#i think names are a reflection of the narrator's relationship with the other districts at any one point

[moonmoonthecrabking]

suzanne collins: yeah pretty much everyone from every district has a name related to their industry except district 12. why? uhhhhhh fucking make it up yourself i'm not your mother

[mr-nauseam]

The Case of Lonely Mothers p. 1

A study about the "similarities" between Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen and their relationships with their respective children

Read only if you are interested in parallel Sejanus/Katniss. Otherwise just don't read it

For Juli (@julietasgf)

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I should clarify before I begin that I do not believe that such "parallel" is something Suzanne put in the text. Most likely there was never any intention to establish a connection between Ma Plinth and Katniss' mother by this great author

This only a crazy idea of mine that arises from noting various overlaps between the two characters and is mostly based on assumptions and headcanon's about Ma Plinth - Mrs. Everdeen

I'm just doing this for fun

.

Now let's began

I know it may seem strange to make a comparison between Ma Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen

Mrs. Plinth is quite well loved in the fandom. Regardless of what people think of her son, most conclude that she is sweet and her fate tragic, as she was a very devoted mother. Mrs. Everdeen on the other hand is one of the most controversial and hated characters in the franchise, and although opinions about her are divided, most conclude that she was a bad -or even the worst mother

The proposition here is that they are a reverse mirror of each other

I. Without a Name

We know that the narrators' perspectives are the cause. Coriolanus has no interest in knowing Ma Plinth's name (and really none in knowing her or talking to her beyond what is necessary)

Katniss on the other hand has a complicated and conflicted relationship with her own mother, which is reflected in this conscious or unconscious choice to deprive Mrs. Everdeen of her name in order to lock her into the role she theoretically fills in her life

If we could have a narrative of Sejanus we might discover his mother's name but I would like to point out that every time he talks about his mother he calls her Ma

Which is an affectionate nickname yes but in a similar way to Katniss it is a way of locking his mother into the role she occupies in his life

In this case mothers have no name. They are mothers

II. Different circumstances same story

The Plinth are rich. The Everdeens are poor

Ma Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen live in totally different realities due to their socioeconomic status but I believe that deep down, their experiences are very similar

I won't delve too much into the traumas within the games (Maysilee Donner - Katniss) that Mrs. Everdeen has but I will contemplate them when talking about the disadvantages she faced in her life

Let's move:

Mrs. Everdeen is described as a very talented healer. Belonging to the merchant class of her district, which is a high social stratum in her District. Katniss mother then comes from a background of privilege -compared to other people in 12

She falls in love with a man, a miner. He is from a very different class than her own and out of love decides to marry him and move to the Seam; the poorest area of Twelve and in doing so it is implied that her family turns their back on her

So you could say that Mrs. Everdeen had to abandons her home, her past life to be with the man she loves. Leaving her with his husband and her daughters as her only support system

And then she lose Mr. Everdeen. Left alone to care for two children in poverty

(This situation is even worst in her case if you consider that her best friend was killed in the games and had already suffered severe trauma from such an experience)

About Mrs. Plinth:

One of the first things we discovered about Ma Plinth is that she is a very talented cook. We don't know nothing about her background, she could have come from the merchant class or the poor mining class in Two. For our parallel it might be interesting to lean towards the last option but it is indifferent.

The important thing is that Ma just like Mrs. Everdeen falls in love with a man: Strabo Plinth.

Strabo ultimately may have been of a higher class than Ma but in the Plinth's case that is not the scandal of their relationship. The scandal is that during the war Strabo, owner of a munitions and armaments factory, supports the Capitol.

And Ma, who loves him, decides to stand by his side. I should note before continuing that the war itself is a traumatic experience to live, it is true that the trauma may be less severe if you have money and privilege but it persists. Ma carries this trauma on her shoulders

Strabo makes the decision to move his family to the Capitol. The most influential and wealthy area in all of Panem. And although she has her doubts Ma follows him. Her family turns their backs on her (only one of her sisters keeps in contact with her, while the rest of her family has decided to make zero contact with Ma)

So we can see that Ma as Mrs. Everdeen had to leave her home and her past life to be with the man she loves. Leaving her alone with her husband and her son as her only support system

In the Capitol, Ma ends up as isolated and depressed as Katniss' mother at the loss of her husband. Both have lost their primary community and are on their own. They are now two lonely mothers

This is not to say that losing your partner and moving to the Capitol are equal and comparable experiences at all. Because they are not. The only connection that I establish between these events is that they were traumatic experiences, the turning points that will mark the life and the relationship that these characters will have with their children

I also considered it important to consider how different circumstances influence the experiences of these characters. Ma Plinth lived through the first rebellion, lived through the war and the first decades of the post war, but that does not take away from the fact that she comes from D2, one of the richest districts in Panem, which while oppressed by the government, its disadvantages cannot be compared to those existing in D12 as they face more severe oppression

Especially in a D12 under the direction of President Snow, in a Panem where games are a constant -and Mrs. Everdeen its a victim of them in many ways- but equally Mrs. Everdeen's "social descent" to the Seam probably involved its own challenges, and adaptations but these were very different from the "social ascent" that involved the Plinth's move to the Capitol and the violent xenophobia they had to deal with on a daily basis without any external community were to lean on + the severe rejection that it is implied people from Two had against them

III. Children surviving on their own

Before we delve into how Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen's response to a severe trauma - turning point eventd in their lives, mirror each other and define their relationship with their children (a mother who is completely devoted to her son, a mother who is completely neglectful of her daughter) we must talk briefly about Sejanus and Katniss and their relationships with their fathers

