The myth of America is now girlhood

Movie critic Manhola Dargis gives Catching Fire, a place in the film and cultural history of America:

“Catching Fire” isn’t a great work of art but it’s a competent, at times exciting movie and it does something that better, more artistically notable movies often fail to do: It speaks to its moment in time. “The mythic America,” the literary critic Leslie Fiedler memorably wrote, “is boyhood.” One of the things that “The Hunger Games,” on the page and on the screen, suggests is that the myth is changing. Boys (and men) are still boys, of course, including in movies, but the very existence of Katniss — who fights her own battles, and kisses and leaves the boys, only sometimes to save them — suggests cultural consumers are ready for change, even if most cultural producers remain foolishly stuck in the past. It’s unlikely Katniss will lead the real revolution the movies need, but a woman can dream.