Recently I went to watch the movie adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy. (The image left is h/t Natalie). Centuries into the post-apocalyptic future, the US – now known as the nation of Panem (or “bread”, in Latin; presumably an allusion to the interplay of panem et circenses that is its dominant theme), is ruled over by a privileged elite based in the Capitol, a hi-tech, glitzy metropolis situated in the Rockies. Surrounding it are twelve Districts, places of poverty and squalor that are obliged to send tributes to the Capitol as the blood price for a rebellion 74 years in the past. These tributes are both material in-kind (individual Districts specialize in fishing, agriculture, coal, electronics, luxury goods, etc) – and human. Every year, the subjected Districts have to send a male and female child, drawn by lot or a volunteer, to compete in national televised blood games.
Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of the trilogy, is a teenage girl living in District 12, one of the poorest and most underprivileged. They specialize in mining coal, which is burnt in another district to produce power for the Capitol. While some reviewers see the books as a critique of capitalist exploitation, it is pretty clear that the dominant economic system is command economy geared to the goals of extracting superprofits from the peripheries and funneling them towards the citizens of the Capitol to buy their quiescence. (As Eric Kain points out, “Arbitrarily picking Districts to supply only one type of good to the Capitol means that human capital is badly mismanaged… a flourishing market economy likely would have meant a far more wealthy populace in the Capitol as well.”)
WARNING: The rest of this review will contain major spoilers.
Collins, Suzanne – The Hunger Games (2008).
Category: dystopia; Rating: 5/5
Collins, Suzanne – Catching Fire (2009).
Category: dystopia; Rating: 5/5
Collins, Suzanne – Mockingjay (2010).
Category: dystopia; war; Rating: 3/5
The Movie – The Hunger Games (2012).
Category: dystopia; Rating: 3/5
Evidently, President Snow and his cronies appreciate that their system is non-productive and fragile, and relies on pervasive propaganda and coercion for its sustenance. The propaganda element revolves around the Hunger Games: “Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous,” Snow declares. Brett Keller has a good economics explanation of how this works: “… The odds that any given child will be selected are relatively low – and even lower in districts with large populations – but it is the fear that really controls the population… The Capitol regime also knows that once children are selected from each district, Prospect Theory predicts that citizens will have a new “reference point” (they assume their tributes will be killed) and thus see victory in the Games as a gain to be celebrated, rather than merely the maintenance of the status quo (the tribute being alive) that existed before the annual lottery.”
The other crutch of the regime is outright coercion. In the Districts, it is direct and brutal, consisting of “Peacekeepers” who keep the citizenry in line and put down any revolts. They are drawn from the Capitol itself and two of the more privileged districts. Citizens of the Capitol seem to have more freedom but this is illusory; there is a secret police apparatus to deal with true dissent. The only difference is that their cage is golden, not iron. The closest real world equivalent to Panem is probably North Korea: Residents of Pyongyang (the Capitol) and the military (Districts 1 and 2) are privileged but oppressed nonetheless; other Districts and social groups suffer from varying degrees of dearth. Nonetheless, because of the system’s inefficiency there exist black markets for food, shoes, etc. much as is the case in Panem. Katniss and Gale are hunters, which is forbidden, but they get around the restrictions by bribing off the Peacekeepers, who also want their meat.
Could a state like Panem ever emerge in real life? North Korea realizes some of its dystopian visions, but nowhere near to the same extent; obviously, it doesn’t have blood games. They seem to have gone out of fashion by the late Roman period and never resurfaced. That said, there is plenty of other science fiction positing a return of public Deadly Games in technologically advanced but socially and politically wrecked societies: Most famously in Battle Royale and The Running Man (various books and movie adaptations), Lukyanenko’s Knights of the Forty Islands, etc. Typically, they are social commentaries on particular trends, real or perceived, in society – social breakdown, growing authoritarianism (as a response to the former), the numbing and dumbing down effects of TV infotainment and “reality shows”, growing poverty as the middle class slips into penury, etc.
Two main criticisms of the film is that (1) it lacks social commentary and (2) it is politicized anti-capitalism. Obviously, the two cannot exist. Anyone who has actually read it will know that the anti-capitalism element is only a mere interpretation, with Katniss as narrator describing the world as-is throughout; and if anything, as I argue above, the more proper analogy is to a command economy ruled by a narrow elite. But this is only a mere interpretation on my part. To the extent that it exists, any social commentary by Collins is very much implied rather than existent. And I think that that is a GOOD THING, because movies that go overboard on superimposing social critiques on the narrative tend to be rather bad because they become artificial. Case exhibits: Battle Royale 2, Land of the Dead, 28 Months Later, etc.
