We Have Seen The Hunger Games, and He is Us

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[Masacree]

Critics defend The Hunger Game's graphic violence by portraying it as a dystopian warning film of the same type as 1984 and Brave New World. In fact, there is some truth to this statement. The author of the books was directly influenced by the disturbing state of (post)modern American media.¹ On some level, the graphic violence in the book is meant to disturb the reader and draw parallels with the modern state of media. This type of warning is apt, and although the concept is unoriginal (see Baudrillard), the method for distributing the message is.

Disaster is an intrinsic part of the (post)modern American  diet. As Baudrillard first elucidated in 1994,

It was not the dead that are the scandal, but the corpses being pressed into appearing before the television cameras, as in the past dead souls were pressed into appearance in the register of deaths. It is their being taken hostage, as it were, and our being held hostage too, as mystified TV viewers. All the media live off the presumption of catastrophe and of the succulent imminence of death. A photo in Liberation, for example, shows us a convoy of refugees 'which, sometime after this shot was taken, was to be attacked by the Iraqi army'. Anticipation of effects, morbid simulation, emotional blackmail. It was the same on CNN with the arrival of the Scuds. Nothing is news if it does not pass through that horizon of the virtual, that hysteria of the virtual - not in the psychological sense, but in the sense of a compulsion for what is presented, in all bad faith, as real to be consumed as unreal. In the past, to show something up as a fake, we said: 'It's just play-acting', 'It's all romance!', 'It's put on for the cameras!'. This time, with Romania and the Gulf War, we were able to say, 'It's just TV!'

When world politics fails to provide bodies, the news media looks closer to home. Trials of horrific crimes are now national sensations. Suffering is commodified because it sells. It is how we satiate our own national Thanatos.

Where does this leave the Hunger Games? While the Hunger Games attempts to bring this message to a mass audience, it does so by creating the very graphic media it simultaneously tries to condemn. People watch The Hunger Games, not for the message it has to give, but to consume the disturbing violence it tries to critique. We who watch the film laugh at the barbarism present in the film's citizens, all who watch the games occur on television. But does that not equally apply to us, we who consume the film all the same, for all the same reasons?

1. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20080609/9915-a-dark-horse-breaks-out.html
2. Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End

[Vermillion_Hawk]

So what, people really are that bored that they are trying to overanalyze a poor screen adaptation of a poor children's book?

[Spartan_Marine88]

So what, people really are that bored that they are trying to overanalyze a poor screen adaptation of a poor children's book?

1. yes people are that bad

2. adaptation was well done

[AmPM]

Critics defend The Hunger Game's graphic violence by portraying it as a dystopian warning film of the same type as 1984 and Brave New World. In fact, there is some truth to this statement. The author of the books was directly influenced by the disturbing state of (post)modern American media.¹ On some level, the graphic violence in the book is meant to disturb the reader and draw parallels with the modern state of media. This type of warning is apt, and although the concept is unoriginal (see Baudrillard), the method for distributing the message is.

Disaster is an intrinsic part of the (post)modern American  diet. As Baudrillard first elucidated in 1994,

When world politics fails to provide bodies, the news media looks closer to home. Trials of horrific crimes are now national sensations. Suffering is commodified because it sells. It is how we satiate our own national Thanatos.

Where does this leave the Hunger Games? While the Hunger Games attempts to bring this message to a mass audience, it does so by creating the very graphic media it simultaneously tries to condemn. People watch The Hunger Games, not for the message it has to give, but to consume the disturbing violence it tries to critique. We who watch the film laugh at the barbarism present in the film's citizens, all who watch the games occur on television. But does that not equally apply to us, we who consume the film all the same, for all the same reasons?

1. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20080609/9915-a-dark-horse-breaks-out.html
2. Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End

I hear that TV violence and video game violence are real. So when you shoot someone in a game it's the same as shooting them in reality.

[tank130]

Fuck em....... I will just crush the fuckers with my M10

[Masacree]

I hear that TV violence and video game violence are real. So when you shoot someone in a game it's the same as shooting them in reality.

Your sarcasm is very persuasive.

[Masacree]

So what, people really are that bored that they are trying to overanalyze a poor screen adaptation of a poor children's book?

d00d I anal-lyzed (lyzed comes from the latin root 'lysis' meaning destroy) your mother last night.

[TheWindCriesMary]

What graphic violence? All i saw was a shaky camera.

Battle Royale had some decent violence... which this movie/book is just a cheap ripoff of anyway

[8thRifleRegiment]

i wanna see childen beat each other up physically and mentally over an imagined goal, ill watch survivor. But for now, ill be fine with the actual book

[brn4meplz]

What graphic violence? All i saw was a shaky camera.

Battle Royale had some decent violence... which this movie/book is just a cheap ripoff of anyway

Battle Royale is great too, but the 2 stories only share an Arena and Violence. Calling them the same thing is like calling the Chinese Japanese by mistake.


I have yet to see the movie(I'm supposed to see it this weekend) But the book was good. It was intriguing and kept me reading. It's a short book so only took about 2 hours of straight reading to finish.(Starship Troopers is a short read and it's my bible)

While the novel has violence, it's not violence for the sake of violence. I pretty much expect the Movie to have some violence but mostly implied violence. I would hardly expect them to take a Novel with little gore and turn it into an R rated gore fest.

Like when I read a Storm of Swords(Game of thrones) and you get to the Chapter with the Red wedding, I EXPECT, that to be violent as all fuck when they do the series

[TheWindCriesMary]

Battle Royale is great too, but the 2 stories only share an Arena and Violence. Calling them the same thing is like calling the Chinese Japanese by mistake.

