{"id":1700,"date":"2012-03-29T10:15:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T14:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2012-03-29T10:15:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T14:15:17","slug":"afraid-to-see-the-hunger-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/afraid-to-see-the-hunger-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Afraid to See The Hunger Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheI know I\u2019m going to see it.\u00a0 Probably this weekend.\u00a0 But I\u2019m afraid.\u00a0 The book disturbed me so much when I first read it that I\u2019m reluctant to put myself through that again.\u00a0 That\u2019s the main reason why I\u2019m afraid to go: true pure cowardice.<\/p>\n

The second reason is my fear of erasure.\u00a0 When I see a film version of a book I love, it superimposes images over the powerful, individual ones I have imagined, and they are erased forever.\u00a0 I can\u2019t find my own vision of Hermione\u2019s face or wild, bushy hair anymore.\u00a0 Wilbur and Charlotte no longer have their own, true plaintive and soothing voices.\u00a0 Edward Cullen, alas, is nothing like my own mesmerizing, smooth-voiced, vulnerable Edward Cullen anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 I know the exchange can be worth it, as in the case of the dining hall at Hogwarts, which is even more magical in the film than it was in my mind, but even there, I\u2019ve surrendered my own imagination to the common, shared vision of every other movie-goer.<\/p>\n

I see Katniss as a skinny, scrappy, dirt-covered kid with a Southern accent.\u00a0 Her attitude is in her stance, and in the inner workings of her mind with all those quick-thinking fragments and decisions.\u00a0 I lived her perspective through the first-person narrative of the novel, and I still feel her loneliness and determination, her love for Prim and Rue.\u00a0 Suzanne wrote the book, but once I read it, Katniss and Peeta became mine, in the way only I absorb book characters.\u00a0 I can\u2019t easily give them up in exchange for the Hollywood versions.\u00a0 So far, I\u2019ve avoided watching any trailers, except for one that came up on TV during Modern Family<\/em> last night, which both fascinated me and made me cringe.\u00a0 So far, the book experience is still pure.\u00a0 Mine.<\/p>\n

So why will I go to the film? \u00a0Curiosity will take me, plus trust that I\u2019ll be truly entertained, and the little kid feeling of not wanting to be left behind.\u00a0 My son has seen it already, and my husband wants to go with me.\u00a0 I can\u2019t choose to be blind to a major phenomenon that is reflecting and shaping my culture right now, either.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ll go.\u00a0 Don\u2019t mind me if I get a little moody and difficult in the aftermath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know I\u2019m going to see it.\u00a0 Probably this weekend.\u00a0 But I\u2019m afraid.\u00a0 The book disturbed me so much when I first read it that I\u2019m reluctant to put myself through that again.\u00a0 That\u2019s the main reason why I\u2019m afraid to go: true pure cowardice. The second reason is my fear of erasure.\u00a0 When I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1708,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions\/1708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}