Wear a Necklace of h(r)ope Side by Side with Me: Young People's Neo-Liberal Future and Popular Culture as Political Action

Protestors in Thailand using the three fingered salute.

Essay by Luke Howie and Perri Campbell

An Introduction: to the Risks of Neo-Liberalism

"Occupy your heart. Another world is possible, make ready your dreams."

~Banner at an Occupy rally. In Chomsky 2012, pp. 20-21

The Occupy movements, according to Noam Chomsky (2012, p. 54), were the:

"first major public response ... to about thirty years of really quite bitter class war that led to social, economic and political arrangements in which the system of democracy has been shredded."

For Wendy Brown (2015), these ‘arrangements' are what we have come to call neo-Liberalism. Neo-Liberalism is the catchphrase, the ideological label, we give to conditions of economic, social and cultural marginalisation, disadvantage and uncertainty born of a fetishistic version of the so-called free-market capitalism. It is a condition where the money-making logic has no stopping point and has the capability to destroy anything in its path — the environment, democracy, people. "The institutions and principles aimed at securing democracy', argues Brown (2015, p. 17), 'are challenged by neo-Liberalism's “economization" of political life and of other heretofore noneconomic spheres and activities'. Neo-Liberalism, in this view, is an extension of rational, utility maximising economics into the everydayness of social and cultural belonging. It can even be said that neo-Liberalism produces its own type of 'common-sense' which encourages us to understand ourselves, our lives and each other as consumers and market competitors, dragging us further and further away from 'collectivist attitudes that underpinned the welfare state era' (Hall and O'Shea 2013, p. 11). This type of common-sense encourages fierce individualisation, competitiveness, entrepreneurialism and servitude to the so-called realities of the market.

Pop culture in a time of neo-Liberalism, especially since the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), has played a significant role in representing and questioning these arrangements, this neo-Liberal common-sense (Hall and O'Shea 2013). These moments in pop culture often feature young characters and are made, mostly, for young audiences. In this chapter, we want to examine The Hunger Games novels and films and the story of a teenager named Katniss Everdeen as an artefact of a neo-Liberal, post-GFC world. The Hunger Games refers to a popular three-part book series: The Hunger Games (2008), Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010); and four-part film series: The Hunger Games (2012), Catching Fire (2013), and Mockingjay Part 1 (2014) and Part 2 (2015). The movies and books gained significant global attention. Mockingjay Part 1 had the biggest opening weekend at the box office of 2014. More than 36.5 million copies of the book series went to print in the USA alone. The Hunger Games series asks its audiences to consider what the world would look like if we imagined it in other terms. What if we replaced the status quo with a world of our own making? What sacrifices would this require?

The Hunger Games novels and films can be read as moments that imagine the future in other terms and are, therefore, possible catalysts for change. This reading requires diligent viewing and a little imagination. We have organised this chapter around two sections. In the first, we describe key allegories from The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 that we believe have the capacity to inform and influence how young people imagine their futures. We focus on the song 'The Hanging Tree' that becomes the ballad of the revolution in The Hunger Games, and the existence of the 'Mockingjay' birds which become the emblems for nation-wide resistance. In the second section, we analyse these allegories in relation to contemporary social theory and youth studies that has explored the roles of young people in times of socio-economic uncertainty, especially as they relate to themes of neo-Liberalism and the GFC. In this section, we also provide examples of the impact of The Hunger Games in post-GFC societies. We want to read The Hunger Games as political action able to help young people think through the dilemmas posed by neo-Liberalism, to reinvent themselves in the process, and resist, when they can, those socio-economic conditions that we are raised to believe are inevitable. In this way, we do not wish to shy away from the possibility that rethinking neo- Liberalism may require a revolution - perhaps a revolution of imagination.

Katniss Everdeen's Panem

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?"

~Katniss Everdeen.

The Hunger Games is set in the not-too-distant future in a nation called Panem. It is a nation built out of the ashes of present-day North America. It tells a well-worn dystopic tale. The history of Panem is a story about division, war and its fallout, and the ushering in of a functioning totalitarianism where the affluent flourish at the expense of the huddled, 'silent' majority (Baudrillard 1983). For more than 70 years, this order is maintained in the realm with vicious peacekeeping troops and the annual 'Hunger Games' where each segregated 'district' must offer two children — one girl and one boy — to participate in a fight-to-the-death, gladiatorial event which is beamed into households across Panem as a spectacularised sporting event (Collins 2008, p. 21). The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen and her life in 'District 12', an impoverished region of Panem. In this hyper-mediated, hyper-surveilled dystopia, the whole nation witnesses Katniss time and again show courage beyond her age and social status and it inspires insurrection in the most desperately marginalised sections of the population.

