Chels

It’s a bold statement to say that the early 2010s was the age of dystopia. I mean, the genre has been around for what seems like forever. In fact, it’s either celebrating its 200th or 300th anniversary next year, depending on who you ask.

Officially, the first dystopian novel (that people can agree on) is Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), but many scholars consider Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) to be a dystopian novel. Equally though, many scholars disagree, either labelling it utopian, anti-utopian, or simply not associating it with a deliberate use of dystopia or utopia. I’m yet to read Gulliver’s Travels, so I can’t give my own verdict.

Regardless, the dystopian novel has been around for a long time. So why exactly is it associated with the 2010s?

To me, as someone who grew up during the boom of the young adult dystopia market, and looking back on that time with a different knowledge of the literature scene (I loathe to label myself a scholar, but it’s true, I have studied audiences and trends in film and literature), I’m pretty confident in saying that it all stems from the meteoric success of the Harry Potter series. Those books were huge – the films too. Not only did they result in a significant rise in young people reading for pleasure, they were also really profitable – there were so many avenues for merchandise, special editions, rereleases. They were popular with people of all ages – the IP holders could reasonably expect to make profits from baby toys to adult collectibles. 

This is where the two key players come in. Once the series was over, fans were looking for something new to hook them, and publishers searched for their next darling – the next series they could, let’s be honest, milk for every penny they could. And this split the market into two key avenues, demonstrated by the two big YA hits immediately following the success of the series. Twilight capitalised on the fantastical elements of the story, the supernatural and the romantic, whereas for those more interested in the political implications, or the impact of war on young people, The Hunger Games captured their attention.

I personally didn’t hear of The Hunger Games until after the first film had been released (and my friend began a very intense but brief archery obsession). There are plenty of people who could unpack the series for pages and pages, but like most of my childhood favourites, I haven’t actually picked up the books in years, and a lot of the details are fuzzy to me. What I do remember, however, is the impact the series had on so many of us. 

For those of you that haven’t experienced the series, it’s a tale of a dystopian America split into thirteen districts, and each year, two children aged 12-18 from each district are sent to fight in a televised battle – the Hunger Games. If the political undertones of Potter had intrigued us, The Hunger Games fanned that flame at just the right time. Suzanne Collins never shied away from the horrors of the games, and despite the films somewhat dampening the impact by casting adult actors to play many of the tributes, we were acutely aware that the tributes were our age. It was one thing being the chosen one when it came to magic, or to romances in fantasy settings, but The Hunger Games flipped that on its head. It was that discomfort that drew many of us in.

The thing is, Suzanne Collins was directly criticising the kind of marketing that made The Hunger Games as big as it was. In the series, the Capitol distracted from the horrors of the games and the potential uprising by shining a light on the orchestrated romance between Katniss and Peeta, and, following the success of Twilight’s love triangle, The Hunger Games was marketed as a love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. Love triangles made money – studios knew how to market romances to young audiences. Horrifying tales of conflict and uprising? Less so. It’s not that we weren’t aware of it at the time – plenty of viewers, young and old, noticed the similarities between the actions of the Capitol and the actions of our own media conglomerates, but once something becomes big enough, it inevitably spirals out of control, and there was no going back from the precedent that the success of The Hunger Games set.

Soon enough, you couldn’t scroll through a YA book rec list without seeing half a dozen dystopias modeled on The Hunger Games, but just … different. It’s not that the books weren’t without merit, but it was clear that they were capitalising on the key elements that made the series unique, without really considering the reason that dystopias are so valuable to young audiences – the real criticisms of the world. Suddenly we were inundated with series of countries split into districts or factions, segregated by increasingly bizarre qualities. And, of course, there had to be a forbidden romance of some kind, and usually, that romance was what spurred the books’ chosen ones to fight against their oppressors. There was such an oversaturation, that inevitably, criticisms of the genre as a whole poured in, and The Hunger Games saw a lot of ‘blame’ for the crowded market. Suddenly, dystopias were no longer the next big thing, it wasn’t an underground niche that everyone wished was more popular, it was the popular genre, and with so much choice, many of us moved on to the new next big thing.

I don’t want to completely disregard the books, because they were important to so many young people, and they were clearly very successful, but the genre became a bit of a paint by numbers game, which was a real shame. In a way, it dampened the impact of The Hunger Games. But at the same time, it encouraged so many young people, girls especially, to engage with politics. And in the mid-2010s, it was the perfect time to become aware of these topics.

The Hunger Games is back now with a couple of prequels. I always worry when new works come out so many years later – there’s always a risk that it’s a cash grab that will end up spoiling the experience of the original works – but I’ve heard from so many people that it’s not the case, for once, and these prequels are really important, politically, and to flesh out the history of the series. Hopefully, one day I’ll finally get around to reading them, but for now, I think I’m happy that they’re around, and they’ve reminded so many of us about a series that had a huge impact. It feels right to return to a series that had such an impact on our understanding of the world as teenagers, now navigating the same world with a new perspective in our 20s. Perhaps Suzanne Collins just decided that her original audience are now ready to explore the complex early years of Panem.