We could say a lot about these relationships (Especially in the case of Sejanus and Strabo) but this is a post focused on Mothers so we will limit ourselves to three aspects:

1. Who they look like, 2. Quality time, 3. Survival lessons

Katniss is a living portrait of her father. It is the first thing to inadvertently establish a noticeable distance between her and her mother (who is blonde and light skin and had color eyes). Our girl on fire possesses the typical traits of the Seam and the prejudice they carry, by her physical appearance Katniss is already confronted with a set of experiences that her mother will never experience and which intimately binds her to her father

There is an implicit recognition of being equals just because of how they look and they must navigate the world because of it. What becomes a more special and tragic bond when her father dies and Katniss has her own reflection to remember him by, she is in a way the only thing left of his appearance and it is this in turn that could also drive the wedge between her and her mother

For Mrs. Everdeen, her daughter had the face of a ghost

In the case of Sejanus and the Plinth in general the physical descriptions are vague and nonexistent. Again, Coriolanus' narration has its priorities according to his character -he inform us how badly the Plinth dress but not what they look like

We could go with the movie on this, and although they appear in only one scene, it is obvious that Sejanus is his parents' son, but his round face, hair and large brown eyes seem to immediately distance him from Strabo. He looks more like his mother and we can say that possibly Sejanus also moves through the world in the same way his mother does not only by his physical but by his manners. He moves in the manners of the District

Is relevant because even if we could not confirm it, there are gestures in the text that hint that Strabo has preferred assimilation to move around the Capitol. He adopts its ways, while his wife keeps an altar to her old house in D2 -where she has not been for more than a decade-, Ma its the one that spend most time with Sejanus and that would influence him. For example their time together probably make that Sejanus knows the traditions around Death in Two

Which ultimately leads to quality time. Before Mr. Everdeen dies, Katniss's family seems stable and loving, her problems with her mother are far from starting but it still seems that it is with her father and not her mother that she spends the most quality time with

As I said previously there is a good starting point for this to happen in the physical aspect. People will never treat Mr. Everdeen the way they will treat his wife, which translates into people will never treat Katniss the way they will treat Prim, Mr. Everdeen knows that and act accordingly by spending more time with Katniss to guide and teach her things she might not otherwise know -which will end up leading to survival lessons

It must be said that it also influences what appears to be a personality resemblance between Katniss and her father, which causes a greater understanding between them, and the reason of why Sejanus and Strabo couldn't work

I wouldn't say that Strabo was an absentee father but I think we can assume that his work is very time consuming and since he is the sole provider for his household, the chances of him spending much quality time with Sejanus are slim. Which drives a wedge between the two, a wedge that will only grow wider as Strabo tries to get closer to his son through survival lessons

Many will agree that Sejanus was not given the guidance or tools by his parents to be able to survive in the Capitol but we can't say they didn't try. Strabo did. It was just that his survival measures failed to communicate with Sejanus belifs -and we might wonder if they were the right measures in the first place

Strabo did a lot to ensure Sejanus' survival, and to teach him how to cope with the world. He left him an inheritance that would ensure his economic well-being and tries to teach him how to keep the business, took him to the Capitol where to "free" Sejanus from the hunger games and takes care to let him know how unique his position is, taught him how to shoot but Sejanus hates it. Every time that Strabo try to teach Sejanus a survival lesson he fails to communicate them and consequently his son never use his lessons 99% of the time

Why does he fail? There are many things that go into it. From literally the language he uses, the different ways Strabo and Sejanus handle the trauma of living in the Capitol while being from the district, but I think the primary thing in causing this fatal miscommunication is the similarities in their personalities and the fatal difference in beliefs

It's easy to see how Sejanus' character distances from Strabo's character; he's selfless, sensitive, gentle, and soft but also he's very similar to his father. His stubbornness, bravery, courage and pride come from Strabo. Fire with fire. This plus the fact that Sejanus is not being able to use the lessons of his survival from his Pa because they get in conflict with his thinking

It made that Sejanus had to figure out for himself how to survive in the Capitol

Katniss also gets her own survival lessons from her father (hunting, gathering, singing, etc) and Katniss unlike Sejanus uses them, although I should note that Katniss is partly forced by circumstance to use her father's lessons. It was literally a matter of life and death, she could not choose to alienate or distance herself from the lessons, and thus the symbolic burden of belief they carry, of her father.

Whatever, quality time, physical resemblance, a simple complementary match of their personalities, the way things were said and teach and gender along with other factors allow for more a effective communication to happen between Katniss Dad and her than the Plinths but still a fatal miscommunication takes place between them: death

While Katniss is able to survive thanks to the survival lessons her father gave her, their time together was very brief and the truth is that she was a child who only knew a handful of things about how not to die when she lost her dad. The rest she had to figure out on her own because the dead don't talk and can't guide the living

Understanding that, the question arises:

But what about their mothers? Couldn't they take care of them, or communicate with them once Sejanus and Katniss "lost" their fathers?