The Hanging Tree

The song 'The Hanging Tree' tells the story of an alleged criminal, captured and sentenced to hanging, who cries out to his missing lover and co-accused. Katniss' father sung it to her as a child. In Mockingjay Part 1, Katniss, sitting beside a lake, sings it for the media team charged with following her around to capture moments that could be used as pro-paganda to inspire the resistance movements. The video becomes the 'spark' that leads to violent rebellion during the uprising. In Mockingjay Part 1, revolutionaries are depicted singing this song as they launch an attack against a water catchment that serves the population in the affluent 'Capitol'. This attack costs many of the revolutionaries their lives. One particular verse of this song stands out as the call to revolution and becomes an allegory for the ambivalence inherent in any attempt to create significant socio-economic change. This is how the lyrics appear in the novel:

Are you, are you, coming to the tree?

Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.

Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be,

If we met at midnight at the hanging tree (Collins 2010, p. 139).

Katniss - as the narrator of the novels - speaks at length about the ambivalence inherent in the song, the uneasy feelings it sparked within her and her mother's intense reaction when her father sung it. It is Katniss' musings on the song's shifting meaning as she transitioned from childhood to adulthood that illuminates some of the revolutionary character of The Hunger Games series:

"At the beginning, it sounds like a guy is trying to get his girlfriend to secretly meet up with him at midnight ... but it's not until the third verse that "The Hanging Tree" begins to get unnerving. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer. He's still in the hanging tree. And even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking if she's coming to meet him ... at first you think he's talking about when he told her to flee presumably to safety. But then wonder if he meant for her to run to him. To death ... it's clear what he's waiting for. His lover, with her rope necklace, hanging dead next to him in the tree." (Collins 2010, pp. 140-141)

Plutarch Heavensbee - a double agent and architect of both the 'Hunger Games' and the revolution - sees enormous potential in this song as a propaganda weapon, but with one small change. One should change the 'necklace of rope' to a 'necklace of hope'. The change is dramatic. In one, the uprising requires that civil unrest ends in almost certain death for the revolutionary, but perhaps we should pay such a price for meaningful change. In the other, all that is required is hope. Perhaps all one needs to rebel is to simply want change? We believe that all we need is hope despite knowing that hope will never be enough, the sacrifice will be far greater. Thoughts do not secure change, but action might. In a further twist, the official song that hit the global charts and features on the motion picture soundtrack to Mockingjay is the version with 'hope'. We, as consumers of The Hunger Games franchise, consume the propaganda version of the song.

Katniss wonders whether it may be better to die rather than live under the Capitol's rule. Indeed, in The Hunger Games films, suicidal resistance is a central theme. The song becomes a tool of the rebellion — come and join Katniss in certain death and face the possibility of freedom. In the water reservoir scene, the rebels can be seen charging with rudimentary weapons at peacekeepers with machine guns. Their sheer numbers see them win the day. A key feature of their attack is the use of rebels to shield a large bomb and those carrying it. Suicidal violence is inscribed into the revolutionary message again when Katniss ends a furious and uplifting speech with the phrase 'If we burn you burn with us' (Collins 2010, p. 119).

The Mockingjay

The second story we want to focus on is the birth of what came to be called the 'Mockingjay'. Mockingjay is the title of the third book, the third and fourth films (the Mockingjay book in two parts), and a type of bird that can be found in many parts of Panem. It was the symbolism around which the icon of Katniss Everdeen was built and which served as a recognisable symbol of the uprisings that spread throughout the nation. The imagery of the Mockingjay appears again and again as an antagonism to those in power and as a symbol of non-compliance and resistance. Symbols of the Mockingjay are subsequently banned throughout Panem.

