Even though the release of the film adaptation of the next Hunger Games installment is over six months away (9 November, 22, to be precise), the Hollywood stylists are already pulling out all the stops on the teaser posters and other publicity tools in their arsenal to ensure that the 75th Hunger Games will be, shall we say? smoking hot. What is particularly fascinating about these images is how they tie into the text, history, the trilogy’s metanarrative and, yes, the sick, sad, real Hunger Games we call Hollywood. So let’s take a peek at the shiny film posters and those fascinating (and still coming) “official” Capitol portraits, at least one of which was foreshadowed on the Oscar red carpet.
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‘Catching Fire’ Film Posters: Roses, Chairs, and Costumes that Show at least One of the Gamesmakers Does Still Read
March 8, 2013 by 4 Comments
’10 Questions’ with Veronica Roth, Author of the Divergent Trilogy: Part 3 — “Did You Plan These Books? No? Really?”
March 6, 2013 by 11 Comments
Hogwarts Professor.com Interview with Veronica Roth: Part 1 (with Prof Louise Freeman) and Part 2 (with Prof Elizabeth Baird-Hady)
In my conversation with Ms Roth in Orlando last summer, she told me point blank she didn’t plan her books. Hence my query below, the last of our ’10 Questions’ exercise, which is more of a reading comprehension selection followed by an essay question, alas, than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ short answer piece. Ms Roth very graciously and generously replied. Enjoy!
You told me in Orlando that you “don’t plan” your work, period, full stop. My question is “Really?” How can a dystopian world of such coherent complexity be written ‘off the cuff’? Let me explain why I think a more credible answer to the planning or jump-right-in question deserves a qualified “both yes and no” response. It’s hard to believe that the five groups came to you in mid-flight of the story; there must have been some world-building plan on the ground, if you will, as the story took shape or reverse engineering to have it work as it does.
For this I’m leaning on the psychological interpretation and exegesis of Prof Freeman. If you haven’t read them already, please read her two HogwartsProfessor posts on the five tribes of Divergent and their alignment with psychological categories (OCEAN).
Given your comments about your interest in Personality factors in interviews, it’s a real stretch to think this kind of artistry wasn’t planned.
Prof Freeman, in answer to a question I posed her about allegorical qualities of Divergent, wrote this:
MuggleNet Academia 18: High School and Hogwarts — Did You Survive and Move on or Are You Still the Wizard Adolescence Made You? A Conversation with Professor Carrie Birmingham
March 5, 2013 by 6 Comments
Pepperdine University Associate Professor Carrie Birmingham is a teacher with experience in pre-schools, elementary grades, middle schools, and, yes, high schools. She is a published authority on a variety of subjects of the pedagogical variety, but, unusual for a “teacher of teachers” in Pepperdine’s Seaver College, Prof Birmingham is equally accomplished as a Potter Pundit. With articles in academic journals, college talks, and featured presentations at fandom gatherings, she is in the front row of academics discussing the Hogwarts Saga, especially the few intrigued by the school issues involved. Did I mention she has a web site on this theme? Check out ‘Harry Potter Goes to School.’
Prof Birmingham joined me. Letty Nardone of Byram Hills School District in New York, and MuggleNet’s Keith Hawk to discuss Harry Potter’s high school experience as compared to what we experience(d) in the equally unreal world. First read Jennifer Senior’s New York magazine article, Why You Never Leave High School: New Science on Its Corrosive Traumatizing Effects, the article that prompted Mrs Nardone to write us and suggest this podcast subject. If you’re an American that survived secondary education in the last fifty years or are going through that gauntlet now, I think you’ll be fascinated.
You’ll certainly be prepared for our conversation about what school does to our heads in our formative years — and how Ms Rowling plays with this social fact in her reinvention of the schoolboy novel. We discuss the Terrible Trio, but the Dark Lord, our Beloved Headmaster, the Marauders, and, of course, Severus and Lily to think again about to what degree our adolescent experiences, traumatic and identity shaping, make is who we are.
Enjoy! Below the jump, you’ll find more links to this program and to all the other MuggleNet Academia podcasts.
’10 Questions’ with Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent Trilogy: Part 2 — Elizabeth Baird-Hardy’s Questions
March 5, 2013 by 2 Comments
Part 1 of our 10 Questions Interview with Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent Trilogy, the part featuring the questions of Prof Louise Freeman, can be found here. Today, Hogwarts Prof Elizabeth Baird-Hardy (pictured at right) asks Ms Roth about names, the Christian content of the series, and, yes, tattoos! Enjoy the generous and thoughtful responses!
7. Why isn’t Joshua an Abnegation name, as Marcus points this out when Christina uses it in her babbling cover story to the guards at the gate in Insurgent?
I’ve actually gotten asked this a lot, and it was really just an instinct I had– I choose names mostly based on how they feel to me, and Abnegation names tend to feel stuffy or old-fashioned (Beatrice, Tobias, Susan, Marcus). Joshua doesn’t feel stuffy to me, it feels tough, strong—maybe a Dauntless or Candor name?
I also think the way we use names in groups over time is somewhat arbitrary, and has less to do with the meanings of the names than you’d think. Why are half of my mother’s friends named “Barbara,” but there were a dozen “Katherine”s in my graduating class? Certain names are popular in certain groups and not in others and I’d be hard pressed to explain why, though I’m sure someone else has.
8. Each of the factions celebrates a characteristic (courage, meekness, wisdom, peace, truth) that is, somewhere in Scripture, seen as one Christians should seek to attain, and yet, as we see, the results are disastrous. How do you see the story of Tris as being one about our faith and the dangers the apostle Paul pointed out in I Corinthians 12? [Read more…]
’10 Questions’ With Veronica Roth, Author of the Divergent Trilogy: Part 1 — Louise Freeman’s Questions
March 3, 2013 by 6 Comments
HogwartsProfessor, as the name suggests, is largely a Hogwarts Saga discussion weBlog. It has grown, in the wake of Deathly Hallows’ publication and the advent of the Generation Hex publications reflecting Rowling’s influence, to include serious readings of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. Last year we began the long, slow mining of Veronica Roth’s Divergent novels, the mining John Ruskin suggested finds the richest veins.
I wrote three posts about the evident echoes of Harry, Bella, and Katniss in Ms Roth’s Tris to start us off, but it was Louise Freeman, right, a Psychology professor at Mary Baldwin College, who got to the heart of the story in her posts. Read her brilliant A Dip in the OCEAN: Divergent Factions and the Big Five Personality Factors and A Dip in the OCEAN II: Double Dipping Dauntless: Can the neurotic be brave? for the psychological story scaffolding that gives Divergent the ‘wow’ connection and resonance with readers that it does.
I met Ms Roth at Ascendio 2012 (read about that here). I seized the moment and asked her if the HogwartsProfessor staff could have a ’10 Questions’ interview with her as we have with David Downing, Gary Gregg, and T. M. Dolan (not to mention the ’10 Questions’ I write up for each MuggleNet Academia podCast). She said she’d love to. And, as good as her word, Dr Freeman, Mrs Baird-Hardy, and I sent her our questions and she responded. I’ve split the questions up into three parts, those asked by each of the HogPros involved, which I’ll post this week in sequence.
We’ll begin and end with Louise Freeman’s questions — today, her own, in Part 3, my one question will be asked in the context of Dr Freeman’s brilliant psychological exegesis of the novels. On to the interview! [Read more…]
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