Nous sommes fans… des Hunger Games

Il n’est pas facile de trouver des études sur les fans d’Hunger Games. Cependant, cette trilogie exerce bel et bien une fascination sur les chercheurs. À titre d’exemple, Sean P. Connors, spécialiste en littérature pour adolescents, a édité cette année The Politics of Panem : Challenging Genres, qui offre plusieurs interprétations de la série par différents auteurs. L’introduction, écrite par Connors, résume bien le succès d’Hunger Games.

In 2012, the publisher Scholastic announced that 36.5 million copies of the novels were available in print in the United States alone (Lee, 2012). In the same year, the trilogy surpassed J. K. Rolling’s seven-volume Harry Potter series to become the all-time best-selling books on Amazon (Haq, 2012). As of January 2014, the first two films – The Hunger Games and Catching Fire – in a planned four-film adaptation had broken a box office record, grossing over $800 million domestically (Busch, 2014). By any measure, the trilogy is a commercial success. (Connors, 2014, p. 2)

Un nom revenant souvent dans les travaux liés aux fans d’Hunger Games est celui de Jen Scott Curwood, maître de conférences à l’Université de Sydney. De 2011 à 2014, elle effectua une recherche ethnographique en ligne auprès de fans venant des États-Unis, du Royaume-Uni, du Canada, de l’Australie et de la Nouvelle-Zélande afin de comprendre comment les espaces virtuels peuvent contribuer entre autres à la pratique de la lecture et de l’écriture. L’une de ces fans, Cassie, une jeune Américaine âgée de 16 ans, s’implique dans le fandom d’Hunger Games en contribuant à l’écriture des Potter Games, une aventure où vous êtes le héros impliquant des personnages de l’univers d’Harry Potter.

Through The Potter Games, Cassie had an opportunity to share her writing with a public audience. Within the first nine months of its release, The Potter Games had been visited half a million times and had 40,000 Facebook likes. Released just before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two, The Potter Games was poised to draw readers from two burgeoning fan cultures. Cassie felt it was an incredible honor to be asked to contribute Colin [Creevey]’s story. As a fan herself, she knew that her readers would be smart, be concerned about authenticity, and have high expectations of any Harry Potter and Hunger Games remix. As a writer, Cassie was motivated by the opportunity to learn from mentor texts penned by J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins. She specifically talked about her goals as a writer, and she readily drew on resources that existed within the fandoms and affinity spaces. (Curwood, 2013, p. 89)

Curwood a également étudié le cas d’un Australien de 13 ans nommé Jack. Ce dernier, qui a commencé à lire la trilogie à partir de l’âge de 10 ans, s’est impliqué dans plusieurs espaces virtuels, dont ceux de Mockingjay, de Panem October et de Panemonium.

Over the past three years, Jack’s experiences with literature have been directly influenced by his involvement in online affinity spaces, his consumption and creation of media paratexts, and his interactions with other fans of The Hunger Games trilogy. This ethnographic study suggests that young adults’ access to and engagement in online spaces can significantly shape their literacy development. In an era of high-stakes assessment, literacy is defined by increasingly narrow terms in schools. Online affinity spaces, in contrast, allow multiple pathways for participation. While Jack was motivated by opportunities to be a game designer, programmer, and leader, other young people have different (but equally valid) motivations for taking part in The Hunger Games affinity space. Some fans produce videos, create art, and write stories. Other fans engage in roleplays, share news updates, and post on discussion boards. Some just lurk. Whether they are engaged in active participation or legitimate peripheral participation, the affinity space encourages young people to read, critique, and reinvent young adult literature. (Curwood, 2013, p. 425)

The Hunger Games ne permet pas seulement de développer la littératie auprès des adolescents. La trilogie offre aussi l’occasion de réfléchir sur les stéréotypes liés au genre. En 2014, lors de sa maîtrise à l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique, Roberta Helen Loo a analysé le comportement de Katniss, l’héroïne de la série, d’un point de vue féministe.

I used Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity to help inform my understanding of Katniss’ behaviour. Butler’s idea that performativity is “a stylization of the body, a set of
repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (45) is relevant to the way Katniss chooses to construct and perform femininity. From the moment of the reaping, Katniss shows an awareness of the cameras and how to behave in relation to them. Her role as the star-crossed lover is prominent in both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. She plays a feminized role in order to sustain the narrative that she is in love with Peeta. Moreover, her performance is most successful when she can use Peeta as a counterpoint to determine her feminized role. (Loo, 2014, p. 66)

Si la représentation de la masculinité et de la féminité dans Hunger Games vous intéresse, il y a également cet article de Vera Woloshyn, de Nancy Taber et de Laura Lane publié dans l’International Journal of Social Science Studies en 2013. Bonne lecture !