The Hunger Games: War Propaganda 101

Economics Political Theory
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I just saw this movie. I’ll try to recall the obvious stuff, maybe a discussion can get going about what others noticed.

I’ve always been extra skeptical of tv/movie/music propaganda, and my wife is absolutely obsessed with hollywood and can predict any movie. Her secret is, “every detail counts” but I’m sure she’s just good with hollywood propaganda patterns. Anyways, I’ve thought a lot about propaganda in movies, and if the rest of my thinking in life is any indication then I’ve probably caught onto a lot of the right things. So this is what I noticed, and my take on that movie given my perspective:

The movie is pure war propaganda. From the hyperemotional yanking from family to be conscripted, to the proving yourself with violence in front of your judgemental peers, to the “group mentor” a la the military, to the obvious stuff like sportifying murder, impossible moral decisions, laughing about the killing your group has done, absolute disregard for morals because of some clearly avoidable crisis. It had blatant military and prison overtones, and yet never showed the rape that would likely have occurred from such disconnected and powerful supermales (the 10 guy, the black mentor, the white mentor, and the old god man). The murder-scapegoat was a posterboy military superhero stock character who killed shamelessly and laughed and got the girl while times were good, and stayed strong until the bitter end. And just like that he exits the movie and we’re supposed to not judge him because “all he knew how to do was kill” and at least he fought to the death for what he believes in.

Stock characters and the morals and themes: The girl is a sex toy/prize, but she has talent. The berserk 10 points military hero is white and automatically has a girl and friends and dominates everyone, and when he is exposed as a plain murderer its simply brushed off because he couldn’t help it. I live in a military town, and half the people in the theater were women/girls, so I noticed that they all giggled (if you rewatch the movie, you’ll notice the girl characters giggle often too) during scenes that normal people would hate. For example when the military superhero is running around slaughtering people with teeny boppers giggling presumably blowing him off between scenes of murder or some other psychologicalk trauma. Or when the boyfriend (?) back at home saw that she was falling in love with another guy. In fact, the whole idea of sexual promiscuity and widespread cheating and the idea of never talking about the rape that’s all around you is psychological preparation for a standard military life. More preparation was for PTSD, I forget the precise details of every scene, but of course there was something traumatic which involved the anatagonist making an impossible moral decision and panicking afterward. As I mentioned before, the panick for acknowledging evil was clear, and then immediately brushed aside as it cut to the sex prize hero girl sleeping peacefully.

There’s so much more. I saw the latest showing and it’s extra late now. I wonder how this will seem to me in the morning.

The Value of this Community
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I think it was a very good movie, I really enjoyed it.

I don’t really understand your criticism. These things were made in purpose to show how evil are those people. The white dominant murderer was not supposed to be a positive character you know.

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waiting for dvdrip at least. However, trailer hadn’t impressed me at all. I just love sci-fi.

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I have not even seen the movie yet and I can tell you that you’ve missed the point completely, and probably takes things literally without understanding the point or message behind it. The book itself is clearly a dystopian anti-war novel. No one would read 1984 believing it’s proposing government control…

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facepalm.jpg…

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The Hunger Games takes place in a fictional dystopia. The protagonists respects the Capitol and the only time theytry to impress them is when their lives depend upon it. To call that war propaganda may be a stretch. Perhaps you are going after hollywood a little to skeptically on this one. After all, it wasn’t written by someone from hollywood and the fanbase was too huge to change too much.

Rather, I think the existance and popularity of this series reflects a realization by people in the Western wolrd that we are the Capitol and that we are on top of the world for reasons that may not be too pretty to look at. It shows a society where wealth and prosperity is not furthered by a peaceful market but by force.

A major theme in the Hunger Games is the depiction of the Capitol as a “Bread and Circuses” society. In fact the country Panem is named for the phrase “panem et circenses” used by Roman poet Juvenal to describe how his people had surrender power to the Empire. The fact that people giggled every time someone was slaughtered only reinforces what the book is capturing; that we live in the Capitol where vulgar entertainment and misinformation keeps the people at bay; that too many things are controlled by a nefarious government; that the wealth and success of that government exist largely through theft and hegemony; and so much more. It really reflects that people understand that the way we live off of others is wrong, but we don’t know how to change it. So pop culture reflects societies feelings. Sometimes popcult is full of propaganda, but this, I think, is much more a reflection of our understanding that things are just fucked up.

