The Hunger Games, Interstellar, and the Necessity of “Female Stuff”
This holiday season, movies like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Interstellar are adding an interesting view on "female stuff."

***This article contains spoilers for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Interstellar.
A few weeks ago, in discussing the sequel to the wildly successful The Lego Movie, co-director Chris Miller announced that the next film would include âmore female characters and more female stuff.â Exciting news, until you read the rest of Millerâs quote about how their decision was prompted in part by Frozenâs success and a sort of universal surprise that female-centric stories are compelling.
A recent op-ed from The Dissolve took exception (rightly so) with the dismissive-sounding qualifier of âmore female stuff,â warning against ââwomaning upâ mainstream projects, in hopes of riding a cool new wave of female empowerment.â We already have token female characters; those are the characters who get iced in order to properly motivate their brother’s/father’s/lover’s to revenge.
Similarly, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 star Natalie Dormer told The Daily Beast, âWhat weâre aiming for in the industry is not to go, âGirl power! Wave the flag!â We want to get to a place where the gender is irrelevant, because then itâs about the personality, and about the story.â
Iâm with Dormer, except for the part about gender being irrelevant. While I clearly donât advocate for âwomaning upâ a story without good reason, on the flipside, we also cannot totally ignore gender as it relates to characterization and action. Female vs. male and especially female vs. female dynamics are fascinating because of the position from which the women operateâeither needing to overcome inequality or (more interesting to me) the constant tug-of-war between female competition and camaraderie.

While Mockingjayâs male characters are at the center of the action as soldiers (Gale and Boggs rescuing Peeta in the Capitol) or plotters (Beetee and Plutarch jamming the Capitolâs signal from home base), itâs the female dynamics that are truly front-and-center in the story.
The prior two Hunger Games installments saw Katniss grappling with other young women her own age to ensnare the Capitolâs attention even before the Games began: she needed to be prettier and more approachable than Glimmer, but not as crazy and bitter as Johanna. But Mockingjay is the first time that we really see Katnissâwho, letâs not forget, is supposed to be 17-years-oldâinteracting with older women.
However subtly, director Francis Lawrence draws constant comparison between Katniss and District 13âs leader President Alma Coin. As the latter, Julianne Moore wears Coinâs signature gray hair and employs her cheekbones to express an almost skeletal gauntness. Similarly, the first time we see Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), she has been stripped of her youth-giving makeup, poofy outfits, and distracting accessories. She actually looks her age. By contrast, Katnissâ youth is emphasized more than once: after the first disastrous propo taping, one of the men comments that (paraphrased) âsheâs a girl, but with all that makeup, she looks like sheâs 35.â
When they decide to tape the propos in the field, Katniss meets Cressida (Natalie Dormer), who acts as a hybrid of older sister and mentor. Sheâs old enough to have been a professional director in the Capitol before she escaped to District 13, but she sports the youthful qualifiers of a partially shaved head and a wicked scalp tattoo.

A major theme in Mockingjay is rebranding, especially of the female characters. Itâs something with which Katniss is painfully familiar, as Effie and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) have complained about mitigating her prickliness since her first pre-Games interview. In this case, ârebrandingâ Katniss means stripping her down to her actual self: Put her out in the field, rile her up, and get her to yell and cry at the camera. âThereâs your Mockingjay,â Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) proudly tells Coin.
But Katniss isnât the only one whose image has to be massaged. Plutarch also helps Coin change from stiff, concise, and distant to giving impassioned speechesâyou see him literally mouthing the words heâs put in her mouthâthat inspire District 13 to follow her into war.
And yes, Peeta too becomes a mouthpiece, albeit for the Capitol. But his rebranding comes via torture and brainwashing, whereas Katniss and Coin accept their image makeovers as necessary.
Sometimes Katniss acts as the mentor, as well; in this movie, she spends the most time with her little sister Prim that weâve seen so far in The Hunger Games films. They share a bunk and often a bed, plagued as Katniss is by nightmares; they share secrets out of earshot; Prim proudly shares her promotion within the hospital and her increasing work as a nurse (The Everdeensâ mother remains, as before, useless, though Katniss appears to resent her less).
Sometimes Katniss acts as the mentor: In this movie, she spends the most time with her little sister Prim that weâve seen in the series. They share a bunk and often a bed, plagued as Katniss is by nightmares; they share secrets out of earshot; Prim proudly announces her promotion within the hospital and her increasing work as a nurse (the Everdeensâ mother remains, as before, useless, though Katniss appears to resent her less). But even with her new and more mature responsibilities, Prim is still a child: She risks her life saving her cat Buttercup during the bombing. Katniss barely drags her down to the shelter in time, yelling at her little sister for such stupidity during wartime. Itâs the reason Prim never could have hacked it in the Games, and how all of this started; more than once, Haymitch and Effie refer to Katnissâ selfless volunteering in place of Prim as her greatest act.
For all of their differences in temperament and adaptability, theyâre still blood. Katniss volunteered for Prim without hesitation, because she knew that she was the only one who stood the slimmest chance of surviving. Katniss and Prim bonding in Mockingjay is the necessary follow-through of her action, as we see the ripple effect on Primâs maturity. Prim took her sisterâs sacrifice to heart; in the year or so since that Reaping, she has molded herself into someone deserving of Katnissâ sacrifice. She has always looked up to Katniss, but this is the first time that she can attain peer status with her older sister.

