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Another Perspective
Glamour of Evil or Glimmer of Hope?
Assessing reaction to The Hunger Games.
Suzanne Collins bottled lightning in writing her Hunger Games trilogy. Now that reviewers beyond the work’s original young adult demographic have greeted the new movie based on the first book of that trilogy with varying degrees of enthusiasm, we who care about what influences us and our progeny have work of our own to do: We need to ask whether the Hunger Games franchise is worthwhile, or merely contributes to the coarsening of culture that Collins’ defenders say she has written a parable about.
Controversy dogs The Hunger Games because its fictional world of the not-too-distant future depends on a disturbing premise: In what used to be North America, a postwar dictatorship with a well-scrubbed capital city, an unbridled consumerist ethos, and a perverse sense of “Must See TV” now requires boy and girl gladiators chosen by lottery from formerly rebellious outlying territories to kill each other in annual games where winning brings financial rewards to one gladiator and his or her home district, but losing means death. There are no consolation prizes.
The main thread of the story follows Katniss and Peeta, contestants from an impoverished coal mining region. Peeta becomes a gladiator in the usual way (bad luck), but Katniss takes an unconventional route to the arena by volunteering to replace her younger and softer sister, who is too obviously vulnerable in her first year of lottery eligibility at age 12.
What thinkers from antiquity through the Renaissance would have said about a setup like this, we already know. Assuming for the sake of Western Civilization that it is still appropriate to require something uplifting from art, thoughtful critics have to ask if The Hunger Games meets that criterion. I think it does.
Misgivings about what Suzanne Collins created do not always come from expected directions. Sister Helena Buns, member of a Catholic religious congregation whose mission (they call it a “charism”) is to evangelize the world for Christ through the media, ended her review of the movie by calling it “extremely well done on all counts,” and deferring to parental judgment about who should see it: “Once you know what you (and your children) are in for at the cinema, it’s your call,” she demurred.
Fortunately for the continued relevance of faith-based reviewing, other Christians did a better job of exploring moral issues in The Hunger Games. Working separately from similar perspectives, Fr. Robert Barron and movie critic Steven Graydanus cited a conspicuous lack of Christian influence as key to the Hunger Games environment. “I would argue that what keeps human sacrifice at bay is none other than Christianity, is this great religion that says ‘no scapegoating violence’,” Fr. Barron suggested, clearly hoping that The Hunger Games might help some people to see that.
Greydanus, meanwhile, read subtle purpose into the names that Collins gives her characters. Those names are botanical (Katniss, Willow) or Roman (Cato, Caesar, Cinna, Claudius, Seneca), he said. He is right about that, but would have done well to add a third (“Dickensian”) category, because “Effie Trinket,” “Peeta Mellark,” and “Haymitch Abernathy” are every bit as memorable as Uriah Heep and Martin Chuzzlewit were. In any event, Greydanus observed, “Christian names are almost completely absent, which makes sense, because in no culture with any lingering Christian influence could something quite as barbaric as the Hunger Games exist.” Importantly for my point here, both Fr. Barron and Mr. Greydanus also thought that author Suzanne Collins and movie director Gary Ross had managed to create something unusually thought-provoking
Why Collins chose to speculate about a world without Christianity is a question only she can answer definitively, but I suspect there is a clue in the title of an old blues song called “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?” You do not need to embrace Christianity to believe that barbarism would probably take center stage in its absence.
Writing for the prosecution, bookstore manager Clare Cannon offered an argument to the effect that there are five good reasons to decry the desensitizing or corrosive influence of The Hunger Games. Hers may be the most eloquent of the Christian misgivings about what Collins created. Without objecting to dystopian visions as such, Cannon charges Collins with advancing false notions of mercy as weakness, admiring cynicism, embracing unacknowledged hypocrisy, obscuring moral culpability, and lingering too lovingly over violence.
That five-point indictment must be taken seriously, although space constraints recast serious consideration as “a fair trial, followed by a first-class hanging” — which, come to think of it, is precisely what Ms. Cannon attempted while slamming The Hunger Games. Her argument would have been more convincing had it not suffered from overreach (about which more in a minute) and narrow focus.