They share a whole lot more than that. Not sure if you ever read Battle Royale, but the similarities are extremely similar. According to the author of HG, she heard of Battle Royale *after* she wrote the first book so I'll have to take her word for it that this was coincidental.

Young kids taken against their will to fight to the death in a large wilderness setting complete with sectors, randomly dispensed weaponry etc while being closely monitored by a control room with one central "master of ceremonies". Announcements to the rest of the combatants providing daily updates etc.  Two ridiculously good "ringer" kids who are markedly more dangerous than the rest. The entire ordeal being part of an oppressive regime's attempts to quell disobedience, punishing people who leave enter certain areas via remote means etc. The list just goes on and on. Considering you've opened up with "they only have 2 things in common" you've set a pretty small pond for your case to swim in.

It's a poor mans Battle Royale. Not a bad book series, and the movie was passable, but it's not in the same league.

[CrazyWR]

Wind, you got any idea where I can get a copy of Battle Royale?  I hadn't heard of it til after I read the trilogy and started hearing about the movie and people on IMDB mentioned Battle Royale.  I can't seem to find a place to watch it online...is it commonly available someplace?

[smurfORnot]

i wanna see childen beat each other up physically and mentally over an imagined goal, ill watch survivor. But for now, ill be fine with the actual book

how about children arena,where you put those >10year olds to fight to death. Sometimes give em some weapons(no firearms) to make things more bloody. People would call it sick,but they would still watch it 

[brn4meplz]

You can apply broad strokes to anything and find nearly any Similarities.

Hitler was the leader of a country, Countries have leaders. Leaders must be Nazi's!


All the things you've listed you would expect in an arena for death fights. You need a way to ensure combatants will go near each other. You need a way to notify combatants how many remain. You use kids because it leaves a larger impression on Society.

I'd argue that the Ringer kid in Hunger Games is the main character. It doesn't make you feel that way because of the personal narrative but she scores the highest in her trials.

In Battle Royale it's clear that the strongest kids are the experienced ones. They fit the more traditional threat role or bad guy in literature.

They have similarities, but so does everything else in creative thinking.

If we want to break it all down. Athens supposedly sent 7 boys and 7 girls to the Minotaur every 9 years. You could draw similarities but whats the use? they are clearly different stories told in different ways, at different times.

[nikomas]

Hitler was the leader of a country, Countries have leaders. Leaders must be Nazi's!

That's some Fox logic right there! 

[smurfORnot]

there was that one crusade war,where they sent kids instead of warriors,because they are pure etc etc. ...didnt work out,lol

[Masacree]

Wind, you got any idea where I can get a copy of Battle Royale?  I hadn't heard of it til after I read the trilogy and started hearing about the movie and people on IMDB mentioned Battle Royale.  I can't seem to find a place to watch it online...is it commonly available someplace?

I watched the entire movie on youtube a couple of years ago

[smurfORnot]

why not use torrent?

[DarkSoldierX]

Battle Royal 1?

THAT MOVIE WAS THE SHIT!

But I disliked Battle Royal 2, it seems cool at first but then it died down.

[TheWindCriesMary]

You can apply broad strokes to anything and find nearly any Similarities.

Hitler was the leader of a country, Countries have leaders. Leaders must be Nazi's!

These are not broad stroke comparisons or similarities. You said the two movies ONLY share an arena and violence. You were incorrect, and shown to be so. These specific  similarities are by no means inherrent to the idiom of an standard "arena fight" story and you will not be able to equivocate or scarecrow argue your way out of your earlier statement by erroneously stating that they are. This is why:

a) Both  stories present a dystopian society in which young children aged 10-18 are taken (completely unwillingly except for 2 children in each story) to a wilderness compound wherein they must fight to the death over a course of several days with only one survivor. The eerie similarities of the two dystopian societies and the purpose of the trial is by no means a common archetype in arena battle stories, nor is the size or scale of the playing area common.

b) In both stories they are supplied with a random assortment of weaponry/supplies that are not neccesarily intuitive. In a common arena situation you'd expect weapons of some kind, but one of the things that made Battle Royale such a horrifying situation is that some characters were given seemingly useless items with no direct combat application while others were giving incredibly lethal ones. Both books captured that sense of arbitrary cruelty, but it was by no means a staple of arena fighting.

c) In both stories there are 2 characters who were not conscripted, but who possess significantly more experience and lethality due to extensive training and familiarity with the situation being encountered. This is by no means an archetype, let alone the number 2, in any arena movie.

d) Both stories have an elaborate and technologically advanced control room from which a "master of ceremonies" manipulates, controls and at times interferes with the proceedings via remote technological means. This again is not a common archetype of a story of this kind.

e) Both stories represent the exact same mechanic for "challenging the dystopian status quo" via the specific choices of the characters in the battle, despite the fact that in both cases the games/battles have been going on for decades. This is the year everything changes, which is common in movies, but the means by which this is done are exactly the same (refusing to kill except in self defense, refusing to adhere to the 1 survivor rule, falling in love, etc. etc.)

If we want to break it all down. Athens supposedly sent 7 boys and 7 girls to the Minotaur every 9 years. You could draw similarities but whats the use? they are clearly different stories told in different ways, at different times.

This is an extremely poor comparison. Your Athens reference is an order of magnitude away from the Hunger Games and Battle Royale. Deciding that two pieces of fiction with strikingly similar premises that share significant particular details is the same as "any arena battle to the death story ever told" is intellectually reprehensible.


The very definition of broad defies the similarities I have mentioned here. That word has been used incorrectly and does not apply to the arguments I have made.

-Wind