Hunger Games

I have not read the book.

So let me have my take based on nothing but the movie and my sociological imagination.

I'm quite glad the movie was rather slow moving. It gave me enough time to take it all in.


It's a little difficult to feel what the characters are feeling because it is such a different world from our own. Huge differences in income and standards of living. An authoritarian regime creating a terrible game for the districts to participate in. It doesn't make sense.


That is until you understand that the people in Capitol see the people in the districts as less than human.

They have not met people in the poor districts before, they think of them as poor and backward, and thus the blood sport is a fitting sport for them- let the barbarians be barbaric while the civilized watch from a distance.

(This is not far from the racial prejudice we've seen in the past against the African-American slaves and the Jews during the Holocaust, and today against the Dalits and outcaste in India. They are seen as less than human, and thus are treated as less than human.)


Ah, but this time round, there was a volunteer who didn't fight like the rest.

Katness didn't play into their plans of making the people in the districts seem less than human.

She was not trying to be a killer.

She made friends.

She helped the little girl in the game, and she never attacked anyone except in retaliation after being attacked. I don't think Peeta killed anyone during the games either.

If all the players played like her, they actually can't have a game.

She was trying to survive without becoming a monster.


And she did.

By the end, Peeta and her *spoiler alert* managed to make the Capitol look more like the barbaric ones, trying to separate the very human lovers.

And she showed all the districts that if they united, even the all powerful Capitol could not stop them.

Quite exciting.


I think the love issue was quite unique.

It's actually the opposite of what happened in Wicked.

In Wicked, to have power and authority, the Glinda had to play up things before the camera, letting people see what they wanted, so as to have power. Her relationship with Fydero was on the rocks, but before the people, it appeared as perfect. They played up what they were not before the cameras, but were in fact disempowered.

In The Hunger Games, Katness and Peeta played up their love for the cameras too, although Katness never really confessed to have feelings for Peeta. Just like in Wicked, the protagonists were rather... hypocritical. But in this case... They did it to empower themselves and ultimately used this power against the state, rather than give power to the state like Glinda did.


I'd say... having not read the books, that the next few films will be similar to this first one.

I think the Hunger Games is a metaphor for the bigger battle to come in the future, where the districts will unite instead of compete, and use the power of the media against their oppressors, much like the way Peeta and Katness did.


I think the Hunger Games will spill over from a game and into the streets, much like what happened in District 11 in the following movies.