Being one of those stuck up people who generally looks down his nose at pop culture I tried to avoid the hunger games but over the last few days I sat down and read the first novel and I'm about to start the second. I loved the first third of the book and the world that Suzanne Collins creates. As I read I wondered if one of the reasons the book resonates with people is the way it echoes the current state of the world.
In the hunger games kids are dying for our entertainment. In our world whether it's kids making electronic devices, clothing in sweat shops or picking coffee and coco beans kids are dying for our entertainment. In both worlds there is a one in a million chance they can leave their oppression. In the Hunger Games it's winning the games in our world might be becoming a movie star (slum dog millionaire) or being discovered as a model. In both worlds the capitol (like our first world) has an excess of food and the districts (like our third world) is starving. In the hunger games it is perhaps more obvious the way that food is moved from one place to other. It happens in our world too but sometimes more subtly. Like when we force a third world farmer to give up land previously dedicated to food production and replace it with coffee (if you drink one coffee cup a day you’ll need 9 trees just for your own addiction) or replace it with a water intensive cotton farm to make us t-shirts that will only last a season.
Perhaps most of all I liked the Hunger Games as it connects with my own anarcho-primitivist urges. The urge to reject all that the first world has to offer and hunt and gather food in the forest much like the book’s hero Katniss. Idealistic? Impractical? Of course! Just like ending slavery or ending apartheid was also impractical. I feel like so much of our technology is just like building our own tower of Babel and we are say to ourselves "nothing that we propose to do will now be impossible for us" (Genesis 11:6) I wonder if one of the reasons many people are not too worried about climate change is that many of us believe that if we were to run out of oil or, the world got significantly hotter that we will just find some way to get around it. We don't just wonder "will nothing we propose to do be impossible?” we believe it and we depend on it. I just don't share this confidence. That's why I'm not comfortable in the Capitol and long to live like they do or rather would do in District 12 without the oppression of the Capitol.
In the hunger games kids are dying for our entertainment. In our world whether it's kids making electronic devices, clothing in sweat shops or picking coffee and coco beans kids are dying for our entertainment. In both worlds there is a one in a million chance they can leave their oppression. In the Hunger Games it's winning the games in our world might be becoming a movie star (slum dog millionaire) or being discovered as a model. In both worlds the capitol (like our first world) has an excess of food and the districts (like our third world) is starving. In the hunger games it is perhaps more obvious the way that food is moved from one place to other. It happens in our world too but sometimes more subtly. Like when we force a third world farmer to give up land previously dedicated to food production and replace it with coffee (if you drink one coffee cup a day you’ll need 9 trees just for your own addiction) or replace it with a water intensive cotton farm to make us t-shirts that will only last a season.
Perhaps most of all I liked the Hunger Games as it connects with my own anarcho-primitivist urges. The urge to reject all that the first world has to offer and hunt and gather food in the forest much like the book’s hero Katniss. Idealistic? Impractical? Of course! Just like ending slavery or ending apartheid was also impractical. I feel like so much of our technology is just like building our own tower of Babel and we are say to ourselves "nothing that we propose to do will now be impossible for us" (Genesis 11:6) I wonder if one of the reasons many people are not too worried about climate change is that many of us believe that if we were to run out of oil or, the world got significantly hotter that we will just find some way to get around it. We don't just wonder "will nothing we propose to do be impossible?” we believe it and we depend on it. I just don't share this confidence. That's why I'm not comfortable in the Capitol and long to live like they do or rather would do in District 12 without the oppression of the Capitol.