In the films, the symbol of the Mockingjay is rendered abstract. Little is explained of their existence and much is made of their trait of imitating sounds. Katniss' three-toned whistle used to communicate with allies during the Hunger Games is imitated by the birds and spread throughout the forest. But in the books, the birds have a history bound to oppressive governmental policies, unfair working conditions, marginalisation, surveillance, violence, genetic engineering and nature's accommodating and adapting tendencies. Mockingjays began their species as 'Jabberjays'- creatures that were genetically engineered by the government (mutts, as they are known in The Hunger Games universe) to spy on rebels during the first uprising 74 years before the events in the books take place. Jabberjays repeat whatever they hear. As such, jabberjays would fly in to listen to secret meetings and report back to the government and military. The irony of these creatures is that their failure leads ultimately to the destruction of the authoritarian rulers who created them (although this destruction takes three-quarters of a century to transpire). In short, the jabberjays mate with the native Mockingbirds and create a new species dubbed 'Mockingjays' that, instead of repeating words, repeat sounds and tunes in melodic tones (Collins 2010, p. 137). These tones become a resource for the impoverished District 8 and a tool for the nature-savvy competitors in the Hunger Games arena. In the arena of the Hunger Games, Katniss and her District 9 ally Rue use the Mockingjays to communicate and signal the next stage of their plan. The existence of Mockingjays literally mocks the supposedly powerful Panem rulers and becomes an emblem of the government's weakness and vulnerability. A powerful weapon of the government is transformed into a weapon of the resistance. And as a material force, an inspiration, a revolutionary symbol that inspires the events leading up to the building of an army, the storming of the Capitol and the removal of the totalitarian government bunkered there. The tragic irony, from the perspective of the denizens of the Capitol, is that their special weapons, science and tricks are what made them vulnerable. Their attempts to defeat the rebels made the rebels stronger, delivering them the tool and symbol that would help them realise victory.

These stories are rich in allegory, but they should not be read in abstraction. At its heart, The Hunger Games is a story of revolution. It is about rising up, shedding the shackles of unfreedom, much of which is emotional and psychological. As the story continues to unfold, we begin to learn that the dystopia that Collins is describing shares many socio-economic similarities to the world in which we live. One might even argue that we find ourselves, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, in a situation that is proto-Hunger Games. The economic inequality, the social and biological engineering, the cultural domination, the competitivism — it is all there. All we need now, perhaps, is some sort of military catastrophe or misplaced aggression. Or, so the story goes.

Precariousness: Imagined and Unimaginable Futures

Recent youth studies scholarship has been heavily influenced by Guy Standing's (2014) work on the Precariat. It comes on the back of two decades of youth studies scholarship that has explored the meanings of risk particularly in the contexts of participation in the labour market and how young people manage 'transitions' from childhood to adolescence to the so-called adulthood (see Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Kelly 2006; Wyn and White 1997).

In the aftermath of the 2007-2008 GFC, understanding how young people find their way into various versions of adulthood has taken on dangerous dimensions. There was a 'deadly time bomb' that loomed over the world, 'more destructive and dangerous' than anything an international terrorist could muster:

"Ticking time bombs, social dynamite, boiling-over frustrations, pent-up anger, violent conflicts, political insurrection and instability, disease and death. These are some of the representations of youth that are now being widely circulated, as youth returns to centre stage in poverty and development discourse in global centres of power and across the developing world." (The Hindu in Sukarieh and Tannock 2008: 301)

There is a second portrayal of young people at work in these dangerous times, and that is young people as 'agents of change', as 'citizens and leaders' and as a nation's 'most important assets'. We view young people in their positivity when they 'stand inside this system as willing and enthusiastic participants'. But when young people 'stand outside this system and question and doubt its basic precepts and promises' (Sukarieh and Tannock 2008: 302), they become subject to discourses of being dangerous, at-risk (Kelly 2006; Harris 2004), not fully developed in their brains and bodies (Bessant 2008). Here, we find intervention strategies designed to correct the supposedly bad choices they have made, such as in the case of counter-radicalisation programmes that have been en vogue since the rise of the Islamic State (Schmitt 2015).

These framings of young people as a problematic and dangerous population have a long history (see for instance: Bessant 2008: 348 and Harris 2004: 13). Kelly (2006) has argued that 'young people' — as a discursive category — have been institutionally produced as a dangerous and at-risk population that should be made subject to a range of narratives and social engineering interventions that sit among neo-Liberal imperatives of transitioning from education to the labour force, from idleness to productivity, and from family and school-based dependency to individualism. But these narratives were based on assumptions about the reliability and continuity of the institutions that structure everyday neo-Liberal realities. That hard work and education will result in stable employment. That avoiding risky habits surrounding sex and drugs will ensure mature adult relationships. That a positive attitude would ward off collapsing mental health and well-being.