*Little note:

The gender also influences in this, because there is an expectation of masculinity that Sejanus is expected to fulfill and does not (being more typically feminine in his values) that Katniss in relation to her father not have (by the society in any case she is expected to be feminine and its curious that she kinda adopts instead typically masculinity values). And I haven't said it but I think it is visible that just as Ma Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen are an inverse reflections of each other, something very similar happens with Sejanus and Katniss AND I LOVE IT

Next part: The conclusion (I'll have to do another part because this is already too long HELP)

[jitteryjive]

i made a post a few days ago about a ce au character named chester.. here he is!! this also includes dolores the other protagonist of this au.. of course this being a body sharing au and also about reflection in fiction i wanted to be very similar to the shifter twins hence why they share a lot of features with the toon they correspond to! i already mentioned the plot of the au in the post about ruth and chester’s relationship but i’ll reinstate it under the cut since i like me my details

the au (which i’m calling Off the Page and Into the Brain) takes place in april of 1935 during the Great Depression; i aim to make it more historically accurate hence why chester and dolores look realistic compared to a lot of humans in crime express, but it’s not 100% historically accurate, 1) because the story very obviously is impossible 2) conditions aren’t nearly as discriminatory as they really would be in 1935 and 3) ruth, blu, tulip, and more are still all queer but they all get misgendered a couple times because they’re not represented in the cartoons, since things weren’t so great in 1935. honestly this au is more for goofs and to write different dynamics than a deeply serious masterpiece!

anyways, like ruth being the most predominant (third person) narrator of crime express, chester is the general narrator for the story. he’s been working for about a decade on animation since he was about twenty during the roaring 20’s, and for the past ~7 years has been working at lane parade animation studios (yeah i just used ruth’s district in show-stoppolis LOL). the studio solely develops and sells a cartoon that features the cast of crime express, however in this all the in-canon humans have the appearances of toonans (which for reference they look more like fleischer studio human characters) and the story is different. ruth and blu are kind of like sam & max, as in they’re fraternal twin freelance detectives and patton (he isn’t called nineteen in this) is their assistant. their personalities are generally identical to their canon adult personalities though ruth is much less chronically anxious and blu’s a lot less trigger-happy. other notable characters are tulip the french socialite, who’s glamorous and notably involved in their entomological schemes, accompanied by mason the bodyguard, who’s much less anxious and better described as sunshiny and cuddly.

the story itself introduces chester as a lover of his craft, especially ruth; she’s his favorite character (especially because he is his main animator) and he feels he understands them on a deep level, especially because he unintentionally puts a lot of facets of his autism into her. when sent to start solitary development on visual concepts for the newest cartoon they’re making, he ends up getting worked up in his office about how they have the budget to consider giving the cast voice actors and how he thinks his opinions aren’t considered regarding the characters. he ends up banging his head by accident on the inside of his desk (he’s looking for a reference book) and spilling ink all over himself. from that point forward he begins to experience odd and unusual symptoms until he ends up having to leave work early after vomiting during a storyboarding session. everything culminates into chester racing to his apartment and his brain being occupied by another person’s conscience while he goes through the classic body horror situation. through unknown means, he’s taken on the appearance and the brain of ruth who reveals herself to have previously been a semi-conscious cartoon character, as well as kind of recognizing him as his cartoonist. they befriend each other, and work together to find a comfortable way to share a body when ruth’s got a bad case of fidgeting and sensory issues versus chester’s need for privacy; from there, the real mystery they have to solve is what the cause for this impossible situation is!

though i’ve only written up to a scene where ruth and chester figure out how to function in public without giving the clear appearance he’s roomies in a toon body with the toon herself, there are several scenes and characters i’ve developed, which i will laboriously detail 😅

dolores martínez (she/her), the deuteragonist, is the studio intern who’s been on for about four or five months. her parents immigrated to louisiana sometime in the tens, so she was born with her first younger sister there and raised for a couple years before moving further north, in which her second youngest sister was born; in her mid-twenties now she must look after her now teenage and tween sisters due to uncomfortable parental situations (this’ll get more developed when i write more). inside the studio, dolores is the intern and generally keeps away from everyone due to being stoic and gauche. however, especially as the story develops, she sort of has a special bond with chester as he’s unconditionally kind to everyone (even if they’re fucking dicks to him) and he’s very helpful to her, which is a relief because she also gets pushed around a lot. this is technically a spoiler cause i’m deliberately building up to it with red herrings and everything but chester eventually reveals to dolores that he’s sharing a body with ruth, expecting her to be disturbed or whatever, but she freaks out and reveals that for the past three months she’s been sharing a body with blu?!?!? which their relationship is an entire fun thing because they work really well together

roh jung-hun (he/him) is… kind of an antagonist at first! however he overcomes a lot of internalized problems and reveals his actual personality of being a gentle and loving person. before this big change, jung-hun is witty, snarky, and can be very well described as censorious. this comes from hailing from a bit of a pressuring and stress-inducing family, which leaves him treating his coworkers the same, especially chester. they spend a lot of time together due to him being the biggest animator of blu, like chester’s responsibility with ruth. the toon that he ends up sharing a body with is mason, inexplicably. this is because i think it would be hilarious and also ruth/chester and blu/dolores get along so well that jung-hun and mason butting heads is good writing practice. the obvious happens where mason eventually pinpoints what makes jung-hun act the way he does, and he works to heal his brain-roommate through friendship and care that’s not really found in big city 1935. also mason does his classic accidental power of making jung-hun realize he’s gay because mason is one thing and that’s a sweet and handsome boy

there’s a lot of characters and plot points not mentioned here but i wanted to put the major humans in this because they’re important you know!!

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY A nuclear war breaks out in 1986, expending the world’s entire nuclear arsenal, except for one missile. Two children, Philip Chandler (John Stockwell) and Marlowe Hammer (Michael Dudikoff), are abandoned by their fathers in a fallout shelter cut into the side of a wooded mountain. The pair grow up in the shelter, with 1950s detective fiction and swing music as the guiding force in their learning. Fifteen years later Marlowe succeeds in digging out the cave entrance. The pair give each other haircuts, dress in suits, and go to rejoin the world.

