Call it the Katniss Effect.
Around the country, anecdotal evidence suggests that a fair number of girls are picking up Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen’s weapon of choice: the bow. “All of a sudden, sales of bows have, like, tripled,” Paul Haines, a salesman at the Ramsey Outdoor store in Paramus, N.J., told the Associated Press.
So many folks seemed turned on to archery by the movie, in fact, that the store’s manager put up a sign in the hunting department that read, “Quality bows for serious archers and girls who saw the movie.”
Teresa Iaconi, spokeswoman for USA Archery, concurs. “There’s been a massive uptick in interest, especially in the past two to three weeks with the opening of The Hunger Games,” she told ABC News in late March. “As the books gained popularity and people started hearing the movie was coming out, interest started to soar.”
But while The Hunger Games’ feisty female protagonist wielded the bow against human targets in a brutal contest to the death, real-world Katniss wannabes are taking a competitive but far less gruesome approach to archery by joining clubs and leagues dedicated to the sport.
“Katniss is so inspiring,” says Gabby Lee, who asked her parents for archery lessons for her 12th birthday after reading Suzanne Collins’ best-selling trilogy. The nontraditional sport of archery, she says, is giving her athletic confidence she’s never had before. “I’m not very sportsy,” she admits. But now that she’s participating in a New Jersey youth archer league, “It feels really good because I’m usually the girl who sits and reads.”
And it’s quite possible that archery’s recent surge in popularity is just getting started. This summer, two more high-profile films will feature bow-wielding heroes. Audiences will be introduced to master archer Hawkeye in The Avengers. Meanwhile, Pixar’s latest animated effort, Brave, centers on another young female arrow-slinger, the fiery-haired Merida.
Add in archery coverage during the Olympics (beginning in late July), as well as CW’s forthcoming TV show Green Arrow (a DC Comics superhero), and it’s starting to look like a perfect storm of bows and arrows.
“Archery is definitely having its pop culture moment,” Iaconi says. “I have a feeling it’s the next big thing.”
Recent Comments