I think these will bemore than your common serial novels turned movies. They will be, as literature should, a reflection of what society is experiencing. Right now we’re expeirencing the fact that we done fucked up the world just like the Capitol did in The Hunger Games.

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  • I meant to say the protagonists don’t respect the capitol, mea culpa.

Also, when they do rebel, they side with another government which is quickly shown to be just as bad as the Capitol and Katniss ends up killing that government’s leader. You’d think war propaganda would portray at least one government as good, right?

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This literature is useless if people can’t even read into it correctly and take it at face value without being able to interpret the message it’s conveying, which only proves more so what’s going on in the book.

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I wouldn’t call it useless and I won’t insist there is only one way to read into it correctly. But I agree, the fact that the movie itself is a violent spectacle is kind of ironic considering thats what the books were portraying as wrong, but whatareyougunnado? you know.

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I saw it last night and I liked it. I interpreted the set up as a parellel of (democratic) politics in general, the contest of which entertains the masses even if it’s ultimately of no consequence. This was the point of the president’s comment that it is necessary to leave some hope in order to quell the masses, which in my reading was a parallel to elections (it was of course also a reference to Pandora’s jar) - remember that the Hunger Games were instituted in order to prevent dissent and more importantly secession (the sequence of secession, civil war, and the predominance of elections/Hunger Games parellels the historical development of the USA). In the Hunger Games, just like in elections, the chances that your vote/tribute can make a difference are extremely small, and even if you win you must necessarily sacrifice a lot, since only one person can win and there are always two tributes from each district (and in elections, the person you vote for will almost certainly lie and be corrupt, even if their rhetoric matches your beliefs). The often repeated phrase ‘may the odds be ever in your favour’ reflects this further.

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Wow, I didn’t see the parallel between the two tributes from each district and the two major-party candidates (Democrat vs. Republican) in a typical US election. Thanks for pointing that out!

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Another major element in the parallel I was drawing is the importance of sponsors and the need to project a particular (false) image in order to acquire their support.

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/agree

OP misses the point completely.

The film is strongly anti-war, anti-oppression, and rife with the idea that good should and will triumph over evil, with evil in this case defined as aggression both on a societal and a personal level.

If anything, the movie presents the idea implictly that responsive coercion in the face of oppression is both necessary and moral. The main character doesn’t shrink from killing in the face of people and things ready to kill her.

The oppressor nation is portrayed as decadent, morally confused, and ultimately as defeated by the main character, who forces them to change the rules to allow two winners.

Great movie. Everyone should see it.

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I saw bits of it at work tonight, and one thing it made me think of was Spooner’s views on voting. You have individuals who do not want to participate, but only do so to protect themselves - which is their only reason to play along. Just like how someone votes to keep the other participant from voting their property away, people who do not want to kill must do so to keep themselves alive. It appears the two main characters withdraw action by not killing each other, they do not concede to the system.

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Good observation Bert, but you might want to put some spoiler tags on there!

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I thought about it, but since it’s a discussion on the movie by people who’ve seen it I figured it’s a given the thread is a spoiler to begin with.

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SPOILER ALERT

I just got back from the movie. The OP is total bullshit. If you have to panhandle to raise $10 to go see the movie, I suggest you do so. It exceeded my expectations and delivered a jarringly clear message: Politics is a bloody charade played with real human lives for the purpose of keeping people in line so that those in power can live off the productive energy of those they subjugate. Wow.

Contrast that to Immortals, a movie that was billed as a cross between Clash of the Titans and 300. Do not see Immortals. I would pay money to get those 2 hours of my life back. The dialogue was childlike and asinine, the plot meandering, banal and predictable, the battle scenes stretched on and on through pointless graphic violence to a point of almost combinatoric dimensions - first guy gets his arm hacked off, second guy gets his leg hacked off, third guy gets decapitated, fourth guy gets an arm and a leg hacked off, fifth guy gets an arm hacked off and decapitated, ad nauseum. There can be no doubt that Pentagon money was pulling the strings on the production of Immortals. It’s just another recruiting advert - aimed at 13-year olds.

Hunger Games, OTOH, was a ball-of-fury deconstruction of taxation, conscription, imperialism, political aggregation (and, implicitly, global government), voting, “elections-as-football-games”, reality shows, mass media, the “political industry”, doing-your-duty-for-your-country… the list goes on and on. While the more subtle messages of the movie will go over the heads of most of the kids going to see it, I think anyone with a 3-digit IQ can see the clear parallel between HG and conscription. You are compelled to go fight in a battle that is part-tradition, part-ritual and all compulsory in which you bear a significant chance of dying (HG just turns up the contrast on conscription by making it a fight-to-the-death). I really don’t know how this movie sneaked through onto the big screen.