Sisters are peers, sometimes competitors, mirrors constantly reflecting back and forth on one another. Like in The Hunger Games, Frozen hinges on an act of sibling sacrificeâtrue love greater than even the most romantic kiss. If Elsa and Anna had been brothers, or a brother and sister, you wouldnât have the same movie.
Consider the events that shaped the princessesâ childhood: Elsaâs powers lead to an accident that almost kills Anna, so Elsaâs parents alter the girlsâ memories and force their elder daughter to hide her abilities from her best friend. Even though the troll king says heâll remove the magic, âbut leave the fun,â he still cuts a chunk out of the girlsâ relationship.
Removing Annaâs memories of magic dilutes the memories, makes them normal; the sisters are bonded by nothing more special than any other children. Add that to the fact that Elsa is now paralyzed with fear that her changing body will somehow hurt her sister, and abruptly withdraws from all interactions. Sisterhood is about bonding over the things we have in common, but there is no opportunity even for that.
Then their parents die in a shipwreck. At the key moment in which the girls should be united, their bonds are too fragile to do so. When Elsa doesnât even leave her room for the funeral, Anna knows sheâs lost her sister as well. Which brings us to the movieâs present, where both princesses are complete basket cases. Elsa is too scared to even open the gates of Arendelle, effectively isolating them from their own kingdom. Then thereâs Anna, who is so starved for love that she talks to the paintings on the wall (cute) and leaps into an engagement with a handsome prince she has only just met (not so cute).
Not to draw too large of a generalization, but you wouldnât see these neuroses in young men. At least, not all of themânot this fear of oneâs own body and this yearning (and, we later find out, dangerous) desire for someone to find her worthy. And thatâs okay for the charactersâ personality traits to be more obviously female. As we see more and more female characters in movies, these fictional women are allowed to be more fucked up now.

In talking about gender, Dormer also told The Daily Beast, âWhat I love about Mockingjay â Part 1 is that President Coin or Cressida could have easily been played by a man, and if you look at Interstellar, the Anne Hathaway or Jessica Chastain roles would have been men years ago.â
Sheâs not wrong in her assessment, but making these four characters female have led to much better dynamics. If Coin and Cressida were male, Katniss would find less in common (or in stark opposition) to them. Sheâs already got Gale and President Snow as comrade and nemesis; her relationships with Coin and Cressida must be more nuanced. And yes, if Interstellar had come out closer to the time of the original screenplay, we may indeed have seen Matthew McConaugheyâs Cooper interacting with his son Murphy. But whereâs the fun in that?
Murphâs bond with Cooper is more powerful because sheâs his daughter. Even though his son Tom is following in his dadâs footsteps as a farmer, Murph (Mackenzie Foy) is the one who is truly Coopâs shadow. That makes her bitterness at being left behind on Earth all the more difficult to watchâbut these scenes are also necessary. If anything, Coopâs adult children swap gender roles: Tom (Casey Affleck) is stalwart and keeps his head down while Murph (Chastain) rages and rebels against their absent father and dying planet.
Making Murph female also strengthens the significance of her losing a father when Coop goes on his mission, but gaining a father figure in the form of Professor Brand (Michael Caine). This goes both ways: the professor knowsâmore than anyoneâthat heâs sent his daughter away from Earth forever, but in the 28 years that theyâre gone, he still gets to pass on knowledge, hope, and the painful truth to a surrogate daughter.

Then you have Amelia waxing poetic about love up in space. Although Anne Hathawayâs speech is one of the movieâs most polarizing moments, it canât have been a mistake that she is the one to introduce the notion of love as âtranscend[ing] dimensions of time and space.â Not only Coop, but also most of the audience, dismisses her speech as that of a lovesick woman abandoning all rational thought for her selfish happiness. But she turns out to be very, very right. Even though itâs Coop who later puts everything into motion, he validates Ameliaâs theory.
Frozen, Mockingjay, and Interstellar are centered on female vs. female dynamics, and theyâre better for it. In subverting the expected character tropes and not shying away from making their women damaged, they encompass the whole female experience. We should certainly continue to move toward a place where maleness is not the baseline for a compelling character, but we would be badly served to swing to the other extreme and eradicate gender entirely.Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!