In the aftermath of the GFC, Walsh (2015, p. 57) argues that young people face an increasingly fluid workforce that is ... insecure and precarious'. We might say that for young people, there is increasingly a 'grey area between employment and unemployment' (Furlong 2007, p. 102). "The Precariat' is Guy Standing's (2014) name for a generation and a class that is characterised by under- and unemployment, perpetual and structural disadvantage, perpetual uncertainty and marginalisation:

"Youth are entering labour markets in some disarray, many experiencing status frustration, feeling economically insecure and unable to see how to build a career. Their predicament in many countries is compounded by unemployment. The financial meltdown hit young people hard. Millions lost jobs, millions more could not enter the labour market, and those who did found they had lower wages than their predecessors." (Standing 2014, p. 132)

While Standing's argument runs the risk of essentialising the experiences of a diverse and complex population, it is evident that the 2007-2008 GFC has exacerbated the already existing conditions of disadvantage and youth marginalisation. A situation that is coupled with the phenomenon of older people re-entering the labour market, working longer and doing so in lower-skilled jobs that may have otherwise been occupied by under-skilled young people (Standing 2014, pp. 135-137). 'Dismal prospects' is how Standing (2014, pp. 133-134) describes these multitude of challenges facing young people as they enter the 'precarity trap'. A life shaped by the incentives of neo-Liberalism - the encouragement to be employable to be made presentable and flexible in any number of ways' - and the need for a sense of social belonging. These conditions, along with 'exposure to a commodifying education system', give rise to a 'status frustration' (Standing 2014, pp. 133-134, our emphasis).

Against the neo-Liberal common-sense, this 'status frustration' could be viewed as a positive development, since dissatisfaction with the status quo may prove to be the seed of meaningful change. Career/life/identity/ self-status frustration may come to represent the base from which the future can be imagined in other terms (see Howie and Campbell 2015). This might be the seeds of the Mockingjay - a predicament created by the powerful that may lead to uprising and change among those who do not benefit under neo-Liberalism. This, one might say, was the essence of the activities pursued by the Occupy movement in protests against austerity and globalisation around the world.

For Wendy Brown (2015, p. 30), 'Intensified inequality, crass commodification and commerce' and 'ever-growing corporate influence in government' are among the consequences of neo-Liberalism and among the chief grievances of post-GFC protest movements. What these movements understand better than most people is that 'Citizenship in its thinnest mode is mere membership' (Brown 2015, p. 218). What many young activists also seem to understand is that patriotism is not the only form that activism might take (although, for a whole range of reasons, right-wing movements are particularly prominent in Western countries at the time of writing). But what form can and should their action take?

Today, as economic metrics have saturated the state and the national purpose, the neoliberal citizen need not stoically risk death on the battlefield, only bear up uncomplainingly in the face of unemployment, underemployment, or employment unto death. The properly interpellated neoliberal citizen makes no claims for protection against capitalism's suddenly burst bubbles, job-shedding recessions, credit crunches, and housing market collapses, its appetites for outsourcing or the discovery or pleasure and profit in betting against itself or betting on catastrophe. (emphasis added, Brown 2015, p. 218)

Defined in this way, the task in developing a disposition suited to neo- Liberal times becomes to be 'dispossessed' of one's neo-Liberal citizenship (see Butler and Athanasiou 2013, pp. ix-xi). Part of simply being a neo-Liberal citizen, in this view, is doing nothing, accepting the world as it is. living happily (or not) among the status quo. It may be that doing something, resisting in any meaningful or perhaps non-meaningful way, are the building blocks for resisting the injustices of neo-Liberalism. It may be the basis of imagining a future in other terms. This might be the moment that young people decide if their necklace is one of rope, or one of hope.

How 'Generation K' Imagines the Future

The Hunger Games have been, in recent times, the most read and most watched novels and films in the youth culture literary and film genre. As a 'franchise' it has, in undoubtedly diverse and complex ways, inspired young people in a post-GFC world to think and act in other terms. Evidence of this can be found in many places. Hughes (2015) argues that the 'generation who came to Katniss as young teens and have grown up ploughing through the books and queuing for the movies respond to her story in a particularly personal way'. The generation of young people her born between 1995 and 2002, according to Noreena Hertz (2015), can be referred to as 'Generation K' - a generation of young people raised with social networking technologies and some of the worst disasters since the Second World War. 9/11, the GFC, Wikileaks and Snowden and looming environmental catastrophe have characterised the first 16 years of the twenty-first century, with few signs that a belief in imminent disaster is fading: "They are a group for whom there are disturbing echoes of the dystopian landscape that Katniss encounters in The Hunger Games's District 12. Unequal, violent, hard' (Hertz 2015). The consequence of this is a generation living under a siege mentality, a generation that labours under a belief that anxiety, uncertainty and doubt are inevitable consequences of imagining a future. The character of Katniss Everdeen shows us that maybe there is reason for hope if we are willing to do what it takes. We may, perhaps, have to wear a necklace of rope (or hope) before change is secured, but fire, rage and desire have the potential to overthrow an unjust and immoral system.

