The Harry Potter books were a lot of things, but their most enduring accomplishment may have been to shine a light on the young adult book market as a fertile breeding ground for film franchises. The gold rush has already spawned the Twilight movies, as well as scattered almost franchises like Percy Jackson and the Olympians and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I don't want to suggest that I'm looking down on this category of fiction. I'm not. I loved the Potter books as an adult, and I loved Ender's Game (soon to be another franchise), and I've enjoyed books by writers like Scott Westerfeld and Philip Pullman. I mean, I see the appeal even for adult readers. These books are surprisingly sophisticated and they don't indulge in some of the more obscurantist tics of adult literary fiction. More than that, though, I understand the appeal because young adult authors have become surprisingly good at the "masking effect," something young adult fiction shares with comics. According to comics theorist, Scott McCloud, the masking effect occurs when a central character is abstracted relative to its surrounding such that the reader can imprint themselves on the character. A good example of this occurs in the Twilight books. These books receive a good deal of criticism for having a largely colorless central heroine, but that's exactly the point of Bella Swan. If you read how Stephanie Meyers describes Bella, she's completely vague to the point that she could be, literally, anyone. In contrast, Meyers describes Bella's paramours in minute, almost pornographic detail. It's the reason that devoted readers of the Twilight are so fervid. They have imprinted themselves on Bella. They are Bella. So criticisms of Twilight are seen by its fans as personal attacks on themselves.
Given the level of identification readers have with young adult books, it's easy for writers to create shifty allegories that appeal to a young adult mindset. They share this, too, with comics. Consider The X-Men: The X-Men are a protean kind of allegory given that you can assign them just about any outsider narrative you want. Do you want to see them as emblematic of the trauma of puberty? That works. Do you see a racial allegory? That works, too. The movie versions of the characters explored a queer reading, which is also totally justifiable. Young adult books do this sort of thing, too, and this brings me in a round about way to The Hunger Games (2012, directed by Gary Ross), the latest film franchise to springboard out of young adult publishing. The movie version of the first book is an ideal example of what I'm talking about. I say that these stories are surprisingly sophisticated because there's a post-modern participation with the audience. The audience, as the saying goes, completes the picture. That's totally true of The Hunger Games.
Posts
