Looking for someone to do a 1250 word essay that compares 1 scene from 2 black mirror episodes to choose from and 2-course articles. the prompt is to " Analyze how your film scene represents an issue

Wong 6

Amy Wong

Professor Farnsworth

W131

28 October 2014

Katniss Everdeen: The Enlightened One

Katniss Everdeen, the main character of Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games, lives in a dystopian world divided into twelve districts. These twelve districts are governed by one wealthy Capitol and its leading officials. A yearly sacrificial competition, referred to as “the Games”, requires the selection of two tributes from each of the twelve districts that must fight to survive in a designated arena. When Primrose, Katniss’ younger sister, is selected to be a tribute, Katniss does something unheard of and volunteers in her place. As a result, she must prepare to fight for her life in the Games. This begins the complex relationship between Katniss, the Games, her world, and its society. Because of this relationship, Katniss acts in ways that critique the system in which she lives, and which might be applicable to the real world.

In a particular scene, every contestant of those games is to show their skill in order to win the favor of sponsors and high ranking individuals from the Capitol. This takes place in a large open area, like that of a parking garage stripped of any color or markings, just gray walls and subtle lights. Upon her turn, Katniss Everdeen shoots an arrow, her weapon of specialty, at a target and misses. Throughout the scene, the camera angles alternate primarily between down at Katniss from a high angle, and up at the judges from a low angle. When Katniss misses the target, the people watching laugh and quickly disregard her. She shoots another arrow from her bow, hitting the target perfectly in the center. However, the sponsors and officials aren’t paying attention. Frustrated, she shoots a third and final arrow into an apple decoratively placed into a cooked pig’s mouth that all of the officials are gathered around in their elevated room as they mingle and fix their plates. The people of the room freeze in shock, surprised at the apple being pinned to the wall by an arrow so close to all of them. Katniss then thanks them for their “consideration,” and puts the bow back before exiting.

Like the dystopian world Katniss lives in, the world described in McKenzie Wark’s “Agony (on The Cave)” is similar and may help to understand the relationship of the districts, the Capitol, and the people as represented in the scene. Wark describes a world in which the citizens are players in a gamespace; a world where “[t]he reigning ideology imagines the world as a level playing field, upon which all folks are equal” (Wark paragraph 8). The players in this game are part of a larger game, in which they believe they are all given equal opportunity to succeed. There is a ruling group, who makes the rules, counts the scores, owns the teams, and runs the game, and it is best not to inquire about who this group is (Wark paragraph 8). The gamespace is invisible, intangible, and can include anything from game systems to the war (Wark paragraph 9). This develops an understanding of the game as a social construct. Referring to soldiers, Wark explains that their lives are “managed by a computer in a blip of logistics (Wark paragraph 10). Further, those who regulate war monitor the gamespace from a “safe” and distanced location, behind a screen. According to Wark, one who realizes the existence of the game is an “enlightened gamer”. An understanding of Wark’s gamer theory is useful in understanding Katniss as a subversive figure in this scene from The Hunger Games.

When Katniss shoots the arrow into the room of judges she disrupts the relationship between the citizens and officials of her world. In this scene, that relationship is shown, created, and altered by the placement of the characters and their actions. The officials of the Capitol are in their elevated room, a space that separates them from those that they watch, much like that of the person behind the screen monitoring the soldier in Wark’s writing. Katniss is put in the lower position because she is repressed in her world, and forced to play the game as governed by this (figuratively and literally) higher group. However, Katniss is an “enlightened gamer”: she realizes that the system in which the people of the capitol rule is not natural and is of human creation. The system is arbitrary. She is aware of the game, but must play it still, or she loses her life. This doesn’t keep her from opposing the game because Katniss is a gamer that plays “within the game but against gamespace” (Wark paragraph 19, emphasis mine). Her shot, being so close to the officials and sponsors judging her, disrupts the relationship between repressor and repressed. The group stands shocked because the distinction between them and Katniss that keeps them higher and safe is illusory and arbitrary; it does not exist, and her shot proves it.

Harlon Dalton similarly explains the individual’s relation to society and may help explain Katniss shooting the arrow. Like Wark, Dalton acknowledges the common myth in societies of all people having the same equality or opportunity for success. He claims, “Nevertheless, it is by now generally agreed that there is a large category of Americans—some have called it the underclass—for whom upward mobility is practically impossible without massive changes in the structure of the economy and in the location of public resources” (Dalton 88-89). This means that once the caste system is created, a repressed people are limited in their access to higher levels of that system. That is, the player can’t become the game designer, the underclass citizen can’t become president, and the tribute can’t live in the Capitol.

Katniss’ shot into the room of the judges momentarily disrupts their world of superiority and rids it of a safe boundary between the suppressor and the suppressed. By doing so, Katniss shows that a system can be created to put people and organizations in order, but that those separations are only socially constructed, and can be temporarily disrupted just by shooting an arrow. While it is ideal to the Capitol that everyone believe they are living in a free society, that isn’t the case for everyone. Katniss realizes that she is living in a world that expects its citizens to be blind to the truth of their existence. She is the enlightened citizen that isn’t okay with being expected to conform to the unfair rules of her society. She lives in a world in which mobility between classes is restricted. Similarly, Dalton argues that mobility between classes in the U.S is restricted. This scene can be interpreted as an insight on contemporary America, countering notions like equality among classes. The scene, as well as the film, offers an opportunity for the viewer to recognize or question their standing in society like Katniss and to develop their own acceptance of or opposition to it.

Works Cited

Dalton, Harlon H. “Horatio Alger.” Readings for Analytical Writing. Ed. Christine Farris, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 87-92. Print.

The Hunger Games. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Jennifer Lawrence. Lionsgate, 2012. DVD.

Wark, McKenzie. “Agony (on The Cave).” Gamer Theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press: 2007. Paragraphs 1-25. Print.