Graphic by Sofia Lopez Melgar.
By Eliška Jacob
Copy Chief | A&E Editor
Maybe you spent countless hours scouring YouTube for the most recent compilation video of Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, either in press interviews or sorrowful “Hunger Games” edits set against the song “Just A Game” by Birdy. Or, if you felt a need to categorize yourself with a fictional group as the basis of your prepubescent personality, perhaps you took the same “Divergent” faction quiz multiple times until “Dauntless” shined through your laptop screen, hidden under the covers on a school night.
Memories such as these feel distant and limited to the experience of today’s 20-something-year-olds, now almost a decade apart from the dystopian world of young adult novels and films that took the internet by storm in the early to mid-2010s. Set against soundtracks filled to the brim with features from the most popular artists of the time, these dystopian worlds pervaded the minds of nearly every tween. And yet, the production of these novels and movies eventually burnt out, with the market becoming oversaturated with dystopian media that all became reminiscent of one another. Their plots typically aimed to save society from some imminent downfall propagated by an evil leader, with a romantic trope between the two main characters carrying the films.
A former lover, or rather an obsessive fan, of YA fiction must ask themselves this question: Why in the hell am I now seeing so many clips of Coriolanus Snow shirtless? Why am I taken close to tears watching young kids gleefully engage with the fandom I once called my own? Could this be a resurgence of the 2010s YA dystopian culture? To your excitement or trepidation, I have come to tell you that, yes, the obsession with YA dystopian fiction has returned.
The November film release of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel in the “Hunger Games” franchise, has spearheaded this resurgence. Coriolanus Snow, a member of the once-affluent Snow family, is responsible for training Lucy Gray Baird, a poor tribute set to fight to the death in the 10th Annual Hunger Games. Throughout various social media platforms, edits of Snow and Gray in each other's arms, and mouths, run rampant. An adaptation of the eponymous book released in 2020, the film is arguably the first dystopian YA adaptation to spark such intense interest amongst young adults in the years following the genre’s boom in the early 2010s.
Social media accounts advertising the film, including that of Lionsgate — the entertainment company that produced the film — have pushed out multiple edits that appeal to the humor, inside jokes and preferred meme formats of the younger generation. Beyond edits that center on the attractiveness of the actors or the visually appealing cinematography, social media creators have posted analyses of the film, specifically focusing on how these dystopian themes relate to contemporary political and economic issues. Social media platforms allow discourse between creators and viewers to discuss these themes further and establish a sense of community. This engagement with YA dystopian novels echoes the practices of past fans, who utilized platforms such as Tumblr and Instagram to disseminate and engage with this mutual interest.
Beyond being ripe for engagement via analyses and memes on social media, the soundtracks that back dystopian YA films, specifically the artists that generate them, create additional interest in connecting with the films. In the “Divergent” franchise, Zedd, Ellie Goulding and Tame Impala contributed to the first film’s score. In the original “Hunger Games” soundtrack, artists such as Lorde, who wrote “Yellow Flicker Beat” for the series second to last film, “Mockingjay: Part 1,” as well as Taylor Swift, constructing the tune “Eyes Open” and collaborating with The Civil Wars to pen “Safe & Sound” for the franchise’s first film, “The Hunger Games.” These famous artists generated more excitement for seeing the films and listening to the soundtracks outside of movie theaters.
This format is echoed in Olivia Rodrigo’s production of “Can’t Catch Me Now” for “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which has already amassed nearly 60 million streams on Spotify. Rodrigo, whose debut album, “Sour,” boasts multiple songs with over 1 billion streams, is a figure who has become a staple in the playlists of today’s young adults. Her participation in a dystopian YA film is alluring to dedicated listeners who may have otherwise not engaged with the film and its themes. A larger demographic is thus drawn to this YA subgenre and subsequently finds themselves drawn to the fandom and their fanatics.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of these films is the presence of attractive love interests, which has heavily guided its resurgence. The “Divergent” films saw Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) and Tobias Eaton (Theo James) engaged in a relationship set in a world that desires to separate them, while “The Hunger Games” trilogy focused on Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark’s (Josh Hutcherson) hesitant romance within a love triangle with Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth). These romances added another layer of drama in an already dramatic, dystopian world. In this dystopian YA resurgence, Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, who play Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird, respectively, are yet another set of characters engaged in a form of “forbidden romance.”
These conventionally attractive actors often see a boom in their popularity with the release of these films, with a new generation of tweens swooning over them, desiring to either emulate their on-screen romance or fantasize about flirting with the characters themselves. This obsession with the romantic interactions of attractive dystopian YA actors coalesces with the films’ dystopian themes to create a generally appealing story that many fans want to engage with. The films intend to embolden viewers with the bravery and courage necessary to affect positive change in an ever-becoming dystopian world and, with the combination of romance and fearlessness, appeal to multiple facets of a young adult’s evolving personality.
While this resurgence of interest in dystopian YA novels has no set timeline, its impact thus far cannot be disputed and bears eerie similarities to the fandoms born of the 2010s. Whether you engage with this subsect of YA literature because you enjoy watching borderline erotic clips of the protagonists engaged in forbidden, elusive intimacy or because you have found comfort in engaging in a community with a mutual interest that does not shame your excitement, one thing is for sure: For now, this resurgence is here to stay.