The Girl Who Was on Fire by Diana Peterfreund, Carrie Ryan, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Leah Wilson, Terri Clark, Blythe Woolston Page B
Authors: Diana Peterfreund, Carrie Ryan, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Leah Wilson, Terri Clark, Blythe Woolston
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thing you had to do to get on it was be real, but if you tried to be real you would never make it.
By this time too the words “success” and “fame” had been conflated in American discourse. Kids who watched The Real World did not want to be successful; they wanted to be famous. They did not understand or care that there was a difference between the two. The tragic actors and actresses who achieved fame only to drown in it, from Marilyn Monroe to River Phoenix, were still famous. The housemates on The Real World were famous for being real and successful for being famous, and for almost a decade this was enough for the American public. Then Survivor
came along, the brainchild of a British television producer, and reintroduced the Puritan work ethic to the reality media landscape. To be on Survivor, all you had to do was be real, but once you were on it, you had to be exceptional again—to compete in challenging competitions and outsmart your opponents. It was a microcosm of the old American Dream inside the new, and like The Real World it spawned a host of imitators.
American Idol swung the pendulum back toward the old dream, unfolding season after season like a hyper-speed trip through Hollywood past, with clean, glitzy stages and an unfailing obedience to the will of the people. It rewarded performance in the most traditional way: a straight vote. Critics called Idol many things, but they never called it fake .
While it ascended, the Real World model of fame for free was picked up by the internet. By 2006, when Time magazine’s Person of the Year was “You,” it was unnecessary—hokey—to appear on television to gain fame. The problem was that on the internet, being real was no longer enough; with 900,000 new blogs created per day, 12 dreamers had to dream bigger to get their message across. The absurd rose to the top—obese singers, dramatic chipmunks, focused light saber artistes. Being real was requisite, but now a certain amount of perversion and disregard for shame was also necessary.
Katniss Everdeen, then, is a post-American dreamer whose story pulls from each stage of the past hundred years of media history. Like the housemates on The Real World , she is not selected for the Hunger Games for any particular skill. Her family is struck by the hand of fate in the reaping and she does the best she can in response, selflessly taking the place of her
younger sister, which is what we would like to think we would do. As an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances, her reluctance makes her authentic.
Contrast this with the Careers that she fights against from District 2. Not only are they cunning and bloodthirsty, they want to be there . They train for the Hunger Games and look forward to achieving fame and glory on television. They are like the posers who do not make The Real World , the boys and girls who try too hard; they are also like Gilgamesh, brutally exceptional in the most unrelatable way. By being willing participants in the Games, they “swallowed the Capitol’s propaganda more easily than the rest of us,” says Katniss in Mockingjay , which makes them dupes, quaintly hokey, buying into a system that does not work. They are holdovers from a generation that believes in work rather than realness as the path to success, while Katniss learns it is authenticity that makes her a heroine in a media-saturated age.
But Katniss’ realness is only the beginning. Once her interview brings her to Panem’s attention, she delivers in combat, beating the Careers at their own game. Inside the arena, she takes on the traits that made Richard Hatch a hero on Survivor— ruthlessness—and Kelly Clarkson a heroine on American Idol— skill. The fact that she is drafted into a reality show she then excels at, despite not wanting to, lets her succeed in the old American dream while embracing the new. She is famous for being good and famous for being herself.
I was not good. After my initial choke-up
By this time too the words “success” and “fame” had been conflated in American discourse. Kids who watched The Real World did not want to be successful; they wanted to be famous. They did not understand or care that there was a difference between the two. The tragic actors and actresses who achieved fame only to drown in it, from Marilyn Monroe to River Phoenix, were still famous. The housemates on The Real World were famous for being real and successful for being famous, and for almost a decade this was enough for the American public. Then Survivor
came along, the brainchild of a British television producer, and reintroduced the Puritan work ethic to the reality media landscape. To be on Survivor, all you had to do was be real, but once you were on it, you had to be exceptional again—to compete in challenging competitions and outsmart your opponents. It was a microcosm of the old American Dream inside the new, and like The Real World it spawned a host of imitators.
American Idol swung the pendulum back toward the old dream, unfolding season after season like a hyper-speed trip through Hollywood past, with clean, glitzy stages and an unfailing obedience to the will of the people. It rewarded performance in the most traditional way: a straight vote. Critics called Idol many things, but they never called it fake .
While it ascended, the Real World model of fame for free was picked up by the internet. By 2006, when Time magazine’s Person of the Year was “You,” it was unnecessary—hokey—to appear on television to gain fame. The problem was that on the internet, being real was no longer enough; with 900,000 new blogs created per day, 12 dreamers had to dream bigger to get their message across. The absurd rose to the top—obese singers, dramatic chipmunks, focused light saber artistes. Being real was requisite, but now a certain amount of perversion and disregard for shame was also necessary.
Katniss Everdeen, then, is a post-American dreamer whose story pulls from each stage of the past hundred years of media history. Like the housemates on The Real World , she is not selected for the Hunger Games for any particular skill. Her family is struck by the hand of fate in the reaping and she does the best she can in response, selflessly taking the place of her
younger sister, which is what we would like to think we would do. As an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances, her reluctance makes her authentic.
Contrast this with the Careers that she fights against from District 2. Not only are they cunning and bloodthirsty, they want to be there . They train for the Hunger Games and look forward to achieving fame and glory on television. They are like the posers who do not make The Real World , the boys and girls who try too hard; they are also like Gilgamesh, brutally exceptional in the most unrelatable way. By being willing participants in the Games, they “swallowed the Capitol’s propaganda more easily than the rest of us,” says Katniss in Mockingjay , which makes them dupes, quaintly hokey, buying into a system that does not work. They are holdovers from a generation that believes in work rather than realness as the path to success, while Katniss learns it is authenticity that makes her a heroine in a media-saturated age.
But Katniss’ realness is only the beginning. Once her interview brings her to Panem’s attention, she delivers in combat, beating the Careers at their own game. Inside the arena, she takes on the traits that made Richard Hatch a hero on Survivor— ruthlessness—and Kelly Clarkson a heroine on American Idol— skill. The fact that she is drafted into a reality show she then excels at, despite not wanting to, lets her succeed in the old American dream while embracing the new. She is famous for being good and famous for being herself.
I was not good. After my initial choke-up
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