I feel that the third book slipped into this trope: What Collins intended to be an exploration of the ills of war flopped because it was a theme that (1) had no obvious connection with the Deadly Game element of the first two books, i.e. the very element that attracted readers in the first place; and (2) gave off a rather banal impression because this particular trope is a major leitmotif of literature and has already been done far, far better than Collins could ever hope to do by countless novelists and poets down the centuries. That is why I gave it a 3, while the first two books got 5.
Some particularly stupid people criticized it for making Rue a black character, or claiming Katniss’ “victory” is unrealistic because she is a girl. Erm, Rue is described as being black in the books. And clearly, a skilled archer has far better chances than any amount of brawn if said brawn only has access to a melee weapon.
Another commonly aired criticism is that it is a mere rip-off of Battle Royale, or Running Man, or whatever. Get real. There are now precisely zero original ideas in fiction. Let’s cite Cracked on this, that indispensable scholarly resource: “Originality is actually pretty overrated when it comes to movies, at least when it comes to basic story lines. There’s really only so many basic stories that can exist…. The basic plot is like a mannequin. You’re pretty limited in the number of shapes you can come up with – curvy or straight, thin or fat. The rest of the movie – the subplots, the personalities, the atmosphere, the pace, the number of explosions you add – that’s like the costume you put on the mannequin. Someone pointing out that a plot is “basically the same” is pointing out that two designers are using the same fat mannequin. One could be wearing a bloodied Viking costume and one could be wearing a flowery muumuu, but they’re both size 40, so they’re “basically the same.”"
I like to imagine Panem as it is, how it evolved to be that way, what I would do if I was chosen as a tribute from my district… Far more fun than making smart-ass comments about how stupid or unoriginal the idea is. That’s what trolls do. I for one think originality is overrated (see above), nor do I think it stupid, to the contrary it is very fun – well, that’s probably not the appropriate word – to imagine what one would do if selected as tribute for one’s District.
So what would I do if the day after tomorrow, the Feds rename Washington DC into Panem and demand annual tributes from the states to participate in blood games for the amusement of the bankster elites? I’m stronger than average, but have next to no outdoor smarts; regrettably, I’ve never been out hiking or camping more than one day at a time. I don’t have the first clue about how to build a fire or recognize plants. Nor do I have experience in fencing or archery. So to stand a chance, I would really hope there are guns, as opposed to medieval weapons; and that the Career Pack would accept me as one of their own (so that I stand a chance of surviving the initial bloodbath around the Cornucopia; as I can’t live off the land, I will have to participate in it to get my supplies). The location would hopefully be an urban area or a ski resort. Realistically speaking I would not except to survive. One out of 24 are steep odds, no matter how good you are, and its likely there would be good woodsmen and marksmen among the other tributes. I think Peeta captured my own attitude best: “Only keep wishing I could show the Capitol that they don’t own me. That I am more than just a piece in there game. If I am going to die I still want to be me… No, when the time comes, I’m sure I’ll kill just like everybody else. I can’t go down without a fight.”
The concept itself is not as implausible as one may imagine. Panem clearly arose in the aftermath of a global warming cataclysm, probably also involving lots of biowars, etc for the population to be so much reduced (Panem has less than a million people). Why are the normal laws of economic rationality inverted? Because, presumably, the Panem elites realized that economic or population growth per se was not desirable – that was, after all, what led to the Great Cataclysm (AGW-induced collapse) in the first place. However, the Capitol elites not only want to maintain the strict political control necessary to prevent sustained growth in the outlying Districts, but want to live a life of indolent luxury themselves. Panem’s technological level, with its hovercraft, crazy bio-engineering, virtual reality environments, etc, is clearly far higher than today’s, but the very low population (not to mention political environment) is not conductive to further technological growth. So it appears that they continue harnessing legacy technologies from the late (pre-apocalypse) industrial age but directed towards strictly controlled not to mention deeply perverse ends. This is an Equilibrium society: Hi-tech but static, frozen politically and temporally.
