Thursday
Jan262012
Pretty Panem Princesses
Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 11:12AM 
JA from MNPP here. Have you guys seen the bizarre (and wonderful, genius even, if you ask me) merchandizing choices that the team behind The Hunger Games movies have been making? First I assume we all know the basic story, but if not here's the quick take - in a future dystopia, The Hunger Games are a televised battle fought every year by the children of this society's twelve districts. Fought to the death, that is. The survivor of the battle wins food (yes, food) for the starving people of their district. Such a light and airy premise! Happy, happy stuff..
Anyway this is a big Hollywood movie they're making so they have to make money somehow, and so naturally they have decided that the best way to sell this movie's premise is with nail polish.
.
.
Naturally! Okay a little more context is needed. The first district is The Capitol, and it's a city and it's filled with rich vain types. There are good people and there are bad people there, it's not cut and dry, but there's a definite focus on the ways in which we distract ourselves with frivolity in the face of the world's horrors. If you've seen the trailer then you've most definitely seen Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, who typifies the people therein. That's her in the ad above, and now there's an entire website devoted to "Capitol Couture" and it looks like any old fashion website. Except, you know, with an undercurrent of violent, horrible death.
.
Since the books are very critical of this thoughtless extravagance by the super-rich and the literally life-or-death inequalities deeply embedded within these societies, I've seen a lot of people online who have gotten upset that the movie is using these same kinds of frivolous extravagances as its marketing tools. But I dunno... it seems kind of brilliantly ballsy to me. I haven't seen the nail polish in person but if I'd been the one designing it I'd have really wanted it to say somewhere on the label that this bottle was bottled by only the most downtrodden of serfs, working the most horrible hours you can imagine. And when you're done getting dolled up, you're going to look like a crazy purple clown lady, won't that be just terrific?.
Can you imagine? But even without getting that explicit, I really do feel as if the nudge is there. Come for the pretty fingernails, and stay for the state-sanctioned murder of innocents! Or am I projecting? What's y'all's take on this?
Reader Comments (9)
I love this. At first I was completely annoyed with HUNGER GAMES for their obsessive marketing months and months before the movie was out. But like you I think this is kind of subversive and creative and I'm generally for it.
Somewhere i turned the corner from "not at all interested go away!" to "okay, i want to see this movie now" and it wasn't necessarily just the trailer.
Do you ever have a word that refuses to come to mind? You bang your head on the desk as you're writing something, knowing there is a word you need to employ, that is perfect, and no matter how hard you try to pull it from the tip of your tongue and put it on the page it just refuses to come to you? SUBVERSIVE was that word for me today. UGH I couldn't think of it no matter how hard I tried, and now you're said it Nat and I feel like a weight's been lifted. Thank you! It was driving me crazy.
Anyway, I agree. it is totally SUBVERSIVE, is my point. ;)
Yeah, I think this is one of the most creative marketing teams of any major studio release that I've seen in a long time. It's completely specific to the themes of the books, with their analysis of frivolity as a way to both ignore and exploit the plights of those less fortunate. Tons of movies use this kind of themed product line to earn extra revenue, but with the themes of this particular series, the product lines become a subversive draw into the world of the characters. Brilliant really. And damn if I wouldn't totally wear some of those polish colors.
Since I lost my footing in the HP mess (I started reading the books when I was young, started to kinda lose interest because people who weren't reading them were just going to see the movies and I felt like I was falling off the bandwagon), and Twilight is a mess, I kind of want to read these books and be into the release of the movies. I feel like it'll be epic.
But what does "Panem" mean?
Nathaniel, 'panem' is Latin for 'bread' (as in "panem et circenses": "bread and circuses/games"). In the books, Panem is the name of the country.
After the first book it went downhill for me. The first book is great though.
The first book is more than great. I started reading it at 9:00 pm one night and could...not...stop until I was finished at 6:00 the next morning. If the "WCW" lists ever come out for this year, "The Hunger Games" would go straight to the top.
Nathaniel - you nailed it with "subversive". Effie seems (and reads) like a human version of Miss Piggy (remember "Miss Piggy's Guide to Life"? Which was in itself a parody of self-help beauty books.) Every note is pitch-perfect.