Reflection
Down Syndrome in “Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”: the effectiveness of nothingness
Viktoria Geldner
The inclusion of a character with Down Syndrome in the prequel of the world-renowned Hunger Games movies is so effective because it does nothing more than including the character. In a setting that invites to apply the whole spectrum of potential meaning to disability, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes portrays what inclusion is about at its core: being included.
In November 2023, the prequel to the Hunger Games series The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, based on the 2020 novel by Suzanne Collins, was released in theatres. The novel focuses on young Coriolanous Snow, later to be president of the state Panem, and main antagonist in the Hunger Games series. Set in a dystopian future of the United States of America, the Hunger Games taking place once a year serve as punishment for the twelve districts’ uprising against their capital district, the Capitol, whereby a boy and a girl of each district are placed in an arena where they must fight to death until only one of them is left. In the Hunger Games (2008), protagonist Katniss Everdeen wins the games, sparking (pun intended) a revolution unfolding in Catching Fire (2009), eventually culminating in the fall of President Snow’s rule in Mockingjay (2010).
Tributes
Every tribute placed in the arena serves a purpose. There are those that get bludgeoned to death at the very start, setting the stage for the power players. Between these characters, the plot unfolds. On the one hand, the characters are narrative devices. On the other, depending on how they are, they are catalysts: the death of little Rue in Hunger Games causes Katniss to kill a human boy, vowing to Rue that she will win the games. It is no coincidence that Rue is not only a little girl, but also of color, making her more vulnerable of a character, which underlines Katniss’ virtue. Likewise, the mercy-killing of antagonist Cato in the same movie, after he has been brutally mauled by gene-modified wolves, shows that Katniss has not lost her humanity. These deaths, then, have an effect corresponding with their characters, giving further meaning to the story.
Down Syndrome
Naturally, when character Wovey, a little girl with Down Syndrome, played by actress Sofia Sanchez (who has Down Syndrome), made her first appearance as a tribute for the games in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, my first thought was, in best you-made-this-bed-now-lay-in-it – fashion: How are you going to kill this character? I assumed that, playing on the widespread portrayal of (cognitive) disability as childlike and innocent, Wovey would be killed by one of the antagonistic tributes to underline their evilness. Or die a particularly gruesome death as a reflection of the Capitol’s cruelty. However, much to my surprise, none of the sort happened.
Throughout the movie, Wovey’s disability is not focused on nor taken into consideration. It just exists as such. The other tributes or audience are not especially concerned for Wovey due to her disability. Wovey forms alliances with other tributes as do the rest of them. She exists as a girl trying to survive, as do the others. And her death is no different than of the rest: in order to bring the games to a rapid end, game maker Dr. Gaul drops a vessel of venomous snakes in the arena. Wovey is, granted, the first to be hit by the wave of wriggling reptiles, but the other tributes follow suit. Her death is no different than of the rest of the tributes’ death.
Conclusion
As described above, character Wovey exists as a character like the others, with no focus on her disability. Her death, too, which would have made for picture-perfect symbolism, does not frame her as something different. In the admittedly horrible framework of the arena, the movie The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has attained what so many movies have tried to do and failed: actual inclusion.