About similarities to Battle Royale – I think it’s amazing how the story line of Hunger Games is basically manga – altered a bit to suit western audiences. It’s the same with Twillight – the narrative, the characters are just compleately, even painfully manga-like. And Manga loves these themes – dystopian futures, supernatural beings, all if this mixed with pains of being a teenager…
Ofocurse there’s nothing original here – I can’t help but like the fact that Manga is making it into the mainstream this way. Kudos to the Japanese.
There’s a world of difference between Twilight and Hunger Games.
One is (poorly-written) chick lit, the other one isn’t.
First. Second, I see no connection whatsoever between HG and manga. Granted I never read manga but in what possible ways can “dystopian futures” and “supernatural beings” be considered specific to it? Can one then argue that The Running Man and Knights of the Forty Islands were likewise influenced by manga themes?
Third, for that matter HG does not have “supernatural beings”, and the “pains of being a teenager” are peripheral to the story to the extent that the theme even exists. Collins herself said that she hadn’t watched BR before writing HG and I tend to believe her on that,
I too recently watched the Hunger Games. I have to say that I was very disturbed by the violence, particularly the murderous melee at the cornucopia and the killing of one of the girls by someone called I think Thresh who beats her against the wall of what looks like some sort of landing craft. The violence was far more graphic than I had expected and I have to say that there were moments in the film when I had to cover my eyes.
If there is any political message in the film I am afraid it completely passed me by. I would just make the following comments;
1. The production values and the acting quality were very high. The film and presumably the books obviously draw on the well known genre of “post apocalypse televised game show violence” films eg. Death Race 2000, Rollerball, the Running Man etc, but develops that genre to an extraordinary degree. The violence is far more graphic and brutal and the film wholly lacks the comedic element you find in the earlier films.
2. The single thing I found far and away the most troubling about the film was that the violence is between children. I understand that this is also true of Battle Royale but I have not seen that film. Perhaps I am old fashioned but I still find representations of violence between children of the very graphic sort that happens in the Hunger Games deeply disturbing. I hope that this film doesn’t start a fashion.
3. On a slightly off track note, I think one unacknowledged source for the film if not the book (which I have not read) is Mary Renault’s now largely forgotten but formerly very famous 1958 historical novel The King Must Die. This purports to be a historical rendering of the Theseus and the Minotaur legend, which is an acknowledged source for the story. Many of the elements I saw in the film strongly reminded me of Mary Renault’s book to the point where I find it difficult to think that their presence is mere coincidence. Some examples are (1) the representation of the metropolis that receives the tribute children (in Mary Renault’s book Minoan Crete) as immeasurably more advanced and wealthy than the tributary states that provide them but also as corrupt and decadent and ripe to fall (2) the effete quality of the ruling aristocracy of the metropolis with its addiction to pleasure and fashion (3) the treatment of the tribute children as celebrities prior to their sacrifice (4) the manipulation of this celebrity by the tribute children to enhance their survival prospects and (5) the sponsorship by wealthy aristocrats of particular tribute children in the sacrificial games.
For anyone able to read French and who is interested in what gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome was actually like the unsurpassed study is that of Georges Ville, La Gladiature en Occident des Origines a le Mort de Domitien (1981 Ecole Rome). This not only discusses the origins of gladiatorial combat but describes and analyses every single instance of gladiatorial games held in Rome up to the death of the Emperor Domitian in 98 AD. This is possible because contrary to what is widely supposed gladiatorial games were held relatively rarely and at irregular intervals invariably to celebrate the death of a prominent Roman being normally staged by a member of this person’s family. In other words they were originally funeral games involving an element of human sacrifice. After Domitian’s death the connection was broken and gladiatorial games thereafter became pure entertainment.
The usual pattern was for gladiatorial games to last a day. In the morning there would be a wild beast hunt (venatio), followed in the early afternoon by a display during which criminals might be publicly executed in all manner of strange ways (Christians to the lions etc), followed by the serious business of actual gladiatorial combat (munus) in the late afternoon and evening. This was invariably one to one fighting between trained professional fighters following rigid rules overseen by a referee or umpire. Bouts normally lasted no more than a few minutes and did not invariably end in someone being killed. Unlike chariot races gladiatorial games were elite entertainment with the Colosseum in Rome able to accommodate perhaps 50,000 spectators out of a total population in excess of a million (the Circus Maximus where chariot races would take place over several dozen days in a year could accommodate 150,000 spectators). The audience did not pay but was invited and was segregated according to class, status and sex with senators sitting in a block and given the best seats at the front and women (apart from the Emperor’s family and the Vestal Virgins) confined to the uppermost galleries. There were strict dress codes for the spectators and standards for proper behaviour were enforced. The depraved behaviour of the crowd one sees in Hollywood movies and in such TV series as Spartacus Blood and Sand would have been even more shocking to the Romans than it is to us. Gladiators did not say “Hail Caesar we who are about to die salute you” before their fights and any decision as to who would live or die was made strictly by the person who was staging the games, who was of course normally the Emperor, who might consult the audience who however almost certainly did not make thumbs up or down signs.
