If you're going to be offended...
So it appears there is a little bit of a curfuffle over the use of a sexualized Jennifer Lawrence on the cover of Glamour magazine. Elle LaPraim over at her blog shares the following critique:
Of all the things to be offended by, I'm not sure I understand why this would be the point of rage.
Warning: There are spoilers for the movie under the cut
Now to be fair, I don't see anything that overly done for Glamour magazine. It is an adult beauty magazine and it features on its pages an adult looking beautiful. In fact, I barely recognize Jennifer Lawrence in the pictures from her appearance in The Hunger Games, given how radically different she looks with her hair up and without the soft makeup to give her face some age.
But what does concern me is the assertion that the target audience for The Hunger Games is girls aged 12-17 and their mothers, and not adult men over the age of 18.
Again for those not familiar: It's a story about a girl who competes in to the death combat against 23 other children aged 12 to 18. It's about how many of those "Tributes" are not fellow competators but simply cannon fodder so that the Districts can say that they sent their tribute. I was told by one of my classes that upon the death of one particular character that there was a walk out of the theater because too many of the younger audience members couldn't handle it anymore. Good on those parents for recognizing that this wasn't a movie for 10 year olds, and shame on them for not doing a little more homework before taking them.
I think that rather than being upset at the sexualization of an adult, there is better anger to be directed at the effort to present such violence and darkness as entertainment to children who don't have the emotional maturity to handle it.
Who is the audience they are going for here? It appears to be men over the age of eighteen, which is a demographic extremely unlikely to go see this film. The moviegoers mostly likely to see The Hunger Games are young girls between the age of 12-17, along with their mothers. That is an audience that clearly does not need to see a character's cleavage in order to want to rush out and buy tickets to the movie.
Of all the things to be offended by, I'm not sure I understand why this would be the point of rage.
Warning: There are spoilers for the movie under the cut
Now to be fair, I don't see anything that overly done for Glamour magazine. It is an adult beauty magazine and it features on its pages an adult looking beautiful. In fact, I barely recognize Jennifer Lawrence in the pictures from her appearance in The Hunger Games, given how radically different she looks with her hair up and without the soft makeup to give her face some age.
But what does concern me is the assertion that the target audience for The Hunger Games is girls aged 12-17 and their mothers, and not adult men over the age of 18.
Again for those not familiar: It's a story about a girl who competes in to the death combat against 23 other children aged 12 to 18. It's about how many of those "Tributes" are not fellow competators but simply cannon fodder so that the Districts can say that they sent their tribute. I was told by one of my classes that upon the death of one particular character that there was a walk out of the theater because too many of the younger audience members couldn't handle it anymore. Good on those parents for recognizing that this wasn't a movie for 10 year olds, and shame on them for not doing a little more homework before taking them.
I think that rather than being upset at the sexualization of an adult, there is better anger to be directed at the effort to present such violence and darkness as entertainment to children who don't have the emotional maturity to handle it.
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Rachel
(new)
Apr 02, 2012 09:38PM
I see a huge disconnect in how we view sex versus how we view violence in our society and this is a perfect example. How can you be upset to see these rather tame pictures of an adult actress who happens to portray a teenager in a film, but not mention that she plays a teenager in a movie that is about the ritualized killing of other teenagers? If you are going to be offended by the hunger games, at least be offended by the offensive parts.
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My thoughts exactly. (I think)And if we're being totally honest it's not just other teenagers; it's ~children~. Some of the "Tributes" are as young as 12 which is, generally, an age that's off limits for that kind of violence.
Makes one wish for the "good old days" of Lord of the Flies when violence had some literary punch to it and it was a significant act, not reality TV.
You can be sure that somewhere a network or three are batting around ways to make a Hunger Games reality show...oh, not with the killing, of course not...but....*sigh*
Batting around?I'm sure it's in post production as we speak....