Philip narrates their adventure on their first day out:

My name’s Philip, and this is going to be a yarn about me and my pal, Marlowe. About the day we got out of this shelter and went off into the post-nuclear world. Now, as excited as we were about leaving the shelter, it was still a joint that held fond memories. I mean, it was the only world we’d ever known. Where I practiced my magic, Marlowe, his dancing; where we both dreamed of becoming private eyes, just like the ones we’d read about.

Marlowe hopes to find their fathers, but Philip is disgruntled that they never returned, and presumes that they are dead. The mountain is now devoid of trees. The first people they find are a trio of radiation burned “mutants” chasing a beautiful woman, Miles Archer (Lisa Blount). They rescue Miles, who kisses Marlowe as a distraction and steals his gun. This backfires, as she drops the activation keys to the last nuclear missile. Miles leaves, and the pair are immediately attacked by a biker gang of bald women in red wigs. Afterwards the boys discover the activation keys, which bears their fathers’ names. This excites Marlowe, but disturbs Philip.

They rescue another young woman, Rusty Mars (Michele Little), from a group of armed children Philip nicknames “disco mutants”. She takes a liking to Philip, and leads the two of them to Edge City which is plagued by gang warfare. Rusty takes them to a dance club, where they are captured by cannibals. They want the nuclear keys, and to eat the young men, a rarity of uncontaminated meat. Although Rusty helps them escape and apologises, Philip doesn’t trust her. Just after they part ways the pair meets up with a friend of Miles’ who also wants the keys. After he is dispatched Miles shows up and takes them to her hideout. There she tells them about the purpose of the keys. Miles then threatens to kill them, but they escape.

Rusty has followed them to the hideout, but is attacked by the child gangsters. The pair chase them away, but Philip still doesn’t trust her. He wants to shoot her, but is out of bullets. After Rusty apologises again for lying to him and originally handing him over to the cannibals he says, “That was a million years ago, and I got a short memory. In fact, I don’t even remember who you are”.

The pair resolves to rid the city of the gangs and keep the keys. They go to an abandoned warehouse, using themselves as bait, in the hopes that the gangs will kill each other before killing them. For the most part, the plan works. However, the bosses of the child-gangsters are in fact Philip and Marlowe’s fathers. Before he dies, Philip’s father tells him that the past does not matter. In the end, the only gangster left standing is Miles, who has the keys. She shoots at them, and misses, but startles Marlowe into shooting and killing her.

The film ends with Philip letting go of the angst which he had nursed for 15 years. He adopts Marlowe’s “silver-lining look on life”. The two demonstrate Marlowe’s tap-inspired “post-nuke shuffle” to the crowds of the city. In the closing narration, Philip explains that they plan to set up shop as detectives, but that first he will find Rusty and see if he can repair his relationship with her. Of the keys, he says that he and Marlowe hid them in a secret location, because “you never know, in a tight jam a nuclear missile just might come in handy”.

PRODUCTION Albert Pyun’s first film, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, made box office waves and instantly established him as a hot property in Hollywood. If you haven’t heard much about the young director in the past two years, it’s because Pyun has been busy working on his next feature, a post-nuclear fantasy-adventure tale entitled RADIOACTIVE DREAMS. The film is scheduled for release later this year, though a distribution deal has not yet been finalized.

The long pre-production period was, in part, due to the challenge of acquiring financing (after THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, Pyun had several offers, but wanted to work independently from the studio system and a six month talent search for the roles of Phillip and Marlowe. Pyun estimates that he saw over 600 young actors, striving to find two who weren’t too modern-looking, and could believably carry a 40’s attitude as part of their characters. During this time, Pyun and Karnowski wrote some 50 drafts of the script, began scouting locations, and dove head-long into the other crucial pre-production elements.

A visit to the production office at Laird International Studios reflects just how much work had already been done on the project which, in Pyun’s words, has a budget only “slightly larger than the $3.5 million spent to film THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, the walls are covered with color storyboards by in-house illustrator Shawn Joyce (who will be preparing all the film’s matte paintings), character sketches, blueprints of sets, and even tabletop poster board miniatures of the hippie city square (modeled after San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district), and the bombshelter (which comes complete with a two-car garage). Mark Moses, a winner of several CLIO awards, serves as the film’s visual consultant, with Chester Kaczenski handling art direction.

Principal photography, by German cinematographer Thomas Mauck, who shot many of Werner Herzog’s films, began in March in Pyun’s native Hawaii, on the island of Hawaii. The remote locations-in the mountains and on the site of the Mauna Loa volcano, where an unexpected eruption occurred on the first day of shooting-generated some visually sensational dallies, according to publicist Scott Fields.

Interview with Albert Pyun

How did you come about writing Radioactive Dreams? Albert Pyun: I wanted to do something after “The Sword and the Sorcerer” that was distinctive and not like anything else. I think I felt that if I only got to make 2 movies in my life, the second had to be as imaginative as I could create. So that was the start of it and I had a lot of meetings with studios and what they liked about my first film was how it was imaginative, so I went that direction.

Did the 1980’s missile crisis have anything to do with what inspired you? Albert Pyun: Well, no, but growing up in the Col War years certainly did. I always was a fan  of Dr. Strangelove and i think that and “O Lucky Man” got me going on the idea of the last nuke left.

How long did it take for the guys to get the “Post Nuke Shuffle” down? Albert Pyun: Did they ever?? To be fair, we had to shoot it really fast as the sun was coming up and we were losing extras. So we had to shoot it fast and that was unfair to John and Michael because they did work hard on that dance. We shot most of the big music scenes and extras scenes in one night so that really made it a very rushed shoot night. I don’t know if John was as comfortable with the dance as Michael. I think it went against this sort of “cool” vibe John had. He was very dedicated to what we were doing but some of it i could tell unsettled him.

