The unjust society written in young adult dystopian fiction can very much be our own world told through the wrong perspective – where are the people of colour?
The Young Adult Dystopian Craze
The rage for young adult dystopian sagas hit an all-time high in the 2010s. Popular series such as The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner to non-adapted novels like The Lunar Chronicles and Red Queen depicted wartorn political landscapes that were more often than not up to white teens to save or dismantle.
The genre blew up in the mid-2010s due to the oversaturation of blockbuster adaptations of these novels. But what do these novels actually say about our society?
What Builds Your Standard Young Adult Dystopian Novel?
We begin with a traditionally unjust society: The Hunger Games’s Capitol, The Maze Runner’s WICKED, and Divergent’s Faction system. Dystopian novels always begin at the height of its ‘norm’ – when our fateful (typically white) teenage protagonist is one of the millions of civilians partaking in an everyday occurrence in dystopian hell.
The point of a dystopian government is to highlight and exaggerate the flaws our modern-day governments have, almost playing a cautionary tale. The Maze Runner took the worst potential medical outbreak and used children, referred to as the future generation, as test subjects. Novels like these emphasize and create a world where class division leads to overwhelming starvation, inhumane labour laws, and, eventually, mass murder.
What makes dystopian novels so compelling to this generation is that we are seeing the worst possible outcome of all the problems accumulated today. These pieces demonstrated the consequences of power getting in the wrong hands or our leaders making one too many errors – when reflected in reality, leads to resentment, protests, and a massive divide amongst the populus. These types of stories creates a world where see a teenager be the one that takes it down, to lead that change – is startling. It’s a jarring difference from how our day-to-day lives are.
People of Colour in Dystopian Fiction
The Hunger Games, for example, centers around Katniss and Peeta, two teenagers who are sent to an arena to fight to the death against ten others (aged 12 to 18). While there’s been some speculation on Katniss’s race before Jennifer Lawrence was cast (resulting in some disputes upon the first casting announcement) – the films ultimately portrayed the main characters with white actors (Lawrence as Katniss, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne, and Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy) – leaving the supporting cast to be a less than desirable mix of white actors and actors of colour. The film has only approximately 23 total people of colour cast.
Two of the most notable people of colour in this first film are Thresh, and Rue – two other tributes competing in the Hunger Games. Thresh, a character with maybe five total minutes of screen time, is portrayed by Nigerian-American actor, Dayo Okeniyi.
Rue, on the other hand, has a much heavier screen presence as she plays Katniss’s first companion in the games. Rue, played by actress Amandla Stenberg, is a twelve-year-old tribute who befriends Katniss and for a while, team up as they attempt to stay alive. The character ultimately is meant to remind Katniss of what would happen if her younger sister, Primrose, was in the situation she was in. However (and spoiler alert if you never read or watched The Hunger Games), Rue eventually meets her untimely demise and her death creates a ripple effect in both Katniss and the other district’s anger against their government.
And, now since the cat’s out of the bag, it should be mentioned that Thresh’s defining action in his main scene is saving Katniss’s life “for Rue” due to the nature of their relationship. Both characters, though creating a large impact on our main character and the events following their deaths, are used as pieces in a game and ultimately die to further the plot of the white protagonist.
That being said, in novels such as Divergent, the people of colour were sidelined to our white protagonist’s best friend and the best friend’s brother (who in the film adaptations, had been changed from dark-skinned Black characters to mixed actors which in itself is an entirely other conversation) – a trope that is overdone repeatedly. Approximately only 15% of the reported top cast were people of colour.
While obviously, there are better and worse portraying adults of people of colour in fiction, the genre has become so oversaturated that we shouldn’t have to settle for “better” representation in the forms of recurring characters who maybe live to the end of the series.
The Choice of the Protagonist
In such narratives, the choice of the protagonist often carves out what the story becomes. In most of the novels and films mentioned, our lead protagonist is usually a white teenager between the ages of fifteen to eighteen. The fate of their entire world rests on the shoulders of somebody who hasn’t even finished high school yet. Their age draws most of its demographic in and also highlights just how severely dystopian their society is. Children become child soldiers and win wars before hitting twenty.
What’s interesting about these works is that while they are meant to show the worst possible outcome of our society, it’s done so through the lens of a primarily white ensemble. Any characters of colour are delegated to side characters most likely don’t see the end of the story.
But with a story so focused on white people uprooting an unjust government – how is it that we don’t see too much of it in our real lives?
Where’s Our Modern Visualisation?
Within the last six years, America has faced quite a tumultuous political climate. Through massive political upheavals, it’s been the Millenials and Gen Z who had some of the most vocal perspectives and experiences. From encouraging young voters to register to leading protests and fundraisers, reality raises a mirror to the younger generations changing the game.
Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times even states in “What Teenagers Have Learned From a Tumultuous Time in Politics”, “For American teenagers, their political coming of age has been a tumultuous one. They’ve seen the boundary-breaking candidacies of women and people of colour, and the norm-shattering presidency of Donald Trump. They’ve lived through racial justice protests, a pandemic, and attacks on American democracy.”
However, if we were to look at these events occurring in our own history – the books do not reflect just how important the roles people of colour play in changing the world. When there were significant political shifts in America (especially from 2016 through 2020), it was the children of colour making waves and actively doing something to reject our society’s outdated norms.
And yet, where are they in the novels and films? While the lack of diversity could well be a nuanced take on just how dystopian society evolved to be – young adult novels often lack an explicit take in their writing to create a critique on it genuinely.
While the 2010s young adult dystopian phase has passed, this generation’s frustration with our society hasn’t. The need for diversity and inclusion in film persists. And with that, children of colour are making their moves and changing the world.