Katniss Everdeen is the Hunger Games character who most compels our attention, and while Katniss is a resourceful young woman who loves her sister, she is also cynical, manipulative, confused, and hypocritical. Cannon understands that skill with a bow and arrow does not make anyone a paragon of virtue, but she ignores the fact that Collins also created the character of Peeta, who is simpler and more introspective than his fellow contestant. In the movie and the book, it is Peeta who first calls attention from within the narrative to how dehumanizing the games are, by expressing a hope that they not turn him into something he is not. Peeta can be deceitful, but what guile he has is used to protect Katniss because – as we quickly find out – he has a longstanding crush on her. Surprisingly, perhaps, self-preservation as an end in itself is not what motivates either of the lead characters. Supporting characters like Rue (youngest of the unwilling gladiators), Haymitch (mentor to spotlighted contestants), Caesar (compromising TV host), and Gale (friend left behind) also have unexpected layers. By emphasizing the shortcomings of one character, Cannon ignored the contrasting virtues of other characters.
The other problem with the Cannon indictment is that it is too ambitious. Anyone who doubts that need only read to the end of it, where Ms. Cannon recommends such alternatives to The Hunger Games as Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place and Immaculee Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell. The Ten Boom and Ilibagiza books are indeed excellent and rife with heroism, but the dire events in their pages really happened, and it is no part of honest criticism to hold fiction and nonfiction to the same standard. We ought instead to compare Collins with her novelist peers. Do the people who think Collins wrote a satirical failure also believe that Aldous Huxley was cheering for a new normal that included “pneumatic” women in Brave New World, or Ray Bradbury was serious about the purported advantages of having firemen start fires in Fahrenheit 451?
Let’s not forget that mortal combat between a teenager and an adult was central to the Harry Potter books, yet the death match there and in B-level films like Red Dawn did not get as much attention because it was not institutionalized as a tool of repressive government or staged for entertainment.
Suzanne Collins grapples more directly than some of her peers have done with morally hazardous material, but grapple she does, and we should applaud her seriousness. Although the Hunger Games franchise is no substitute for a well-formed conscience, the work deserves better than critical dismissal. Ironically, the kids are alright.
About the Author
Patrick O’Hannigan is a writer in North Carolina.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (48) | Leave a comment
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Pecos Pete| 5.2.12 @ 6:33AM
"You do not need to embrace Christianity to believe that barbarism would probably take center stage in its absence." = OWS
PolishKnight| 5.2.12 @ 10:33AM
As a descendant of barbarian tribesmen who used to worship Svetovid, I should be insulted at such a use of the word barbarian.
Keep in mind that it was the Romans, not barbarians, who came up with the cruel spectacles of human torture in the coliseum. Yes? On the other hand, the most cherished rituals of Christianity today have their root in pagan origins: Easter and Easter eggs. Christmas and the pagan ritual of bringing in a tree in the home and a feast. New Years celebrations. Even Halloween.
On the other hand... while Christianity has had many good things to share with the world, the origins of the sentiments of helping the poor at all costs via a massively large state is a twist on the Christian church. Marxism is a twisted, self-hating form of Christianity.
Appleby| 5.2.12 @ 6:58AM
Nobody around here is talking about this movie anymore. They quit talking about it two weeks ago, in fact. They're all outside in line, dressed in costumes and waiting to see The Avengers.
Doctor Right| 5.2.12 @ 8:22AM
First of all, Ms. Collins plot is not exactly original.
Stephen King wrote a novella (one of his best stories, actually) more than 20 years ago called "The Long Walk" that has a near identical plot. In this story, the USA is a Fascist dictatorship run by a man who is only ever referred to as "The Major." Once each year, in the Spring when the weather is warm, 50 teenage boys "volunteer" for the new national pastime, known as "The Long Walk."
The competition works this way: Starting at the northernmost tip of Maine, all 50 boys start walking south on a prescribed route. There is no pre-set finish line. The only rules are that you cannot stop walking - even to sleep - and your speed must not go below 4 miles per hour. Anyone who breaks the rules (after 3 warnings) is summarily dispatched by the soldiers who follow the walkers in a half-track. The winner is the last boy left alive who is still walking.
