SHHG! Episode 14: What the Quell?
Added 2023-09-09 14:01:00 +0000 UTCCatching Fire chapters 3-4
The PAX pox won't keep me away from recording! We've got lots to catch up on after taking a week off for travel, and we spend some time chatting about the PAX trip (thanks to everyone who came to say hi!) and Liz's exciting new musical venture. We've got two rich chapters to discuss this week too, with mostly high highs and a few low lows. What works? Katniss's character development! Peeta's new role! What doesn't work? Katniss's District 11 savior stuff still feels kind of disrespectful. What might work? The Quarter Quell, but how could they possibly make the Games more evil?!
Plus, when we open card packs we learn what the Cornucopia looks like in the movie and ??????????
Comments
Rotating Donald southerland with huge lips in my mind.
Moth Man
2023-09-14 04:15:14 +0000 UTCas someone who has finally freed himself from expectations of being as good at running as I was four years ago before covid, I definitely feel that “knowing that you used to be better at stuff” with the music. also musicchat made me want to pick up MY trumpet again also for the size of panem I’ve kinda been feeling it as like the mid-atlantic? helps explain the low populations at least
TJ Guiney
2023-09-13 22:30:09 +0000 UTCoh and obviously we're also running into a classic case of Good Bodies and Bad Bodies. Good Bodies are what you're born with and make strong through hard work and righteous suffering. Bad Bodies are when you choose to modify yourself, since that can only be accomplished through being rich and privileged. This is supposed to be about wealth inequality but there aren't people not from the Capitol expressing the *desire* to modify themselves but simply can't because they lack the resources that Capitol body-modders have access to. Every character from the Districts is happy with the body they were born with, unless they are unvirtuous people who have been seduced by the Capitol. The desire itself to modify is a sign of decadence and the moral degeneracy of empire.
J G
2023-09-13 17:56:27 +0000 UTCalso the whole reason this is being invoked in the first place is less about inequality and more about Panem being Sort-Of-Rome and as such needs to be shown as decadent and degenerate-coded in its weak, bread and circuses, final days. Just the idea of 'decadence' as a whole is pretty reactionary, a right-wing reading of history that's been mainstream for a long time. And because it's mainstream, you don't have to be actually right-wing to have this 'empires close to collapse have the core imperial citizenry growing weak, morally repugnant and effeminate' idea floating around in your brain, just like you don't have to be necessarily right-wing to have a 'class inequality is best displayed by contrasting your Relatable Straight Oppressed Working Class to Effete Rich Soyboys' idea floating around in your brain too. Both of these ideas are extremely mainstream, all you have to do is not examine your priors. I don't think anyone is accusing the author of being right-wing or intentionally homophobic, just that she's borrowing from and building on some very mainstream ideas that she hasn't examined.
J G
2023-09-13 17:29:52 +0000 UTCThe way that you guys are able to predict things sometimes is so uncanny 😂
Alterstil
2023-09-13 14:18:56 +0000 UTCIt's especially weird because (unless I'm misremembering) the Capitol is never actually characterized as racist. They recreate plantation slavery, but seemingly entirely without intent, as at no point is race made an actually part of the ruling ideology. Notably Katniss only describes the people in District 11 as having "dark skin" instead of as "black people", which would seem to indicate she doesn't have a concept of separate racial categories, which totally goes against the extremely loaded imagery at play.
Ryan
2023-09-11 22:43:13 +0000 UTCI think what immediately hit me with the District 11 stuff is that... it feels like, if you write these racial dynamics emerging without actually explaining the historical continuity at play here, you're actually just kinda inadvertently naturalizing them? Like if in the book the same historical racial dynamic emerges again, down to the aesthetic, and there is no intentionality from the oppressors to replicate it in this fashion for whatever reason, then the book maybe is just sorta accidentally communicating, "This is how things are," even if it goes, "and it's bad," right after.
Cutey! Candy!! Cataclysm!!!
2023-09-11 11:13:25 +0000 UTCYeah that makes sense (Although if the Capitol is everyone like that, that would say that the gays are running the world evily. We wish!) BTW Just read this article about people shocked that Rue was black. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/white-until-proven-black-imagining-race-in-hunger-games
Joshua Smith
2023-09-11 05:49:06 +0000 UTCWhy does Liz knowing EVERY DETAIL about EVERY TRIBUTE make me laugh so hard?
David Larson
2023-09-10 20:37:53 +0000 UTCthis is a great idea, I wish I'd thought of that!
The Shrieking Shack
2023-09-10 19:41:33 +0000 UTCFor sure--we discussed this a bit in the first book discussion on the same topic, but I don't think it's a very good visual metaphor for economic disparity specifically because of what visual elements the book is borrowing from. I can tell that it wants to be a Versailles-style display of opulence, but their outfits and behavior feel less Rococo and more of an amalgam of what was popularly understood as gay culture at the time it was written. It's just sorta backwards--these are counterculture stereotypes, so what does using them as a metaphor for the people in charge say? I don't think it's intentional maliciousness on the author's part, but it does come off as a little thoughtless, maybe?
The Shrieking Shack
2023-09-10 19:41:21 +0000 UTCEpisode summary: "the tumpet. bwaaah" (source: https://www.tumblr.com/gwynndolin/635761291802411008/the-tumpet-bwaaaa?source=share )
Lambda
2023-09-10 17:06:20 +0000 UTCNext time you do a con you should hand out signed dupes of the hunger games cards lol
Zachary Coleman
2023-09-10 14:50:56 +0000 UTCI was screaming at the podcast at times! The body modification stuff that the stylists have is a big way of showing economic disparity. With the people in Capitol having so much money that they can spend it on changing their hair or face repeatedly. It's intriguing how the stylists are part of the games (getting them ready), while also being viewers too.
Joshua Smith
2023-09-10 13:51:57 +0000 UTCDo we think coal school has summers off?
Marisa
2023-09-10 04:24:23 +0000 UTCi can't wait to find out how we somehow called every single way they'd make the quells more intense
The Shrieking Shack
2023-09-09 23:46:02 +0000 UTCThe amount of shouting at the podcast during this one… oh boy
Liam Philipson
2023-09-09 23:24:14 +0000 UTCOmg I love the music chat. I was a cello nerd in hs. In fact, we did play a big arrangement of the pirates of the carribean score, but I was playing the solo part of the saint-saens cello concerto at the same concert so I was mad we also had to do something silly and popular 🙃
Sam Harrison
2023-09-09 20:44:14 +0000 UTCI really like the part where the stylists are having katniss mom teach them how to do her braids and she says they’re so respectful and nice to her mother that she feels bad for how she’s always feeling superior to them
Marisa
2023-09-09 19:33:56 +0000 UTCOh man, can't wait to listen! I've been reading ahead for the first time, so it's pretty exciting 😊
Sam Harrison
2023-09-09 16:39:53 +0000 UTCDistrict 12 getting sillier and funnier, cause of what we learn about the rest will come up again
ZiggyWSB .
2023-09-09 15:11:45 +0000 UTCHaven't listened to the pod yet but I read the description and decided to search the Cornucopia because I had forgotten what it looked like in the movie and found this utterly bizarre image https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-chandler-games--27021666486400786/
Kzinssie
2023-09-09 15:10:48 +0000 UTCHaha, my wife is a composer and was eavesdropping when you guys were talking about music. Her disappointment when I had to tell her this was not a music podcast... LMAO
Alterstil
2023-09-09 15:05:24 +0000 UTCI enjoyed the music chat! My community band started back up recently and I've been having fun with it, so I'm glad Liz is having a good time too :)
Grace A
2023-09-09 15:00:16 +0000 UTC