The dance looked pretty amazing. I’m surprised it isn’t a staple to dance to at weddings and birthdays. Any memories of when you filmed the big final scene? Albert Pyun: Just how fast we had to do it. I was disappointed we could do it with more takes and shots. It was pretty basic and FAST. And they had a costume change in the middle of it. I had actually shot several book end scenes which were set 40 years later and had a young mutant reporter interviewing Rusty about Philip and Marlowe. It talked about what eventually happened to them and how Marlowe was murdered by a gang trying to get the launch keys and how Phillip left rusty to destroy the keys once and for all but never returned. I think there was a small shot at the end showing Philip and Rusty’s son and a quick peek of Philip watching from afar to keep them safe.

The soundtrack to this film still remains very popular. Did you personalty pick any of the artist that made it into the movie? Albert Pyun: Yeah, I selected the songs used. My friend and co-producer John Stuckmeyer was into that LA music scene and got a lot of bands to submit cassette tapes of demos. He weeded out the most appropriate ones and he and I selected the final choices to be used. I think we had a couple written for the movie specifically when we couldn’t find exactly what we wanted.

How did you end up meeting John Stockwell and Michael Dudikoff? Albert Pyun: They came in  during the casting process. We saw a lot of great actors of that time, Judge Reinhold, Clancy Brown, Tim Van Patten, Harry Anderson, many really good actors. We even had a breakfast meeting with Tom Hanks, a tape submission from Ellen DeGeneres. All were young and at the start of their careers as was I.

As a special effects makeup artist, I found the mutants completely terrifying! Any memories of the makeup process on the actors? Albert Pyun: That was by Greg Cannom who would go on to win oscars for Dracula and more. He figured out the design and look. I was disappointed that I had to lose the surfing sequence in the film. We wanted to dye the ocean flourescent orange and have surfing mutants surf and rot I think but the Coastal Commission said no.

Do you think a film like that could be made today? Albert Pyun: No, Radioactive Dreams wouldn’t get made today. It’s way too eccentric and weird. Even in 1984 it was tough to get made. I raised the budget myself from a single investor. He was a real estate developer in San Bernadino California. I think he did it because he finally gave in to my dogged persistence for over a year. He said “no” many times, but I kept hearing “yes”. I’m an optimist I guess. I believed in the film and knew it would be a unique picture to follow up The Sword and the Sorcerer. Anyway halfway through production the funding disappeared.

A couple of Edge City’s best and brightest with costume designer Joseph Porro

SPECIAL EFFECTS Special prosthetic make-ups were created by Greg Cannom. His bizarre designs range from the mysterious repulse men to a wrinkled surf bunny (a girl whose excessive bathing in the post nuclear sun has given her the appearance of a 90 year-old woman) and his favorite, the mutant surfers: those who refused to give up their treasured pastime, even though the ocean has become radioactive.

The surfers’ skin, hanging loosely from their bones, is riddled with chemotherapy patches and permanently-affixed barnacles. their long. scorched, platinum blonde hair is missing entire sections. Josephine Turner, who did the intricate hair ventilating for THE HOWLING and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, will create the wigs. Straight and extra make-ups will be provided by Ve Neil and Rick Schwartı.

Mutant Surfer

Special fire and mechanical effects will be handled by Joe Lombardi’s Special Effects Unlimited. The film’s extensive stunt work, under the direction of Alan Gibbs offers several cliff-hanging sequences: a chase on winding mountain roads involving female bikers, a high-speed helicopter pursuit, various gun battles and a warehouse explosion. Additionally, there will be a surfing sequence in a ‘radioactive’ ocean-a portion of the real ocean near the shoreline will be chemically dyed expressly for filming.

Cast and crew spent most of their final week of production in Los Angeles, working with a 14-foot high mechanical rat created by Charles and Steven Chiodo, with 22 separate functions and 12 operators-giving it head, arm, and body movement capabilities-said to be the most advanced pneumatically controlled robot ever constructed for a motion picture. Star Lisa Blount does a scene while standing in the rat’s mouth. Her stunt double Andre Gibbs, wife of the film’s stunt coordinator Alan Gibbs, takes over for Blount’s death scene in which she is eaten alive by the rat.

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Radioactive Dreams (1985) Soundtrack Most of the songs featured in the film are pop rock in the new wave vein. The exceptions are Zim Bim Zowie, a swing number, and also a tune in the American Songbook style, Daddy’s Gonna Boogie Tonight, played on a phonograph during the scene when Philip and Marlowe prepare to leave the fallout shelter. The latter and another track called All Talk were left out of the Australian and German soundtrack releases.[7]

Nightmare – Jill Jaxx – 5:10 Radioactive Dreams – Sue Saad – 5:18 She’ll Burn You – Maureen Steele – 4:13 Young Thing – Cherri Delight – 4:09 Tickin’ Of The Clock – The Monte Carlos – 2:07 Psychedelic Man – Shari Saba – 2:41 Eat You Alive – Lisa Lee – 2:40 Guilty Pleasures – Sue Saad – 3:44 (Performed by Saad on-screen) Turn Away – Mary Ellen Quinn – 2:13 She’s A Fire – Sue Saad – 2:07 When Lightning Strikes – Sue Saad – 6:51 Zim Bim Zowie – Darryl Phinessee – 2:20 Daddy’s Gonna Boogie Tonight B.J. Ward All Talk Lynn Carey

