Using spectacle to alienate people from each other and life, President Snow's Panem from Collins' Hunger Games trilogy is Guy Debord's Society of Spectacle. As Debord predicts, the spectacle of the Annual Hunger Games causes a degradation of life for citizens in the Districts and the Capitol, leading to a society where nobody truly lives and citizens accept the narrative that President Snow and his regime promote about the Games. Using Luis Althusser to understand how President Snow links his power to that of the Games, we understand how the dictator brainwashed his citizens into compliance through his narrative, and also, how this narrative is constantly delivered through the various ISAs and SAs in Panem to degrade life into false unity and false consciousness, socially coercing citizens to fall in line with the narrative around spectacle. Katniss Everdeen is unique as she is too authentic to use her celebrity status in promotion of the Games; instead, she accidentally performs Debord's true critiques, sparking a rebellion through love. Katniss' acts of love translate into true critiques of the spectacle that is Panem and the Games, and because Snow has spent decades brainwashing his populace into a blind acceptance of celebrity and social similarities, Katniss is successful as the Mockingjay through rebellious love. Through Katniss, we see how spectacle can be as self-defeating as it is self-perpetuating.

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This thesis aims to highlight, analyse and problematize how sexualities and relationships are constructed as normative and deviant in the Hunger Games trilogy through the character Katniss Everdeen. With this analysis, the thesis aims to further elucidate the pluralism of meaning within literature as a contribution to the field of feminist cultural studies. Queer theory and queer temporality studies have been used to identify and discuss concepts such as the heterosexual matrix, monogamy and mononormativity, polyamory and other marginalized sexualities. A thematic queer reading serves as a methodological approach to the material to enable searching for queer themes in the series. The thesis shows how heterosexuality and monogamy are constructed and portrayed as normative and compulsory, where all other expressions of sexuality are presented as deviant and thereby can be view as different expressions of queer temporality.

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND IDEALIZES THE HETEROSEXUAL NUCLEAR FAMILY AS THE ULTIMATE PATH TO FULFILLMENT FOR WOMEN. THE RESULTS OF THE PARTICIPANT RESEARCH SHOW THAT WHILE YOUNG WOMEN ARE CRITICAL OF CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE SAGA, OVERALL THEY VALUE HAVING STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS IN FICTION TO WHOM THEY CAN RELATE.