Much of the confusion concerning gladiatorial games comes from the way they are confused with mass battles the Romans sometimes forced captives to fight as a form of execution. These were comparatively rare but could sometimes be spectacular for example by taking the form of staged naval battles, which happened on natural or artificial lakes and not in the Colosseum. These are the closest approximation I can imagine to the Hunger Games. However the Romans would not have expected children to participate in such contests.
Yay, thanks for using my image, Anatoly.
Great post – I love anything Hunger Games-related. Though I’m surprised you gave Catching Fire such a high rating. Personally, I would give it 4/5. Though I enjoyed the series, I thought the books went downhill throughout. The last two felt a bit rushed.
As for my odds surviving in the games – I’m afraid I’d be out of luck. I don’t have outdoor skills or a useful skill like archery, and I’m not physically strong, either.
As an aside, I hate the new WordPress commenting system! It seems to have taken an old blog URL and put it as my URL for my prior comment :-/ Hopefully I’ve figured out how to make it show the correct URL this time…
“obviously, it doesn’t have blood games. They seem to have gone out of fashion by the late Roman period and never resurfaced.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame#Human_sacrifice
“The association between human sacrifice and the ballgame appears rather late in the archaeological record, no earlier than the Classic era.[51] The association was particularly strong within the Classic Veracruz and the Maya cultures, where the most explicit depictions of human sacrifice can be seen on the ballcourt panels – for example at El Tajin (850-1100 CE)[52] and at Chichen Itza (900-1200 CE) – as well as on the well-known decapitated ballplayer stelae from the Classic Veracruz site of Aparicio (700-900 CE). The Postclassic Maya religious and quasi-historical narrative, the Popol Vuh, also links human sacrifice with the ballgame (see below).
Captives were often shown in Maya art, and it is assumed that these captives were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ballgame.[53] Rather than nearly nude and sometimes battered captives, however, the ballcourts at El Tajin and Chichen Itza show the sacrifice of practiced ballplayers, perhaps the captain of a team.[54] Decapitation is particularly associated with the ballgame – severed heads are featured in much Late Classic ballgame art and appear repeatedly in the Popol Vuh. There has even been speculation that the heads and skulls were used as balls.[55]”
I haven’t read the books or seen the movie, but a girl hunter? Winning a survival contest? There’s nothing wrong with lack of realism per se – dreams can be fascinating and art can be dreamlike. But when out of all the millions of directions into which reality could possibly be distorted an author picks the one direction (girls can kick ass) that just happens to be promoted by the political environment of this very moment, I get suspicious.
Reading the reviews on “The Hunger Games”, I wasn’t impressed enough to want to see it myself. My belief is that the film relies heavily on its lead actor Jennifer Lawrence who played a similar character type in “Winter’s Bone”. In that film which is also adapted from a book, a teenage girl living in the poverty-stricken Ozark region has to find her missing father or her family gets turfed out by the police from their farm. In that environment, the only way out of meth-fuelled despair is to join the US army which she tries to do but fails. The character undergoes various ordeals that would test anyone’s determination and resourcefulness, let alone a teenage girl’s, and discovers what’s happened to her father in an overblown melodramatic climax. If a film has to depend very heavily on its star actor’s previous acting history, how good must it be? Not very, I imagine.
I understand that “The Hunger Games” must resonate a great deal with American audiences as it picks up many contemporary cultural and political issues in their society but I’m guessing also that it doesn’t engage much with these issues; it only uses them to add “realism” to what is basically an action thriller set in a dystopian future. I don’t mean that the film has to be earnest and put words about social hierarchy and Panem’s ills into characters’ mouths, just that it should show through the plot and characters how Panem makes them into what they are so that the audience understands how Katniss and the other competitors come to be, and so the next lot of films might be about Katniss’s evolution into a better person who overcomes the limitations of her upbringing and early socialisation, similar to what the Wachowski brothers did with Neo in The Matrix trilogy.
