Starvation Video games’ transient coda about Katniss’ future PTSD, most YA dystopia tales simply don’t discover these areas.
Picture: Twentieth Century Fox
And simply as YA dystopian tales weren’t notably sooner or later, additionally they have been not often that involved in their pasts, and even their current. They nearly by no means explored their societies in any depth, past declaring them to be evil, violent, and controlling. We don’t actually know a lot in regards to the harmful regimes within the Maze Runner or Divergent sequence — we simply know they’re dangerous. The run of dystopian films specifically solely supplied the quickest, shallowest clarification of why a authorities would pressure its kids into mazes, or make them kill one another. The Capitol’s need to terrorize its residents in The Starvation Video games, or The Maze Runner’s concentrate on inhabitants management and catastrophe response — these are political excuses for mass homicide, however not nuanced ones.
On the identical time, YA dystopian tales have been at all times too depending on the hero mannequin, the place a single teenager sparks a revolt and does the majority of the work in taking down a totalitarian state. Though that’s an empowering imaginative and prescient, it looks like a dated, hole mannequin to the younger adults participating in precise collective motion. We’re arguably residing in dystopian instances, amid a altering world the place authoritarianism and fascism are on the rise, each in America and around the globe. And resistance to it needs to be cooperative, not depending on Chosen One heroes. Inequality and oppression are pushed by establishments, not single villains who might simply be introduced down. The simplicity of tales the place one courageous younger individual stops a monster and revolutionizes a society shortly began to really feel like simplistic fantasy.
A part of the best way these dystopian fantasies averted actuality was by avoiding the true and relatable points that youngsters face. Katniss, Divergent’s Tris, and Maze Runner’s Thomas are all youngsters, however their tales’ main concession to their ages are the minor love triangles they face. Their tales discover points round expertise, environmental destruction, and authorities management, however with out, as an illustration, explicitly drawing parallels between the modern methods youngsters use expertise, or work together with the training techniques designed to form them. Youngsters expertise a plethora of feelings as we develop up, however these dystopian movies not often felt genuine about teen angst or anxieties — their heroes felt identical to generic grownup heroes, performed by youthful actors.
In fact, non-white individuals barely exist within the dystopia-film wave. The few BIPOC characters are by no means totally developed, and the viewers by no means will get to find out about their tales. Research spotlight that white characters are much better represented in YA literature than different teams, which can assist clarify the best way some followers have been weirdly bothered by Black characters within the Starvation Video games films — in such a white-leaning style, they not solely didn’t anticipate anything, they couldn’t deal with it when it arrived.
Picture: Lionsgate
These dystopias counsel that they happen in some kind of post-racial utopia, however they get there by suggesting non-white individuals wouldn’t exist in a dystopian society. Regardless of Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley dominating the style with messages of feminine empowerment, they nonetheless reside in fantasy worlds that amplify some real-world points, like authorities overreach and profound inequality, however that hardly handle the opposite actual points dealing with girls and teenage women, like gender discrimination and harassment. Pretending none of this stuff would exist in dystopian society, once we know from actual expertise that oppressive regimes really considerably compound the problem, feels shallow and false.
However who is aware of, because the march towards new fascist regimes continues, the style might revive in a brand new type. Developments come and go, however they are usually cyclical — and the second or third time round, they’re extra prone to have developed. As the variety wave spreads via completely different cinematic and literary genres, from fantasy to romance to sci-fi and past, the YA dystopia style might revive in new varieties. With the rise of extra BIPOC creatives within the business, possibly we’ll get a particular YA dystopian movie with extra characters of shade.
Not all people desires to reside in or think about a dystopian society. The dystopian fad might have pale partly as a result of younger readers and viewers are prepared for some positivity, and for much less fantastical, simplified issues and options. However it might even be that they’re doing the work themselves now. Younger individuals are mounting an increasing number of subtle political campaigns towards the real-world dystopic futures they’re dealing with, from the local weather disaster and the revival of authoritarian governments to nation-specific issues like sectarian violence, wars, white nationalism, and terrorist assaults. Finally, it could be attainable for authors to take inspiration from that actuality, and revive the style in additional convincing and compelling varieties.
