Though it bears little resemblance to the protest songs of the American civil rights era-those tended to be uplifting, rather than ominous-its genesis into a movement’s anthem invites comparisons to its protest brethren. Of course, in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” “The Hanging Tree” is far more than a vaguely subversive folk ballad. We meant the North-and the North was our Canaan. It has resonances, too, with African-American spirituals: in his 1857 memoir “My Bondage And My Freedom,” the former slave Frederick Douglass described a similar phenomenon:Ī keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of “Oh Canaan, sweet Canaan,/ I am bound for the land of Canaan,” something more than a hope of reaching heaven. As a cultural artifact co-opted and imbued with coded significance by the rebellion, it is a very plausible rallying cry. It contains an invitation-to death, perhaps, or more specifically to martyrdom. Whatever its literal meaning, “The Hanging Tree” has many possible subtexts. This is a shrewd choice on the part of the filmmakers. But in the film, it transforms into a theme song for the rebellion. In the novel, the song never actually makes it into a propo and functions mainly as a window into Katniss’ past. His lover, with her rope necklace, hanging dead next to him in the tree. In the final stanza, it's clear that that's what he's waiting for. But then you wonder if he meant for her to run to him. The phrase "Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free" is the most troubling because at first you think he's talking about when he told her to flee, presumably to safety. And even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking if she's coming to meet him. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer. The stanza repeats three more times, with the third line altered in each repetition: “Where the dead man called out for his love to flee ” “Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free ” and finally, “Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.” In Collins’s book, Katniss puzzles over the narrator’s story: If we met at midnight in the hanging tree. Where they strung up a man they say murdered three. In the novel, Katniss sings “The Hanging Tree” while out with a camera crew filming “propos,” the stories’ slang for propagandist television spots designed to promote the rebel cause. And in the universe of “The Hunger Games,” in which the oppressed citizens of the fictional Panem live under the constant threat of execution by an exploitative upper class, that reference is all the more poignant. Whether you owed a debt or had murdered your wife’s lover, hanging was a likely punishment in the ballad universe.įor Americans, murder by lynch mob-that tried-and-true act of citizen vigilantism by which white supremacists terrorized and dominated the black population in the aftermath of emancipation-is probably a more familiar context for hangings. Appalachia’s songs are themselves descendants of ballads brought over by English and Scottish settlers, and hangings are a common occurrence in both traditions. “The Hanging Tree” is written from the perspective of a man accused of murder and hung as punishment. And Collins’ lyrics, too, play with the tropes of the genre. Lawrence’s character Katniss Everdeen hails from District 12, a coal-mining sector located in a post-apocalyptic Appalachia. The Appalachian inflections in “The Hanging Tree” are no accident. There is a satisfying aptness to the astounding popularity of “The Hanging Tree.” In a sense, folk songs were the original Top 40 hits. Though the sing-songy melody feels more like a caricature of an Appalachian ballad than the real thing, it is nevertheless a recognizable riff on the genre. “The Hanging Tree,” which employs lyrics based on those written by “The Hunger Games” author Suzanne Collins, is set to an eerie tune penned by the folk-pop group The Lumineers and given extra dramatic heft by the unearthly orchestrations of composer James Newton Howard. As much credit as Lawrence deserves, the song itself is arguably the real star.
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