If you were like me in middle school (a book nerd), you highly anticipated the release of The Hunger Games movies, and once they came out, rewatched them religiously. If you were also like me, you were blissfully unaware of how truly messed up this series was due to the extreme desensitization that my entire generation has gone through because of video games and the trauma our country has gone through as a whole. I just rewatched the entire series and am blown away by the fact that I watched this when I was eleven and that I was not completely mortified by the violent deaths and extreme political manipulation. Although this is one of my favorite movie series, I compiled a list of everything that was fucked up about the trilogy that I never even registered.
***Spoilers ahead but if you haven't seen the movies already then why are you here
The government thinks that a good way to keep peace is a death match
Let's just start out with the obvious: the entire premise of the series is crazy! Who in their right mind thinks "oh a way to stop a war is to make our own mini-war with children so they won't rebel." Don't you think it would make them rebel more? And why send twelve-year-olds into battle? My little brother is twelve and he can't even make toast correctly. I cannot picture him or any of his friends in The Hunger Games they would not make it far, but hey, neither would I.
Said death match is televised!
And the rich people can bet on the tributes! Imagine sitting around at lunch betting on who you think is gonna kill who. The Capitol citizens are oblivious to the pain and treachery of living in the districts and they think nothing of this nonsense because this is how they grew up.
Everything about The Hunger Games is marketed for entertainment
Every year the arena is specially designed for optimal viewing and for entertaining murders. There are new tricks up the game-maker's sleeves every time they can tell it's getting a little boring. Also, everyone is forced to watch everything happen, especially in the districts. Peacekeepers are given orders to threaten or hurt those who do not watch. This is their punishment. Why was I not horrified?
There are districts that relish in the fame from the Games so they train kids to win
Tributes from districts 1 and 2 are known as the career pack, named after the fact that they are trained like it's their job in order to volunteer and win The Hunger Games. The Capitol has brainwashed these people into thinking winning the Games is a way to get out of your district and see what "the good life is like." The only way to escape your life is to take others...what kind of logic is that?
Avoxes
A detail that is just so casually thrown into the mix. Whether you are a citizen in the Capitol or in a district and you disobey, your tongue will be cut out and you are forced to work as a slave. Whatever happened to jail? Why is everything so extreme?
Katniss and Peeta's forced relationship
President Snow threatened Katniss's family's life as well as her own if she did not continue to pretend she was in love with Peeta. He thought the districts would see the Capitol as weak after their stunt with the poison berries. I guess I never even realized that Katniss didn't truly love Peeta, I always saw them as just another cute couple in a dystopian movie. I can't even imagine the emotional trauma that must have put them both through. And why did Snow think that people would believe their relationship and there wouldn't be an uprising?
The thought of a Capitol Hunger Games
After the rebels win and are in control, President Coin asks the remaining victors if they would want to do one final ~symbolic~ Hunger Games with the Capitol children. When I was first watching this I was like YES LET THEM GET A TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE! But now I disagree. I get the urge to want the privileged to understand what it is like but they are becoming everything that they just rebelled against.
The "Treaty"
We are told that The Hunger Games are created after the last war and all of the districts signed this document that basically said that the Capitol is in charge of everything and also poor people will have to sacrifice two kids every year in a fight to the death. How could that have possibly come about? When I heard that as a kid I totally just believed it, why did I do that?
Some of the rebellion scenes looks oddly familiar....
This wasn't as relevant when I was a kid but now I started to notice how eerily similar the district protests are to the protests that have been going on in Minneapolis and many other places. Not only have I seen these comparisons myself, but I have seen many posts on social media like on Tik Tok and Instagram doing side-by-sides of strikingly similar pictures from the movies and from our own current events.
Yes, I understand that the point of movies is that you buy into them and their ~world~ but after seeing them so many times, the world started to crumble a little bit for me. I am sad that I have started to slip through the cracks but I am glad I am able to lift my Effie Trinket-like fog that has brainwashed me to think that these movies are fantastic, which they are, just not as morally good as I remember.
The minimum wage is not a living wage.
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