CAST/CREW Directed Albert Pyun Produced Moctesuma Esparza Written Albert Pyun

John Stockwell – Phillip Chandler Michael Dudikoff – Marlowe Hammer Michele Little – Rusty Mars Lisa Blount – Miles Archer Don Murray – Dash Hammer George Kennedy – Spade Chandler Norbert Weisser – Sternwood Christian Andrews – Brick Bardo Paul Keller Galan – Chester (as P.K. Galán) Demian Slade – Harold Hilary Shepard – Biker Leader (as Hilary Shapiro) Sue Saad – Punk District Singer Kimberly McKillip – Sadie – Hippie Chick Gulcin Gilbert – Greaser Chick (as Gulshin Gilbert) Mark Brown – Greaser Russell Price – Greaser

Makeup Department Greg Cannom    …  special makeup Ve Neill  …  makeup designer Brian Wade     …  additional makeup effects designer / additional makeup effects supervisor / special makeup effects artist Kevin Yagher   …  prosthetic makeup assistant

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v15n01 La Cosa Cine Fantastico Issue #113, July, 2005 staystillreviews

Radioactive Dreams (1985) Retrospective SUMMARY A nuclear war breaks out in 1986, expending the world's entire nuclear arsenal, except for one missile.

[motherhenna]

The Power of the ‘Boy with the Bread’: Gender Roles and Defiance in the Hunger Games

Most, if not all, fans of the Hunger Games trilogy can unanimously agree that Peeta Mellark is a polarizing character in any discourse: some adore him with the same intensity that he adores our narrator, while others wish that he had stayed dead after his run-in with the arena forcefield in Catching Fire. Regardless of one’s personal affection for him, however, Peeta Mellark is still incredibly crucial to the series as a whole: he stands as a foil to the toxic brand of masculinity that tends to plague the heroes of young adult media, and his partnership with Katniss challenges many of the traditional gender roles that are so often thought to be absolute and unconditional. Moreover, he is instrumental to both Katniss’ physical survival and emotional growth, as well as to the flow and coherence of the entire narrative in and of itself. Though many readers accuse him of emotional or physical weakness in comparison to both Katniss and Gale, the truth of the matter is so much more complicated than that.

From the first moment of his introduction, Peeta Mellark is defined by his kindness, a trait that seems to be difficult to find in the dog-eat-dog world of Panem. When his name is drawn for the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss’ first response is distress, as she is intimately aware that he is the one person to whom she owes everything.  “Oh no [...]. Not him,” she thinks during the Reaping. “To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy [...] and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed” (Hunger Games, 25-32). From this point on, it is constantly emphasized how unusual and out of place much of Peeta’s behavior is, especially when compared to the more self-sufficient survivors of District 12 and the gluttonous, apathetic denizens of the Capitol. Indeed, this sort of compassion is so out of place that our narrator spends almost the entirety of the first book trying to analyze and decode his actions, as she is unable to believe that such behavior could possibly be genuine, even though “when young Peeta first gave the scavenging Katniss a loaf of burned bread, he was assuming a great personal risk. Katniss was bewildered. ‘He didn’t even know me,’ she reflects” (Foy, 214). As Katniss is defined by her acute ability to endure and carry on, Peeta is similarly identified by his willingness to sacrifice—not simply for the sake of family and friends, but rather for the greater good. Since this concept is much discussed throughout the series, Abigail Mann reflects upon it in her essay, Competition and Kindness: on the odd phenomena of altruism and how this developed among the human species as a whole. “The fact that some people do give to beggars [...] demonstrates that we don’t always take the easy way out; rather, we choose actions that we think will best benefit others who are in need,” she explains. “Peeta burned the bread and endured a beating because [Katniss] and her family were badly in need of that sustenance at the time, and he cared enough to help” (Mann, 117).

Peeta’s personality also exists in sharp contrast to his harsh and often-violent mother, who regularly berates him, belittles him and even goes so far as to physically abuse him on several occasions. The only positive role model depicted in his life seems to be his father, who extends acts of generosity to Katniss that are quite similar to that of his son’s. For example, Mr. Mellark buys Katniss’ game for unnecessarily high prices, gives her cookies after the Reaping, and even promises to watch out for her beloved sister during her absence. –But the interesting thing about the Mellarks is how they deviate from traditional familial norms. In most iterations of media, the authoritative and controlling head of the household is almost always the man, while the woman is generally the sympathetic yet passive nurturer. In spite of this, said gender dynamics are completely flipped within the Mellark family: rather, the domineering mother is clearly in charge, while Mr. Mellark is described as being meek and soft-spoken: “We always wait to trade with him when his witch of a wife isn’t around because he’s so much nicer. I feel certain he would never have hit [Peeta] the way she did over the burned bread” (Hunger Games, 37). And like the Mellarks, we see similar non-normative gender roles reflected in their son and his eventual relationship with Katniss:

“It may take readers the entire first book, or even the entire series, to realize that from his earliest descriptions, Peeta is an equally complicated match for Katniss. Just as Katniss’ masculinity is expressed in her status as hunter, so Peeta’s femininity is expressed in his role as baker. Even Peeta’s shrew of a mother undercuts his masculinity by suggesting that Katniss might actually win this year, a sharp testament to his perceived feminized weakness.” (Mitchell, 132-33)

