The Heroic in Mainstream Cinema: Gender and Bravery in The Hunger Games

Abstract

Popular culture in the twenty-first century is witnessing a process of re-signification of the role of the hero, which we analyse here in the film The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012), which depicts a dystopian world enslaved by totalitarian power and controlled by the mass media. Through a deductive approach based on a gender-focused epistemology, this paper explores the film version of the first novel of Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of the same name. Our thesis is that Katniss Everdeen, a contemporary version of Theseus who also shares elements with the myths of the Amazons and Atalanta, subverts the patriarchal order when she is revealed to be an autonomous and courageous subject. Contrary to what has often been the case in audiovisual narratives, this powerful female role does not fall prey to either traditional standards of femininity or an imitation of masculinity, but is constructed independently and with positive results.