It's a brutal, jarring story, and one can't help but get the feel that Ms. Collins has read it.
FYI, I'm not knocking "Hunger Games;" my kids love it.
Secondly, there's no doubt that Christianity is the sole reliable civilizing influence in the world. All we need do is look around us. Christian culture does not guarantee peace (the examples are numerous), but brutality is often the norm in places where it had no foothold.
PolishKnight| 5.2.12 @ 10:50AM
"The Long Walk" was one of the Bachmann books (written by King under a pseudonym, he claims, to see how his stories would be received without his name. It was a running joke that King maybe felt he was just flooding the market with too much material in his own name.) I liked it as well and found another tale "Rage" to be ugly and later it would be the inspiration for the Columbine murderers. King said that he regretting writing it. Nonetheless, the Bachmann books were incredible writing and, like Philip K Dick, lend themselves well to adaptation.
What Doctor Right refers to as barbarism in leau of Christianity can perhaps be summed up as Darwinistic culture: The weak should be exploited without apology and only the strong survive even, and especially, if via dishonesty, corruption, and what we would refer to as evil. It's the fundamental tenet of leftist politics.
Doctor Right| 5.2.12 @ 11:11AM
In fact, in a world without Christianity, Darwin's philosophy WILL predominate. That's because it's in man's nature to destroy and dominate.
Without God, we are truly lost.
PolishKnight| 5.2.12 @ 12:15PM
The problem, Doctor Right, is that socialism and feminism are warped derivatives of Christianity and chivalry, respectively. The concept of separating church and state (even in the classical Constitutional sense) and limited government was a blip in a historical radar of a large state imposing a collective religion upon it's subjects for nearly all of human history.
Christianity itself is a derivative of Judaism which Islam is also derived from. While Christianity and modern Judaism seem like ideal religions today, both are products of centuries of secularization and "reinterpretation" which really means that wise, and decent men changed them into decent religions rather than "found" them. The Bible orders and condones, among other things, forcing rape victims to marry their rapists, genocide, and apocalyptic thinking.
Doctor Right| 5.2.12 @ 3:01PM
I disagree completely that Islam was derived from Judaism.
The only belief they share is a monotheistic God.
Muslims like to say they are "Children of Abraham." This is patent nonsense. Ishmael, Abraham's son, was the progenitor of the Bedouin (Arab) people - NOT of Islam.
Islam did not exist until around 700 A.D., which is several thousand years AFTER Abraham and Ishmael.
Additionally, I also disagree that "wise men" changed Christianity into a "decent religion." The Word of God has NOT changed; the fact that men have either purposefully or mistakenly distorted it's meaning is irrelevant.
macwell| 5.2.12 @ 3:32PM
Great response Doc.
And right on all counts.
Occam's Tool| 5.2.12 @ 4:50PM
Islam was derived from Judaism in the same way that Casanova and John "Johnny Wad" Holmes both seduced women.
A sick, perverse, child molesting , mass murdering scumbag tried to get the Jews to convert to his despicable way of thinking, and was rightly refused.
Quartermaster| 5.2.12 @ 9:08PM
There is a great deal of ignorance in PolshKnight's post. Rape victims being forced to marry their rapist is just one egregious example.
PolishKnight| 5.3.12 @ 12:11PM
From the King James version:
28If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; 29Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
and
20But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: 21Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
Only after centuries of "Wise Latinas" rewriting the Bible via "interpretation" and secularization are Judaism and Christianity now "civilized" religions.
KennesawJack| 5.2.12 @ 1:21PM
PK, your last paragraph was as good a description of the modus operandi of the left as I've read.
PolishKnight| 5.2.12 @ 2:16PM
Interestingly enough, though, even the left eats their own, so to speak, and the Stalinist purges are a fine example. Well-educated, elites could be picked up by the KGB anytime simply due to paranoia of the current administration.
The leftist oligarchies remind me of the Corellian cruiser in The Empire Strikes Back where the upper management were routinely put to death by Darth Vader. So you didn't want to be too high up the management chain.