Recent protests and civil disruptions in Hong Kong in 2014 provide some merit to the idea of a revolution born of Generation K. They were protests partially inspired by The Hunger Games books and movies. The 'pro-democracy protesters' even adopted the 'three-fingered salute' championed by Katniss. In the Hunger Games' universe, this salute is about defiance and represents a 'screw you' attitude towards people with impossible power (Sim 2014a). The salute was used by protesters in Thailand prompting the Thai government to declare that if people continued to make the salute while part of a large group, then military police 'will have to make an arrest' (Sim 2014b). In late 2014, the Thai police and military made good on this threat by arresting several student protesters, and a cinema chain pulled The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 movie from their screens (Mydans 2014). Katniss' salute had evolved into a symbol of real, violent uprising.

Katniss Everdeen, we argue, helped provide a narrative for these protesters to imagine their futures on other terms. The three-finger salute is not simply a pop-cultural tribute or a playful representation of civic rights. Revolution was on Katniss' mind and she asked her followers to wear not only a necklace of hope but also one of ropes. Violence, the Thai police and government likely feared, may soon follow the salute. This, for Žižek (2012), is the effect of a superhero. It is the 'outcasts, freaks' who take action when injustice reigns and where 'superheroes have to enter precisely when normal society cannot do it'. But change does not happen overnight. The seeds of change are often laid well before change is realised. As Žižek (2014, p. 20) argues: 'People do not rebel when 'things are really bad' but when their expectations are disappointed'. This is perhaps one of the key messages of The Hunger Games novels and films and the message that has contributed to the mobilisation of 'Generation K'. The first step towards change is knowing, and believing, that changed is needed.

Conclusion: Do Something

The point we make here is that action, activism and resistance take many forms. And doing something in a neo-Liberal system that hopes we do nothing is potentially the most rebellious act of all. Danger and risk in their negativity can be reimagined as opportunities for actions in their positivity (see Kelly 2006, p. 18). It is a space where neo-Liberal power can be redirected to benefit those without power. We witness this in protesters in Thailand who deploy a revolutionary symbol they found in a billion-dollar Hollywood franchise. This was their Mockingjay. It is in this moment that neo-Liberalism might merge with the movements that resist it.

We want to conclude by highlighting the tragic plight of some of the highest achieving young people in the USA. Silicon Valley, in the bohemian 'Bay Area' of Northern California, is the corporeal and geographical home of the social media revolution. It is also home to what is known as a 'suicide cluster' - a concentration of suicides in a particular geographic region, often linked by particular socio-cultural conditions (Rosin 2015). Indeed, it is also home to an 'echo cluster' - an extraordinarily rare occurrence where the same geographical location is subject to a second suicide cluster within a decade. These clusters were found in local high schools where the demands imposed by Silicon Valley parents many of whom moved to the area to give their children elite education and employment opportunities were, simply put, pushing their children over the edge through a 'competitive insanity' that 'breeds competition, hatred, and discourages teamwork and genuine learning. We are sick. ... Why is that not getting through to this community?' (Walworth in Rosin 2015). The favourite method for suicide among young people in this region was to throw themselves in front of the Caltrain. One student compared the train's 'warning whistle' to the 'cannon that goes off in The Hunger Games every time kid dies' (in Rosin 2015).

Perhaps, the money making, the stress and anxieties it induces, and the neo-Liberal systems that hold it all together conspire to make many of us desperately depressed, making our world competitive, hellish and hopeless. Perhaps, we live in a world where the only choice many can see is death, but at least a death of their choosing. Perhaps, it is, as Schrecker and Bambra (2015) have argued that neo-Liberalism makes us sick. Obesity, mental illness, austerity and inequality are all perhaps as much a part of thriving in neo-Liberalism as profits, market share and entrepreneurialism and innovation. When framed in these ways, neo-Liberalism is almost certainly not something we hope for young people who face a future of uncertainty (Bauman 1998), precariousness (Standing 2014; Turner 2006) and anxiety (Stossel 2014). But what could be done about this? How do young people survive such hostile conditions? The Occupy movement asks questions like these, as do the activists of the Arab Spring. So too did protesters in Thailand and China in 2014. The existence of these social movements suggests that something is being done in neo-Liberal times, within/against neo-Liberal common-sense.