Make Em’ Human - Make Em’ Flawed

Recently I’ve been re-reading The Hunger Games. Not in a casual reader way, but in a “ve vill torture you until you reveal your secrets!” way. Never have I come across something that I’ve liked so much, yet have no idea why. I’m actually kind of annoyed with it.

I can’t just be that Katniss is a strong-willed female protagonist who is a perfect example of a female action-hero, can it? In Literature, there are quite a few female role-models - far more than in film, TV, and especially Video Games.

No, there is more to The Hunger Games than that. Character is an exceptionally important part of any art-form, but The Hunger Games is very much plot and tension focused. Character is still a make-or-break part of the book, but it’s not the most vital element. But now is not the time for The Hunger Games. I shall report back once it finally cracks under interrogation.

But, in working out why Katniss is such a great protagonist, I realised it’s because she was actually a human.

For a while, female characters came in two forms. Either you had the helpless damsel (self-explanatory), or the femme-fatale - a antagonistic woman who often uses her femininity to her advantage.

There are good and bad examples of the femme-fatale, as there are good and bad examples of any character archetype. But from this came a new archetype, the ‘Strong Independent Woman’ archetype.

You know that civilisation has failed when your eyes roll at the words ‘Strong Independent Woman’.

The problem with this archetype is that, like any bad archetype, those three words are the only things that define that character as a person. In fact, often the ‘Independent’ part is scrapped as the character must fall in love with someone due to the obligation that every mainstream work must have a love-story thrust in somewhere, even if the plot doesn’t demand it.

So we have two words. ‘Strong’ and ‘Woman’. Those are terrible words - particularly ‘Woman’ because what does that mean? That she can read a book whilst watching TV?

If a character is nothing but strength and X chromosomes, then that character is obviously going to be flawed. She won’t be a human being, she will be a robot that communicates in punches and sassiness. This is the case with 99% of female action-heroes.

Think of all the words that describe Katniss. ‘Strong’ will probably pop up, but so will ‘Sympathetic’, ‘Barbed’, ‘Sarcastic’, ‘Cunning’, ‘Hardened’, ‘Self-reliant’ among many, many others. Quite a few of those words are not kind ones. She at times treats Peeta and everyone else harshly. She’s reluctant to play along with the Capitol, and this gets her into trouble in the second book of the series. She has a range of different emotions and traits, not just strength and being female.

Bugger! I said I would stop talking about The Hunger Games…

This idea that the character should be human can carry across to any minority that needs to be represented more. Often gay characters suffer from being identified just from their sexuality, when in reality the majority of LGBT people are human above everything else. Obviously you can’t just ignore the fact your character is gay - thats even worse than turning her/him into a crude stereotype. But ‘Gay’ shouldn’t be the first word used to describe the character. It should preferably follow an ‘and’ after a string of other interesting traits.

The same goes with black characters, characters with mental health issues, disabled characters, characters from a different religion, or just characters from other cultures. Make them human. Make them flawed. Everything else will follow.

Right, back to The Hunger Games. I think I’ll try a more extreme torture. How about I ruin the ending to Mockingjay for it?