The Pentagon is clearly ramping up for major operations against Iran with the potential for a war on Iran to turn into a global conflagration which would require conscription. At a time when the Pentagon is raising hell around the entire globe, this movie is telling young kids: “if you get conscripted, don’t for a moment believe the bullshit about ‘serving your country’ and ‘doing your duty’, you’re being forced into risking death against your will and you have been reduced to nothing more than a slave, a piece of meat to be slaughtered for the political aims and objectives of someone else, in particular, of the opulent political Establishment in Washington, DC.”

I have more to say but it’s late so I’ll comment further on the morrow.

All in all: Bravo! 5 1/2 stars! Woddy Harrelson and Donald Sutherland are clearly good guys. Props to them and the other leading actors, producers and artists who brought this movie into being (not to mention Suzanne Collins, author of the books which I will now have to read).

Clayton -

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The first book originally had a 50,000 first printing, which was then bumped up twice to 200,000 copies. By February 11, 2010, The Hunger Games had sold 800,000 copies and 26 foreign editions. Rights to the novel have been sold in 38 territories, and there are over 2.9 million copies in print. The book is a USA Today and The New York Times Best Seller. It was on The New York Times list for over 100 consecutive weeks as of September 2010.

Outside of that it’s won a lot of awards, only negative criticism I’ve seen (besides being compared to Battle Royale that I never heard of til this movie came out) is

The novel has also been controversial; it ranked in fifth place on the American Library Association’s list of most banned books for 2010, the reasons being it was “sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence.”

I think that reason is bullshit, compared to Harry Potter and Twilight. The theme for HP is death, and the theme for Twilight is lame unfettered high school sexuality. But I suppose magical and fantasy deaths are not as harsh as more realistic ones.

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How the hell are you picking up any positivity from a ceremony called “the Reaping”?? They “reap” 24 “tributes” from the 12 districts. The President specifically asks the Gamemaker: “Why is there a winner? If we just wanted to intimidate the 12 districts, why not just execute 2 people from each district and be done with it? It’d save a lot of time.” He goes on to explain that the reason is to give them just a little bit of hope. Hope, he says, is the only thing more powerful than fear… but only if it’s contained. The President orders the Gamemaker: “Contain it.” In my opinion, this is the most insightful quote from an unusually insightful movie.

He’s a total loser prick who is barely moved out of total apathy by the prospect of helping a young woman who has voluntarily chosen to sacrifice her life for her younger sister. I don’t see how that’s presenting the military as some kind of wise mentor.

Um, the movie is deconstructing the sportification of murder. Almost all the gore in the entire movie is implied, not shown. This is admirable and worthy of emulation.

The main character exhibits salutory moral clarity; unlike the confused, excuse-making heroes of most action flicks who constantly complain that “things happen too fast to make the right decision,” she makes the correct moral decision in instantaneous life-and-death decisions multiple times throughout the movie. And this is not presented as some kind of superhero-like quality, but as an ordinary capacity which every one of us has, if we choose to exercise it.

By a group of people that the viewer is supposed to find morally repulsive. Come on!

Yeah, the districts which attempted to secede from the Capitol are being imprisoned by a military occupation (the Peacekeepers).

I think the decision to forego that was not unwise; the movie was a satire of conscription and (less directly) taxation and imperialism.

Um, I think the point of the movie is to pass moral judgment on those who are running the Games, not the victims of the Games. While the unlikely winners (Peter, Katness) are moral beacons, the most we can say about the rest is they’ve been cast to wild animals in the Coliseum and there is little point in judging them.

I think you’re way out in left field on almost all of this. The sexual component is simply not explored in HG and I think with good reason. American culture is already sexual permissive; there is no need for further sexual liberalization. America’s greatest moral sickness has to do with the sanctimonious and ritualized approval of violence in what is supposed to be our bastions of moral instruction, our churches. Here, people are taught “Our Country, Right or Wrong” “God Bless the Troops” “Pray for the President and Congress” “Islam is a religion of Satan”, and so on. These same people (Christian fundamentalists) are generally sexually repressive, while being permissive of violence committed in the name of God and Country. HG is a stinging rebuke to this moral rot.

Clayton -