Anthony| 5.2.12 @ 11:15AM
Interesting D.R.. I wonder if Bill Bryson who wrote the wonderfully funny book on walking the Appalachian Trail entitled "A Walk in the Woods" knew of King's novella?
Bryson and his chubby friend, who loved Litt'e Debbie's cakes, would not have made it for a day.
Usually those who walk the trail start south and walk their way north to Maine as they follow the spring.
Doctor Right| 5.2.12 @ 3:03PM
Correction:
King published "The Long Walk" in 1979, so it's 33 years old.
And it was 100 teenagers, not 50.
Occam's Tool| 5.2.12 @ 4:42PM
Long Walk is set in an alternative USA, incidentally. It is better than the Hunger Games, as the writer is better.
Dystopian fiction for YA is its own genre, incidentally. Very few of my young patients have any interest in it, which I find confusing.
C. S. P. Schofield| 5.3.12 @ 5:21AM
I can explain that pretty easily; Young Adults may flirt with gloom, but they tend to want heroic stories. Appreciation of dystopia is an intellectual fashion, and an acquired taste.
Bruce| 5.2.12 @ 8:25AM
IMO there is much in the movie that represents "Christian" principles. Katniss was willing to give her life for her sister. Katniss uses every possible avenue to prevent having to kill someone directly (e.g. using the tracker jackers). When Rue dies, I'm sure Katniss would have given her a "Christian burial" if she had the time. Katniss is later saved based on the act of kindness she showed. Was Peeta's act of aiding the poor and needy not a "Christian" act? Even the overall theme reminded people of the Romans sending the Christians and others into the Coliseum for the amusement of the people. There were so many underlying themes that I don't see how anyone could say the Hunger Games world was totally without Christianity.
JFGalt| 5.2.12 @ 12:55PM
Maybe the more overt Chrisitianity has had to be buried deeper in order to survive in their world but it couldn't be erased.
The Big E| 5.2.12 @ 8:55AM
The movie is very, very good on many levels, but it pales in comparison to the books. Such that I have read recently about the series focuses on the The Hunger Games, and makes no mention of either Cathcing Fire or Mockingjay, which tells me that those rendering opinions haven't read them, and are feigning their knowledge solely from watching the movie adaptation of the first.
I'm not saying you did this, Mr. O'Hannigan, but I have no doubt that some of those you quoted in your piece have.
The fact is that I have been amazed, truly amazed, at the way my nearly 12 year old daughter and her friends have read and understood these books - and no, their discussions have NOT been about "Team Gale" or "Team Peeta," as some other reviews have opined, they have been about The Hunger Games as an metaphor for the modern world.
They read The Hunger Games' books and see a capitol that takes everything for itself, where people live lives of astounding wealth while taking (taxing) everything from those people who actually produce the food and other goods that Panem needs to survive, and see an analogy to the current culture inside the Beltway. They read about District 12, where people are starving despite have substantial natural resources and where you are expected by the capitol to die of starvation before killing a wild animal for food, and see an analogy to the way envirnemental rules are destroying our country.
And these are 12 year olds!
And they're not getting this from their parents. I started reading the series because my daughter started asking me some very serious questions about social and political issues which she said the books made her think about, and when she was with her friends, I found that many of them were talking about the books in the same manner. I started reading the books so I could talk with my daughter about them, and found that my daugher and her friends (a) take away more from books that I previously thought, and (b) were far better informed about politics than I realized.
And again, these are 12 year olds!
Yes, there is no Christianity (or any other religion) in Panem, and Panem is a violent, brutal place where no value is placed on human life (and not just by the capitol , but also by those who scheme to replace the capitol with themselves). In other words, the world of Panem is EXACTLY the nightmarish place one would a expect the world to be without Christianity.
As you can tell, I am a big fan of the books. I think the series is on par with the likes of Brave New World, 1984, and even Atlas Shrugged. It's that good, and has made many young people familiar with ideals which so many of this site share.