Though Peeta’s talents and occupations are never actively gendered either way by Katniss’ narration, baking, cake decorating and painting are all coded as ‘feminine’ skills by modern Western society, and are therefore widely considered to be inferior. This is probably why Katniss is lauded for her ‘masculine’ ability to hunt, kill and suppress ‘negative’ emotions like sadness and fear, while Peeta is mocked for his own penchant for nonviolence and creativity. “Of the major characters in the Hunger Games trilogy, Peeta is the closest to being an androgynous blend of the most desirable masculine and feminine traits,” Jessica Miller explains in her essay, Katniss and the Politics of Gender. “He’s confidant and self-reliant [...but] he’s also trusting and open. He’s physically strong, but avoids violence and aggression except in self-defence. Emotional and expressive, Peeta [...] cried openly when he took leave of his family for the Hunger Games” (154).  So even with his muscular build, physical strength and experience with hand-to-hand combat, Peeta is still not considered ‘manly’ enough for many readers, as they have come to expect only the aggressive, authoritarian male lead and tend to reject any character who differs from this archetype. However, in the end, there is no ‘superior’ skill set: Collins portrays both Katniss and Peeta’s abilities as different but of equal merit and importance. After all, “individuals ‘vary’ [...]. From the perspective of Darwin’s theory, it’s just as natural for Katniss to fail in one environment (as she surely would during the Victory Tour without Peeta, Haymitch Abernathy, and Cinna’s help) as it is for her to succeed in another” (Mann, 106-107). Anyway, it’s unlikely that readers see Peeta as a damsel in distress solely because he ‘constantly’ needs to be rescued by Katniss, as canonically, they support each other both physically and emotionally in relatively equal amounts throughout the series. No, in reality, Peeta is probably designated as weak not because he is unable to protect himself, but because he needs to be saved by a woman at all.

Now, while this titular couple is well known from their differing-yet-complimentary personalities, we actually see that Katniss progressively comes to understand and even adopt many of Peeta’s beliefs over time. From the death of her District 11 ally in the first Games to her ethical conflicts with Gale throughout Mockingjay, Katniss is actually influenced by Peeta far more than many readers care to admit. Truth be told, Peeta “risks a beating because it’s the right thing to do. Strange as that motive must have seemed at the time to young Katniss, she will become more and more like Peeta over the course of their relationship, displaying a growing concern for others and a willingness to sacrifice herself in order to do what’s right” (Foy, 215). In fact, Peeta Mellark’s sense of morality is perhaps one of (if not the most) important aspects of his character, as it directly influences his actions, relationships and inclination towards kindness and altruism, as well as contributes to the grander themes of the trilogy at large. A prominent scene that displays said ethics takes place on the night before the Hunger Games. Katniss finds herself so worried about survival strategies and fear for her own wellbeing that she is unable to sleep, and while wandering the District 12 quarters of the Tribute Center, she discovers that Peeta is still awake too. When she asks him what he’s thinking about, he clarifies:

“I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense?” he asks. I shake my head. [...] “I don’t want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not.”

I bite my lip, feeling inferior. [...] “Do you mean you won’t kill anyone?”

“No, when the time comes, I’m sure I’ll kill just like everybody else. I can’t go down without a fight. ...Only I keep wishing I could think of a way...to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I am more than a piece in their Games.” (Hunger Games, 142-143)

Upon hearing this, Katniss is at first flummoxed, then irritated, and misunderstands his explanation as pretention and superiority rather than a sincere personal dilemma. She is at first unable to grasp that “when [Peeta] insists that he won’t let the Games change him, part of what he means is that he’s unwilling to [...] sacrifice his human decency, even at the cost of his life” (Foy, 214). Katniss goes on to put this encounter out of her mind, and the meaning of his moral impasse remains beyond her comprehension for a considerable duration of the 74th Games. But when her young ally, Rue, is brutally murdered by the male career from District 1, Katniss’ whole perspective turns on its head. Upon killing the boy and comforting Rue during her final moments, Peeta’s words are the first to enter Katniss mind, and it is at this point that she makes the decision to do something that will somehow force the Capitol to be held accountable for their cruelty. This is what leads to her memorial to Rue: the first act of subtle insubordination and solidarity to the rest of the districts that proves to be the spark of what will soon become the final rebellion.

With that in mind, although it was Rue’s death that triggered the defiance that eventually turns Katniss into the figurehead of the uprising, it was actually Peeta who first planted that seed of defiance in her head.  After this, both Katniss and Peeta together are “determined to hold onto their humanity by preserving their ethical autonomy, which includes the sense of moral obligation that Katniss has come to feel, in large part because of Peeta’s example. And because they do, they live to see another dawn” (Foy, 216). With the progression of each book, Katniss’ understanding of the broader concepts of ethics and selflessness increases exponentially, and by Mockingjay, her entire worldview has altered significantly to the point where it has become almost indistinguishable from Peeta’s. For instance, in the later days of the rebellion, Katniss is appalled at Gale’s strategy for defeating the Nut: he suggests that they bomb the mountains around the Capitol stronghold to trap and eventually suffocate both enemy and civilian within. When she protests, Gale “makes a classic ends-justify-the-means argument, insisting that war always involves collateral damage, the sacrifice of innocents, and inflicting tremendous suffering upon others” (Henthorne, 87-88). If this controversy had taken place at the beginning of the series, Katniss might have very well condoned Gale’s merciless viewpoint, albeit reluctantly; however, after both witnessing firsthand the damage this line of thinking can do and coming around to Peeta’s perspective, she is now utterly unable to justify the murder of innocents simply for the ambiguous goal of ‘victory’.  In effect, Katniss eventually divorces from Gale entirely, as she has realized that “choosing Gale would mean a betrayal of one of her highest values: the preservation of innocent life” (Myers, 143). Like Peeta had the day before their first Games, Katniss has come to value mercy over justice.