Like Lazy Glossophiliac, I haven’t read the books either so I suppose at some stage after the events in the movie but in the books Katniss realises she’s being used and so rebels against the society and its values? Will she and a bunch of other kids leave Panem and try to find another place or create their own society? This would be far more realistic than a teenage girl who kicks arse by herself, and the challenges the youngsters have in creating a new society and how they are tested would be far more interesting than one repetitive action thriller after another. Katniss does not come across as a positive role model and might even be a negative role model if girls feel under pressure to take on situations that are really beyond their physical and psychological powers after seeing the movie.
Trust Hollywood also to include a shallow romance between Katniss and the boy she’s supposed to fight to the death in the plot. Can’t a girl just get through a film without having to “prove” she’s heterosexual?
The romance is part of the book. And don’t pretend chicks don’t dig love triangles.
Cf. Twilight, Hermione. It also its internal logic. The Panem audience is quite conventional in its demands: The star-struck lovers theme means more sponsors (people who give you gifts in the arena), etc.
Katniss (and everyone else pretty much) always realize they are used. Not like any of them want to participate (well, apart from the Careers, but they are part of a privileged group that’s loyal to the Capitol). They are rebels from the start just for obvious reasons (e.g. Peacekeepers, secret police) they cannot be so openly.
Major spoilers follows.
Will she and a bunch of other kids leave Panem and try to find another place or create their own society?
Almost. There is a District 13, which was supposedly destroyed during the rebellion but was not. It manufactured nukes so it retained its independence thanks to MAD. It is a radically different society from Panem, run on collectivist (but authoritarian) lines. In the third book, the rebels join in with its military power to defeat the Capitol. However, shortly after the victory, when it appears that the megalomaniac dictator of District 13 is positioned herself to become a new President Snow and return to the old order (with the positions reversed) Katniss assassinates her, but is eventually ruled innocent by virtue of mental insanity and finally the political situation returns to something like normality.
So the books do give what you want of them to a certain point. However, the general consensus among reviewers (and myself, see also Natalie above) is that the third book, by trying to go “deep”, was the most inferior of the lot.
Hi Anatoly,
Thanks very much for your kind reply and for clearing up some misconceptions I had. I realise that books and book series written for teenage girls often do have complicated love relationships that include love triangles: I read a couple myself when I was a teenager – they’re safe ways of learning about how adult life works and how young women can negotiate their way through one set of obstacles and the strategies they can pick up. Usually the girl has some control over the network of relationships and isn’t completely at the mercy of her emotions (in the better quality stories); she makes a choice based on reason and a developing set of values and ethics as much as emotion. I find that Hollywood movie treatments of these kinds of stories turn the love story angle into something formulaic in which the female protagonist is passive and is manipulated by emotion or other people.
One reason I haven’t seen the movie or read the books is that I’ve already seen “Battle Royale” and “Series 7: The Contenders” which also feature competitors selected by lottery who have to kill one another to stay in the competition. “Series 7: The Contenders” features a teenage girl, a heavily pregnant woman and a middle-aged nurse as the main female characters: the pregnant woman and the nurse face off against each other and the plot diversion (of course) is that the woman goes into labour.
From the descriptions you and Natalie provide about the rest of the book series, it looks to me as if Suzanne Collins was under pressure to deliver the sequels very quickly to the publisher and any quality control and revision she would normally have used fell by the wayside. I’ve heard people complain about Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetti crime novels and how the quality of plotting and even writing fell with each new installment in the series once the books became popular.
Thanks for interesting and well-written book review, Anatoly. Now I don’t need to read book!Similar to you, my only outdoor sport is skiing. I am not athletic overall, but for some reason I am a decent downhiller and can handle basic moguls. Hence, I think I will do okay in future Hunger Games, provided they take place in ski resort. Preferably one with high-speed lifts and gondolas and mostly groomed slopes. Summit lodge with nice cafeteria would also be nice; need to suck down some soup and rest in between gladiatorial contests, which presumably would consist of cutting off and tripping less capable alpinists or snowboarders — Take THAT ,you punk – ha ha!
Yalensis,
As long as the competition for 1st and 2nd places at the end of the Games doesn’t take place on a 90-metre ski jump?
Ha ha! No, Jennifer, I don’t do jumps!