For that matter, is The Hunger Games really aimed at girls?
The marketing campaign for the movie was specifically designed to appeal to boys because it's assumed that anything with a female protagonist is a chick flick. Seriously.
Oh, no, oh, no! Spontaneous poetic exclamations. Lord, spare me college boys in love.
Dr. Walsh ,'Potential'
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Jessica - Mar 26, 2012 6:47:15 am PDT #19026 of 30000
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
tommyrot - Mar 26, 2012 6:50:09 am PDT #19027 of 30000
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.
I read that The Hunger Games was supposed to pull in a lot more boy viewers than the Twilight movies. Don't remember if they expected it to appeal to boys as much as girls, though.
eta: Huh. Jessica's link seems to contradict what I read.
§ ita § - Mar 26, 2012 7:05:38 am PDT #19028 of 30000
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
Yeah, I've read a lot of uninformed complainants assuming that any YA book with a female protagonist must be Twilight-esque, and that Twilight is effectively identical to the whims of teenaged girls.
I suspect that the period during which you're least likely to get entertainment gender crossover is during adolescence, but I have nothing to back that up with. Just that kids younger than that don't care yet, and that adults have made more peace with their gender identity, but that being a teenager can be fraught with considerations of "appropriate" gender behaviour.
Harry Potter has a more balanced gender makeup, plus I suspect, as with many things, it's more acceptable for chicks to poach nominally male-branded territory than vice versa.
Jessica - Mar 26, 2012 7:17:47 am PDT #19029 of 30000
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
Harry Potter has a white het male title character - he's the default. (He's British, but that's apparently less of a marketing hurdle than if he were black or a girl. This is why I have Tivo and AdBlock.)
Volans - Mar 26, 2012 7:48:58 am PDT #19030 of 30000
move out and draw fire
OH MY GOD PEOPLE...I just read the article on Jezebel about people being appalled that a black girl was cast as Rue.
I mean, I can't even...
/hates peoples
Hil R. - Mar 26, 2012 7:51:58 am PDT #19031 of 30000
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
OH MY GOD PEOPLE...I just read the article on Jezebel about people being appalled that a black girl was cast as Rue.
Wait, what? I thought the book mentioned her "brown skin" a lot, which, from the point of view of someone like Katniss with "olive skin," would seem to pretty clearly mean black.
Jesse - Mar 26, 2012 7:52:59 am PDT #19032 of 30000
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Yeah, what? She's pretty clearly written as black, as far as I remember.
sj - Mar 26, 2012 7:58:48 am PDT #19033 of 30000
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
The teenage girls that were at my showing were scary. There was lots of whistling and giggling at inappropriate times. Like the shot just after games start where they pan over all the kids that already died? There was a group in the back that was laughing and clapping.
Volans - Mar 26, 2012 7:59:51 am PDT #19034 of 30000
move out and draw fire
Exactly. And it's part of the whole socio-political-economic description of Panem; she and Thresh are from what's now the South, and it's been returned to black people working the fields.
But apparently many readers pictured her as JonBenet, and "her death didn't mean as much" if she's black. [link]
Amy - Mar 26, 2012 8:00:12 am PDT #19035 of 30000
Because books.
I just read the Jezebel piece, too. I want to be sick. I didn't think I could be more appalled at Twitter than after the Grammys with the Rihanna/Chris Brown stuff, but I was wrong.