Post by nathan2 on Dec 2, 2013 19:36:43 GMT -5
rate Control of the Media in "Catching Fire"
A few months ago I went to a reading by Margaret Atwood, who was on a book tour for the final installment of her MaddAddam trilogy. I asked the author of such dystopian classics as The Handmaid’s Tale how she made her worlds so realistic and so terrifying at the same time. She replied, and I’m paraphrasing slightly here, that they are terrifying because we know that none of them are made up. She said everything that a human being does to another human being in her novels is something real people are doing every day today.
This, for me, is what makes The Hunger Games work. I want to take this article to look at a few things that stuck out at me in Catching Fire, and compare them to actual real-world statistics. Dystopias are cautionary tales, showing the world as we fear it may become. In the case of Panem, we are closer than we may want to believe.
There is a scene in Catching Fire which was the most chilling scene in the book for me, and it’s executed perfectly in the film. Katniss and Peeta are in the Capitol at the end of their victory tour, after seeing people living on the edge of starvation in every district, and Katniss’s make-up artist asks Peeta to try a particular canapé. He replies that he is full, and she offers him a drink that will make him vomit so he can continue to eat.
To get to my job, I have to walk past at least four or five homeless people every day. At work, not a day goes by that I don’t bus at least one table where someone has bought an eight or nine dollar sandwich, taken one bite of it, and thrown the rest away. As the rallying cry of the Occupy movement reminds us, one percent of Americans control forty percent of the nation’s wealth. And even relatively poor Americans live in relative luxury compared with people in less developed nations. Massive wealth inequality is not science fiction — it’s something that exists all over the world, almost to the same extent as it does in Panem.
The Hunger Games series is also about propaganda. Katniss spends much of the series as a public relations pawn, first for the Capitol, then later for the rebels. The film version of Catching Fire contains some scenes not found in the book between the Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee and President Snow. They talk extensively about controlling the narrative surrounding Katniss — for instance, discrediting her by interspersing scenes of her preparing for her lavish wedding with floggings and public executions. One could easily argue that controlling the narrative is Snow’s only real goal throughout the film — he cannot simply kill Katniss, because he doesn’t want her to become a martyr. And it is Katniss’s value as a symbol, not her skill with the bow, which gives her power over the President.
Back in the real world, the same six companies control 90% of American media. Elections are won and lost by who can control the narrative. Take the recent government shutdown — conservative news sources created a narrative wherein Obama was holding the government hostage by not negotiating with the Republicans. Liberal news sources created a narrative wherein Obama was standing his ground against the Republicans who were holding the government hostage by refusing to fund Obamacare. Regardless of the reality, both of those narratives are now a defining force in how these public figures are perceived.
The Hunger Games itself is being marketed as a huge blockbuster franchise. Catching Fire enjoyed the largest November release for a film ever, bringing in over 110 million dollars in its opening weekend alone. It has tie-in campaigns with Subway and Cover Girl make-up. Most big science-fiction franchises like this can be likened to the Bread-and-Circuses approach of the Capitol — big, pretty stories to distract people from what’s going on around them. But The Hunger Games is what’s going on around us! So let’s not let the film’s marketing undermine its message. Let’s let it spark an actual conversation about wealth inequality, about how the media controls our perception of events, and about how reality TV distracts us from wanting to make a difference in the world. Kurt Vonnegut once compared writers of dystopia to canaries in a coal mine. Let’s see if we can get out before we explode.
A few months ago I went to a reading by Margaret Atwood, who was on a book tour for the final installment of her MaddAddam trilogy. I asked the author of such dystopian classics as The Handmaid’s Tale how she made her worlds so realistic and so terrifying at the same time. She replied, and I’m paraphrasing slightly here, that they are terrifying because we know that none of them are made up. She said everything that a human being does to another human being in her novels is something real people are doing every day today.
This, for me, is what makes The Hunger Games work. I want to take this article to look at a few things that stuck out at me in Catching Fire, and compare them to actual real-world statistics. Dystopias are cautionary tales, showing the world as we fear it may become. In the case of Panem, we are closer than we may want to believe.
There is a scene in Catching Fire which was the most chilling scene in the book for me, and it’s executed perfectly in the film. Katniss and Peeta are in the Capitol at the end of their victory tour, after seeing people living on the edge of starvation in every district, and Katniss’s make-up artist asks Peeta to try a particular canapé. He replies that he is full, and she offers him a drink that will make him vomit so he can continue to eat.
To get to my job, I have to walk past at least four or five homeless people every day. At work, not a day goes by that I don’t bus at least one table where someone has bought an eight or nine dollar sandwich, taken one bite of it, and thrown the rest away. As the rallying cry of the Occupy movement reminds us, one percent of Americans control forty percent of the nation’s wealth. And even relatively poor Americans live in relative luxury compared with people in less developed nations. Massive wealth inequality is not science fiction — it’s something that exists all over the world, almost to the same extent as it does in Panem.
The Hunger Games series is also about propaganda. Katniss spends much of the series as a public relations pawn, first for the Capitol, then later for the rebels. The film version of Catching Fire contains some scenes not found in the book between the Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee and President Snow. They talk extensively about controlling the narrative surrounding Katniss — for instance, discrediting her by interspersing scenes of her preparing for her lavish wedding with floggings and public executions. One could easily argue that controlling the narrative is Snow’s only real goal throughout the film — he cannot simply kill Katniss, because he doesn’t want her to become a martyr. And it is Katniss’s value as a symbol, not her skill with the bow, which gives her power over the President.
Back in the real world, the same six companies control 90% of American media. Elections are won and lost by who can control the narrative. Take the recent government shutdown — conservative news sources created a narrative wherein Obama was holding the government hostage by not negotiating with the Republicans. Liberal news sources created a narrative wherein Obama was standing his ground against the Republicans who were holding the government hostage by refusing to fund Obamacare. Regardless of the reality, both of those narratives are now a defining force in how these public figures are perceived.
The Hunger Games itself is being marketed as a huge blockbuster franchise. Catching Fire enjoyed the largest November release for a film ever, bringing in over 110 million dollars in its opening weekend alone. It has tie-in campaigns with Subway and Cover Girl make-up. Most big science-fiction franchises like this can be likened to the Bread-and-Circuses approach of the Capitol — big, pretty stories to distract people from what’s going on around them. But The Hunger Games is what’s going on around us! So let’s not let the film’s marketing undermine its message. Let’s let it spark an actual conversation about wealth inequality, about how the media controls our perception of events, and about how reality TV distracts us from wanting to make a difference in the world. Kurt Vonnegut once compared writers of dystopia to canaries in a coal mine. Let’s see if we can get out before we explode.