Paul McGrath| 5.2.12 @ 11:32AM
I agree Big E, there is clearly a political element here. In one of the televised speeches by the leader, played by Donald Sutherland, he says something like, "I give you your food, I give you your entertainment, I give you your life . . . " or something along that line. I was half-expecting him to add, "and I give you your health care." If he had done so, the message would have been much clearer. There were a few other compelling lines as well, which I don't remember.
buckeyeman| 5.2.12 @ 11:45AM
I saw the movie. The plot was idiotic. "Katnip", the hunter, spent most of her time thrashing through the woods with the stealth of a bulldozer or standing in open clearings not giving a glance anywhere. The "kill immediately on sight" principle that the whole damn movie is premise on is completely at odds with the small groups that seem to have formed microseconds after the "games" began - it just didn't make any sense. I found the cutsie names annoying rather than Dickensian. It was very unoriginal, proving that almost anything will sell to the younger brain-dead generation. Comparing this slop to Orwell's 1984 is obscene.
JFGalt| 5.2.12 @ 12:53PM
You saw a film for entertainment. You did not see or take in the movie. Sadly you missed the point. You should try and get a refund. It wasn't a movie about hunting.
Renaissance Nerd | 5.2.12 @ 2:36PM
If you haven't read the book, much of the movie can make no sense. I know several people that didn't get about half of what was going on, or why. Having read the book it was plain as plain to me, but since about half of the book takes place in Katniss' head, there's no way to translate it into a movie. It's a very weird style, which I normally hate, but found readable in this solitary instance. I am not a 'fan' of the books; I'm not a 'fan' of anything, but they are superior to Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc, and are much more philosophically coherent than most YA books I've read. The movie as a movie is not nearly as good a the book as a book. I don't own the books; one my sisters lent them to me sure that I would like them. I did, but I haven't purchased them yet, though as it's been over a year since I read them I've begun thinking I might like to give them another look. I always read books I admire at least twice. I read Ivanhoe, Treasure Island, The Lord of the Rings, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, the Chronicles of Narnia and the complete works of Jane Austen every year.
Todd S| 5.2.12 @ 11:09PM
You read the same books over every year? That is hard to believe really and not sure why anyone would do that. I have re-read a number of books but usually have to be at least 5 years or it seems too repetitive. I guess to each his own.
macwell| 5.2.12 @ 3:47PM
Excellent post and I agree with your assessment. I too have read the trilogy, twice, and watched the movie again after reading them. I too have daughters, (3), which are all grown, but read the books through the youngest.
I thought they were a good read and of course a preview of liberalism gone wild. The books are so much better, of course being able to set up the characters better. Ms. Collins succeeded in teaching our young people what OUR public schools have been unwilling, or unable to, what life is really like under any form of communism/socialism/progressivism/statism. The truth is, what ever you call it, the citizens under that kind of governance are always the losers.
We the people MUST rid our country of all those who believe that America NEEDS to be "fundamentally transformed".
Occam's Tool| 5.2.12 @ 4:45PM
Big E---or, just maybe, you raised your kid well. That would not surprise me.
I liked the books, but the whole thing was captured better in "The Gods of the Copybook Headings..."
BEWAREFALSEGODS| 5.2.12 @ 9:54AM
These youth are the future of America, LOL, LOL, LOL...
JFGalt| 5.2.12 @ 12:48PM
The elites in our world these may profess Christianity but they do not live it and they want to destroy it to its root. Progressivism is at odds with it as demostrated by their relentless attacks on Christian institutions. Sandra Fluke for one - why go to Georgetown if you stand against for everything they are for and then spend your entire time there trying to change it. They want the future and maybe they won it in what would be the prequel to The Hunger Games. The life in the capital city seems to be a world of progressives and their vision of everyone else. Maybe that's the message.
Vern Crisler| 5.2.12 @ 1:28PM
I thought Arnold Schwarzeneggar (sp?) did a movie like that a few years ago. It had Richard something-or-other in it, the former Hogan's Heroes guy and game show host. Plus a cute Latino lady.
Ed from Ohio| 5.2.12 @ 2:06PM
That movie was "The Running Man" and the plot was similar. Both movies have a strong undercurrent of Libertarianism. As to the Christian influence of the Hunger Games (or the lack thereof) G.K. Chesterton wrote: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything".