Be that as it may, if our meadowlark and mockingjay are both as similar as they are different, where does that leave the third member of this infamous love triangle? By the closing of the final novel, Gale Hawthorne becomes the true antithesis to everything that Peeta represents. After all, in almost every sense, Gale is what would be considered a traditional and ‘desirable’ male lead, defined by his ability to hunt and existing as the sole provider for his family. Furthermore, he feels intense romantic feelings for Katniss that he expresses passionately, physically and often without her prior consent.  However, these sorts of Byronic heroes and their displays of what might be considered ‘sexual assault’ in the real world are usually seen as alluring when exhibited in fiction. Many individuals, especially impressionable teenage girls, find themselves unable resist the “slightly mysterious and protective” type: so even though he might be “prone to displays of temper and violence [...], Gale fits the stereotype of rugged masculinity” to a tee (Miller, 153). Consequently, when confronted with the ‘Gale versus Peeta’ quandary, plenty of readers default to the taller, darker and handsomer individual without hesitation. However, if one looks closer, one might notice that Gale is actually a vessel for many a toxic aspect of hyper-masculinity, aspects that are entirely absent from Peeta’s character. For example, Gale is the embodiment of the male concept of ‘friend-zoning’. To clarify, this is a relatively recent slang term formed to describe a common situation in which a person is rejected by their romantic interest (typically a woman) that wants to keep their relationship platonic. Instead of mourning rejection but respecting her decision, ‘friend-zoned’ men typically lash out at their former flames and refuse to remain on good terms—friendship, to them, is insignificant if amorous love is not the end result. Throughout Catching Fire and Mockingjay, we see Gale engage in strikingly similar behavior to what was described above. On multiple occasions, he pressures Katniss to admit her feelings for him, even after she expresses discomfort at the prospect of romance, and he coerces and guilt-trips her into kisses or other displays of affection on numerous occasions. Though it is clear from day one that he does indeed care deeply for Katniss, Gale is still unable to accept her platonic friendship at face value, thus putting his own desires above Katniss’ emotional wellbeing.

In contrast, while understandably stung by Katniss’ romantic indecision after the first Games, Peeta is quickly able to swallow his disappointment and extend the olive branch in Catching Fire. While he admits that he “was jealous of [Gale],” he goes on to say, “I thought if I stopped being so, you know, wounded, we could take a shot at just being friends” (51). Despite the reality of his obvious attraction to Katniss, Peeta is more than willing to simply be with her in any way, romantic or not. This is an incredibly uncommon occurrence with any narrative that features a love triangle, as both parties are generally expected to be possessive of their ladylove. It is because of this that these boys are often keen to ‘duke it out’ with their rivals, so to speak, regardless of the apex of said triangle’s possible qualms; friendship just isn’t part of the equation. And yet with Peeta, Collins gives us a new possibility: that a man respecting his significant other’s choices and happiness isn’t just feasible, but healthier than the more conventional alternative. With that being said, the differences between Gale and Peeta go much deeper than just straightforward appearance and personality. In fact, these two young men stand on complete antithetical sides of morality. On one hand, Gale Hawthorne champions the tactic of fighting fire with fire. To him, morality is irrelevant in war, and he is more than willing to sacrifice others in order to achieve what he believes is just. And yet, in the end, it is Gale who falls short; more than that, he is ultimately reproached and sent away by Katniss: essentially exiled by Collins for the remaining few chapters. ...But why is this so important in terms of toxic masculinity and divergence from the gender norms that so constrain modern fiction? And what does Peeta have that Gale doesn’t? –In the end, ‘EverLark’ is the only resolution that makes sense: “Gale is correct when he says that Katniss would choose the one who would best help her to survive—but it’s not just physically. Peeta helps her to survive as herself, with her values intact” (Myers, 143). Though Katniss could have very well chosen Gale, not only would it have gone against everything she believes in, but most if not all of the uniqueness of the series’ romance would be nullified. So despite the fact that many fans of the books are confused and even angry about the final pairing, it remains evident that “Katniss and Peeta—the hunter and the baker—offer something that Gale and Katniss never could have: a partnership that helps us imagine an alternative to dominant romance narratives and a way of valuing both masculine and feminine roles, regardless of who fills them” (Miller, 159).

           In conclusion, Peeta Mellark is not just an accessory to Katniss, nor is he in any way detrimental or irrelevant to the narrative at large. Though he is involved in what could be viewed as a ‘gimmicky’ love triangle, what matters is that he provides us with refreshing divergence from the aggressive, often-damaging masculinity and misogyny that so many leading men in popular fiction are reduced to. Peeta is a multifaceted and three-dimensional character, but most importantly, he is unique—both within and without the narrative. He is kind instead of harsh, gentle instead of violent, calm instead of domineering: he is the peaceful sunset to Katniss’ raging fire, and the Hunger Games trilogy would not be the same without him.

Works Cited

Collins, Suzanne. Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. New York Scholastic, 2008—

2010.  Print.

Foy, Joseph J. “Safe to Do What?” The Hunger Games and Philosophy. Eds. George A. Dunn

and Nicolas Michaud. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. 193-203. Print.

Henthorne, Tom. Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy : A Literary and Cultural Analysis.  

Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. Web. Jan. 2016.

Mann, Abigail. “Competition and Kindness.” The Hunger Games and Philosophy. Eds. George

A. Dunn and Nicolas Michaud. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. 193-203. Print.

Miller, Jessica. “Katniss and the Politics of Gender”. The Hunger Games and Philosophy. Eds.

George A. Dunn and Nicolas Michaud. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. 193-203. Print.

Mitchell, Jennifer. “Of Queer Necessity”. Of Bread, Blood and the Hunger Games : Critical Essays

on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy. Eds. Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark, and Donald

Palumbo. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 118-128. Print.

Myers, Abigail E. “Why Katniss Chooses Peeta.” The Hunger Games and Philosophy. Eds.

George A. Dunn and Nicolas Michaud. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. 193-203. Print.