Whether we are thinking about The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, or The Avengers, it’s worth considering why some stories so easily capture our interest and motivate people to part with their time and money in record numbers? Stories sell, even in a down economy.
In an essay in Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant
Alan Jacobs, reflects on why Harry Potter so effectively snared the attention of so many. Jacobs theorizes that Rowling wrote a blockbuster because she:
- Created characters people really care about.
- Wrote suspenseful plots, so that you really want to know how it’s all going to come out.
- Created a whole imaginative world that people love to inhabit, even after they already know what happens in the stories.
“Many writers,” says Jacobs, “can do one of those things; a few can do two; hardly any can achieve all three. (Tolkien is one of them, which is why he also, though a very different and much greater writer than Rowling, is equally beloved.) It’s the combination that makes [Rowling] special.”
In my mind, Hunger Games, achieved the first two of Jacobs’ three criteria. It was so effective in creating characters we care about, and a suspenseful plot, that it was a blockbuster. But it missed #3. Who would want to visit that world? No one in his or her right mind. But as someone (see m.l.) once sang, “two out of three ain’t bad.”
These three criteria in mind, it is no wonder that the Bible is the number one best seller of all time. It is about the most incredible, beautiful, breathtaking One in all of eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is about many others we care about, whether David and Jonathan, Daniel and his friends, or Joseph. And it ends in a real place where those who know Christ will soon be in His presence.
Chris,
Thanks for these thoughts. I have a thought on #3 and Hunger Games. While some stories create an imaginative world which people would love to inhabit, isn’t there an equal but opposite desire to see a world that is so unlike ours and, possibly, horrific, that we wouldn’t want to be there? In other words, we are attracted by these other worlds, even if we don’t want to be there.
I think that is why I love mafia and gang movies: it is a different world (not one I’d want to be a part of). I think Hunger Games is this type of world. It is appealing because it is so horrific.
Brian,
That makes a great deal of sense . . . same sort of thing with the Mad Max world.
CDB.