Dystopian Images of Law and Visual Performances of Identity in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
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Sidia Fiorato
Sidia Fiorato is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Verona. Her research interests include law and literature, detective fiction and the legal thriller, literature and the performing arts, the fairy tale, Shakespeare Studies, gender studies, health humanities, literature and technology. She is a member of ESSE (European Society for the Study of English), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica), AIDEL (Associazione Italiana Diritto e Letteratura), CUSVE (Centro Universitario di Studi Vittoriani e Edoardiani). Among her publications,
Il Gioco con l’ombra. Ambiguità e metanarrazioni nella narrativa di Peter Ackroyd (2003),The Relationship Between Literature and Science in John Banville’s Scientific Tetralogy (2007),Performing the Renaissance Body. Essays on Drama, Law and Representation (edited volume with John Drakakis, 2016).
Abstract
Susanne Collins’ trilogy The Hunger Games presents a dystopian world grounded upon the power of images. The controlling government uses visual eloquence to determine and project an accepted conception of the real and of its subjects’ identity which forcibly engenders normative commitment. Its main instrument in this sense is represented by “The Hunger Games”, an annual event in which two tributes are selected in each of the 12 districts of Panem to compete in a brutal fight to death until one victor remains. This acts as a punishment and a memento for the huge uprising of the past which led to the retaliating destruction and elimination of District 13. Within this context, tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark engage in a visual and narrative counterposition against the government to reclaim the articulation of their identities and disrupting the created hyperreal dystopia of power.
About the author
Sidia Fiorato is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Verona. Her research interests include law and literature, detective fiction and the legal thriller, literature and the performing arts, the fairy tale, Shakespeare Studies, gender studies, health humanities, literature and technology. She is a member of ESSE (European Society for the Study of English), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica), AIDEL (Associazione Italiana Diritto e Letteratura), CUSVE (Centro Universitario di Studi Vittoriani e Edoardiani). Among her publications, Il Gioco con l’ombra. Ambiguità e metanarrazioni nella narrativa di Peter Ackroyd (2003), The Relationship Between Literature and Science in John Banville’s Scientific Tetralogy (2007), Performing the Renaissance Body. Essays on Drama, Law and Representation (edited volume with John Drakakis, 2016).
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- Foreword: Law and Art in the Aftermath
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- Dis-Affective Justice in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006)
- Contemporary Art in the Aftermath of Legal Positivism: The ‘Other’ Contract Art as Material Jurisprudence
- ‘NO GO’: Artists, Trespass and the Aftermath of Occupation
- Research
- Dystopian Images of Law and Visual Performances of Identity in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
- Books, Broadcasters and the BBC: The Conversations Among British Modern Literature, Media and the Law
- Falling Man and the Aesthetics of Terrorism
- Book Reviews
- Shulamit Almog: The Origins of Law in Homer
- Kieran Tranter: Living in Technical Legality: Science Fiction and Law as Technology
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Foreword: Law and Art in the Aftermath
- The Right(s) to Remain: Art, Asylum and Political Representation in Australia
- Dis-Affective Justice in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006)
- Contemporary Art in the Aftermath of Legal Positivism: The ‘Other’ Contract Art as Material Jurisprudence
- ‘NO GO’: Artists, Trespass and the Aftermath of Occupation
- Research
- Dystopian Images of Law and Visual Performances of Identity in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
- Books, Broadcasters and the BBC: The Conversations Among British Modern Literature, Media and the Law
- Falling Man and the Aesthetics of Terrorism
- Book Reviews
- Shulamit Almog: The Origins of Law in Homer
- Kieran Tranter: Living in Technical Legality: Science Fiction and Law as Technology