Michael| 5.2.12 @ 2:43PM
"Red Dawn" was B-Level?? It was released by MGM, was written and directed by John Milius, an Oscar nominee, and had A-list actors in the cast. It was the #1 movie in the country for two weeks and was number 24 for the year (1984).
Occam's Tool| 5.2.12 @ 4:46PM
Michael: "Avenge Me!" A great line by Harry Dean Stanton, a great character actor.
I LOVED that film.
Renaissance Nerd | 5.2.12 @ 2:44PM
The closest similar story is "Battle Royale" by Koushun Takami, though Collins claims never to have heard of it. It's hardly surprising, as I doubt many outside the anime geek community has read it in the USA. I take her at her word; I've had several ideas myself that suddenly became books or movies by somebody else, and I know they didn't steal it from me. Battle Royale is a lot grimmer than Hunger Games, as it's an entire class of friends, rivals and sweethearts who are sent to kill each other to underline the fact that nobody in the 'soft fascist' society can ever trust even their best friends. It's not televised, and each person is given a pack and a weapon of sorts, and it's a very sad and horrible story. The movie is even worse, just brutal and horrific. The terror of the kids is far more palpable than in the Hunger Games, and there are volunteers who came in just for the fun of murder. Definitely not for kids.
Occam's Tool| 5.2.12 @ 4:47PM
I bneed to get that book, the bits I've read in passing looked extremely grim.
Occam's Tool| 5.2.12 @ 4:51PM
Sorry: "need."
Richard| 5.2.12 @ 2:49PM
This is just a silly movie that is seen by a tiny percentage of the population. So what!
macwell| 5.2.12 @ 3:50PM
Just what is so silly about it richard?
Ken| 5.2.12 @ 4:49PM
The Hungers Games are also a parable for what a country we would be without a Second Amendment. When I watched the film, I was aghast at how people in the outlying districts just meekly acquiesed to allowing their children to be used in these gladiator games. When the death of one contestant sparked riots which were swiftly put down by government stormtroopers, it made me think that had these folks been armed this whole brutal spectacle and the government which insisted upon it could have been ended once and for all. It reminds us that one reason why the left whenever it comes to power first takes away people's guns. A defenseless society is a tyrranized society.
blackwatch| 5.3.12 @ 12:46AM
Ken, you are correct. The books are a primer on how to get rid of a dictatorship and are a warning to us to not lose our 2nd Amendment rights.
the great news is that are seeing the movie my 14 year old daughter and all of her friends are getting into bow & arrow shooting as well as firearms practice and skeet. It's going to be a great summer!
Bob S| 5.3.12 @ 1:31AM
This, of course, is completely lost on the left, who think the Second Amendment is only used for violence and who think the government can't ever do wrong.
pyeatte| 5.3.12 @ 12:27AM
My wife and I saw the movie the day after it came out. We thought it was great - very original and tense. I immediately bought the trilogy for my Kindle and spent the next two weeks reading them. What a trip, and very clear there will not be a fourth. Can't wait for the next two movies.
POST American| 5.3.12 @ 12:45AM
---And NOW for the 'Hunger Games' for REAL.
"When we get through with you
---YOU'LL WISH YOU WERE A TREE."
-Maurice Strong
UN Director
EUGENIST
Globalist
--PSYCHOPATH--
'RIO + 20' is next month.
Tha 'HARD powering' of 'Agenda 21' is
---on the way!
Just a little break from the 'authorized'
controversies as Hollywood and media
BURY without a trace some 6 decades
of anniversaries for the cosmically relevant,
RED China, Globalism and EUGENICS
'unfriendly'
---------------------KOREAN WAR-----------------------
Bob S| 5.3.12 @ 1:26AM
I put it on the same level as the Twilight series: absolutely shallow with no substance, but with all the elements that will appeal to your average teenage girl.
alam| 5.17.12 @ 12:49AM
Funny you should write this. You don't know anything about being christian You lie, cheat on your wife, treat your kids like dirt....... where do you get the right to write about christians?
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