The Hunger Games

Warning: This is not a traditional movie review, but an exploration of politics and pop culture within the Hunger Games movie universe.  Spoilers ahead!

 

“The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.” – Guy Debord

Hunger Games fever is sweeping the nation!  Catch it!  The film adaptation, directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit), focuses on the story of Katniss Everdeen, a coal miner’s daughter from District 12.  Through an act of selflessness, she volunteers to go in her sister’s place to the 74^th Annual Hunger Games.  At the Hunger Games, children between the ages of 12 to 18 fight to the death in front of a national audience.

While this represents only the bare bones of the plot, the film itself offers a unique take on the collisions of politics and pop culture.  The nation of Panem had a nasty civil war where the poorer outlying districts fought against the richer central districts.  When hostilities ceased, a Truce was signed.  The Truce stipulated that two young children be selected from each district to fight to the death.  (A nostalgic film is played on a massive public screen in District 12.  This commemorative film eerily echoes Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia(1938) with its chiseled heroic youths holding swords and striking sculptural poses.)  The process by which the children are drafted is named The Reaping, a term with agricultural and religious connotations.  During the opening text crawl, it is explained that the Reaping and Hunger Games are “penance” the former rebellious districts must pay to the victorious districts.

Susanne Collins vision is fascinating because she shows how a political ideology transformed into a pop cultural phenomenon.  After 74 years, what was once a weighty political ritual has become an empty sports spectacle, complete with sponsors, an opening ceremony, and betting.  Gary Ross is a nice fit for director, since his previous effort, Pleasantville, offers an analogous situation, with Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon trying to escape, then eventually trying to liberate, an entirely mediated space.  The Tributes fight in a similar mediated space, since personnel associated with the Head Gamemaker can easily manipulate its environment.

Akin to the modern-day Olympics, the Hunger Games seeks to depoliticize a painful political event.  Instead of killing each other for political or territorial control, the contestants kill each other in order to become victorious.  Prior to the actual game, the draftees are treated as media superstars, each getting interviewed by the Emcee Caesar Flickerman.

Manners are important.

The Hunger Games offers a fascinating blend of right- and left-wing authoritarianisms.  Like North Korea or Nazi Germany, there is mass spectacle.  Everyone watches the Games, the same way everyone listens to Big Brother’s instructions via television in Orwell’s 1984.  The economic gap between the districts has echoes of France’s ancien regime and the Occupy movement’s nefarious 1%.  The wealthy districts has a dolled-up citizenry with facepaint, make-up, and outrageous hairstyles.  (Cf. Jean-Paul Gaultier’s futuristic costuming in the Fifth Element).  The film is to be commended for making Elizabeth Banks ugly (she plays Effie Trinket).  Not ugly in the sense of Quasimodo or someone with physical deformities, but someone whose artificiality, arrogance, and unawareness make her simply vulgar.  The largest breach of decorum with her is not the televised murder or economic chasm between district, but “manners!”  In the end, manners are rituals and codes one must follow in a certain socioeconomic group.  Katniss is a threat to Panem, not because of her adept archery skills, but because her intelligence bespeaks a knowledge of codebreaking.  She is victorious as both a tenacious fighter and one who “games the system.”  (We live in an age where school shootings are commonplace, alongside stories of teenagers hacking formidable computer programs.  No wonder this movie and novel trilogy speaks to so many young people.)

When hope isn’t contained.

As the games hit their dramatic peak, someone from a wealthy district kills Rue, a young girl from District 11.  This causes a riot in District 8 that boils over into other districts, creating a tense political situation.  During the ensuing debacle, President Snow talks with the Gamemaker, saying to the effect that “a little hope is good, but too much hope is dangerous.  Contain it.”  When I first heard those lines, I recalled last year’s Arab Spring.  For too long, the United States has spooned out hope in tiny portions to the peoples of the Middle East.  The United States would make constant promises about freedom and liberty, and then simultaneously prop up brutal dictatorships because of either their natural resources or their geopolitical position associated with the Cold War and/or War on Terror.  The Arab Spring was something the United States could not control and it scared us as much as an Osama bin Laden videotape.  One recalls how the United States simultaneously talked about supporting freedom yet made constant associations between Arab Spring protesters and Al-Qaeda.  Freedom and liberty are fine, control and commodities are more preferable.

It is not often that a Young Adult novel can so presciently capture the zeitgeist and offer up such lacerating commentary on our brutal, hyper-mediated culture.