"More Than Just A Piece In Their Games": Agency And The Docile Body In The Hunger Games And Reality Television

Abstract

In recent years, with the rise of social media and normalized forms of surveillance there has been an increase in the visibility of how female bodies are policed within Western society. As the fight for women's rights over their own bodies continues there has been an increase in the number of strong female protagonists in Young Adult literature, particularly literature classified as dystopian. Contemporary young adult (YA) literature is now filled with characters, such as The Hunger Games' Katniss, that are taking on corrupt social institutions that represent exaggerated versions of those we quite regularly encounter in America. As many scholars have done before me I explore the idea of the female body as a docile body; however, unlike scholars such as Susan Bordo, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler (and others), my focus is primarily on the ways in which youthful bodies are being policed, and the messages that young people within western society are receiving--through the literature targeted specifically toward young adult audiences--that tell them they are able to subvert the systems that seek to deprive them of power and agency over their own bodies. I address the role of modern surveillance, specifically via reality television and social media, in the establishment of increasingly more oppressive forms of power that construct women and children as sex objects, the idea that female agency is predominately an illusion (since women are often unknowingly perpetuating these oppressive forces), and how young women might dispel that illusion through an understanding of the ideologies being perpetuated by the various forms of media.