Since she wrote it, Americans have risen up in widespread protest of bank bailouts, foreclosures and mass unemployment. Coupled with horrific scenes of police violence against Occupy Wall Street protesters, it’s started to come into focus: America has never been hungrier for a popular entertainment that excoriates the ultra-rich.
“The Hunger Games” is, at its core, a critique of winner-take-all capitalism — a writ-large version of the same struggle that’s given us the Occupy movement and the idea that America’s top 1% is ruling badly and unjustly, with disastrous consequences. Again and again, the books contrast Katniss’s poor but noble hometown, full of dying miners and starving children, with her country’s corrupt Capitol, a fortress city where overdressed aristocrats vomit during banquets in order to stuff themselves again.
Is it right for a small percentage of the population to utterly control access to wealth and power? Is it exploitative when we watch as members of a lower socioeconomic class scramble and fight over scraps of money and potential fame, as they do on many real reality shows and, indeed, in many real televised sports? The gladiatorial Games are a metaphor for the high-stakes games that poor people must play in America to merely survive.
And these days, they’re also not a metaphor. They’re just a mild exaggeration of a culture where one of the only ways for its least privileged citizens to escape their circumstances seems to be risking public pain and humiliation as cameras record their every move.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/real ... 025?pgno=1
careinke wrote:I've read the trilogy and found them excellent. An easy, if not light, read. But I've always been a sucker for dystopic books. I'm certainly going to watch the movie as the previews suggest the movie holds true to the book.
There have always been dystopic movies. Solyent Green, Mad Max, Lord of the Flies, Clockwork Orange to name a few.
pstarr wrote:Me too. But of all the dystopic books/movies "1984" has been my least favorite--too contrived. I am more of a 'Road Warrier' fan because I believe the future is chaos, not control. I'm not sure of this movie; the setup and previews I saw seem kind a cheesy.
Beery1 wrote:I read the book 'Hunger Games' - it's teen fiction, with all the worst elements of the genre - poorly written pulp garbage. From what I've heard, the movie is much the same.
rangerone314 wrote:Beery1 wrote:I read the book 'Hunger Games' - it's teen fiction, with all the worst elements of the genre - poorly written pulp garbage. From what I've heard, the movie is much the same.
Some considered in his time Charles Dickens to be not much more than a hack writer, and ditto on Stephen King today. I think history will see Stephen King differently. I cannot speak to the Hunger Games, as I have not read the trilogy.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests