Tag Archives: Hunger Games

This Week in WTF, November 15, 2013

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– They’ll save a bundle on the overhead for concessions: The producers of the Hunger Games film franchise are reportedly looking into theme park possibilities (h/t LGM). Thanks, but I’ve already seen The Running Man.

– I wonder if the Fleshlight people know about this: Speaking of simulations, doctors have a new opportunity to practice prostate exams, thanks to what I’m going to call a butt simulator (h/t Sarah):

The butt has a name, it’s Patrick. The doctors in training can talk to and gesture with Patrick. Patrick’s butt has embedded sensors to measure the pressure and Patrick can talk about his fears. Life is but a video game.

No word on whether doctors can unlock achievements by progressing further through Patrick’s anus.

Photo via Gizmodo (I may have modified it slightly...)

Photo via Gizmodo (I may have modified it slightly…)

– iPathos: A Roomba in Austria may have made history by being the first robot to commit suicide:

The little dirt-sucker, model 760, reportedly turned itself on, rolled onto a hot plate, and set itself ablaze in Kirchdorf, Austria. When firefighters arrived on the scene, all that was left of the little fellow was a pile of ash. Freaky.

– To be fair, they’re already made of plastic: Department-store mannequins in Venezuela are apparently getting less realistic:

[T]he new shop-window favourite in Venezuela is apparently a fibreglass model sporting a dramatically enlarged bust, an unnaturally sculpted rear, a tiny wasp waist and never-ending, super-skinny legs.

According to the New York Times, mannequin manufacturer Eliezer Álvarez has transformed his business by introducing a line of shop-window dummies based on the exaggerated body shape he thinks Venezuelan women would really like – and, increasingly, are giving themselves with implants and plastic surgery.

– This seems a little too ironic: Burglar dies while stuck inside chimney of law firm.

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Today’s Bad Literary Pun

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A prominent feature of The Hunger Games books (no spoilers) is the annoyingly Twilight-esque question of whether Katniss will end up with Gale or Peeta, because even in the post-apocalyptic indeterminate future, apparently, young adult tropes demand a love triangle.

Hunger Games Love Triangle

My point in bringing this up is that someone on Facebook just pointed out to me that the pairing of Peeta and Katniss may appropriately be dubbed PeeNiss.

Peeta plus Katniss

Now it’s stuck in your head, too.

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We have quite a bit of post-apocalyptic or dystopian SF about the U.S., but what about everyone else?

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1153288_52572910I came across this brief post as I was scrolling through Tumblr entitled “I still wonder what happened to the rest of the world in The Hunger Games”:

Do they still have meetings and stuff?
France: Anyone heard from America lately?
Mexico: Same old, same old. They’re still sending out children to fight to the death in a reality show.
UK: Shouldn’t we do something about that?
China: Just leave them, at least they’re not annoying us.

We have a rather extensive set of post-apocalyptic or dystopian speculative fiction set within the boundaries of the United States or North America, but not much looking at such an America from the outside. Speculative fiction, by offering a view of a possible future, is often the best vehicle for commenting on or criticizing today’s political, economic, or social realities. Think of how much social commentary the original Star Trek was able to accomplish by setting its stories in a quasi-utopian future humanity. I too wonder what a post-disaster U.S. would look like from a non-U.S. perspective, particularly one from the “developing world.”

In terms of post-apocalyptic or dystopian future Americas, aside from The Hunger Games, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road comes to mind, along with alternate history works like Harry Turtledove’s “Timeline-191” series and about half the episodes of the TV show Sliders. Then there are TV shows like Jericho, which portrayed a modern-day nuclear attack, and Terra Nova, which was set 85 million years ago but centered around a dangerously polluted 22nd-century America. The new ABC show Last Resort, about which I will probably write more later, depicts a potentially dystopian contemporary or near-future United States. These all focus on America itself, though.

Robert Silverberg’s Time of the Great Freeze takes place during a future Ice Age, where ice sheets have covered much of North America. The protagonists leave their underground city in North America after picking up a radio signal from the London area, intending to cross the ice sheet over the Atlantic. The book mentions that, with much of Europe, North America, and East Asia covered in ice, the equatorial nations of South America, Africa, and Asia have become dominant world powers. It still doesn’t tell us anything about life in those places.

The Brits Seem to Have No Problem Blowing Us Up in Fiction

The best examples I can think of, that deal with the rest of the world, should the United States go all post-apocalyptic or dystopian, come from Great Britain or other English-speaking countries. The films V for Vendetta and Children of Men both came out around the same time in 2005 or 2006. Both are set in the relatively-near future: V for Vendatta mentions the year 2015 as the not-too-distant past, and Clive Owen’s character in Children of Men wears an extremely ratty London 2012 Olympics sweatshirt for much of the film. Both films reference events in “the former United States,” and both depict a UK turned to dictatorship in one form or another. Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, set in Australia, shows a U.S. devastated by nuclear war. Continue reading →

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I forgot a few very obvious “Hunger Games” influences, may the Great Geek God forgive me

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I am embarrassed to admit a few omissions from yesterday’s post about influences in The Hunger Games. In order to shore up my geek creds, let’s just go ahead and list them here and pretend this never happened, okay?

The SPOILER ALERT from the previous post remains in effect.

  • Running Man Theatrical Poster [Fair use claimed]“The Running Man” (movie): The 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie offers a disturbingly-prescient view of today’s reality TV lineup, with the only difference, really, being that no one actively tries to kill anyone on actual reality shows today (that we know of). Arnold, as a convicted (but innocent) criminal, doesn’t have much choice but to participate in “The Running Man,” in which he must escape various celebrity “stalkers,” portrayed by real-life sports celebrities like Jesse Ventura (wrestling is sort of a sport) and Jim Brown. If he wins, he gets all manner of fabulous prizes (or does he???) Much like The Hunger Games, the game takes place in a large arena with various resources scattered about. It has a smarmy host who seems kindly but is actually a monster (Richard Dawson, soon to be channeled by Stanley Tucci). The biggest difference is likely to be in the fact that “The Running Man” is very, very ’80s.
  • “The Running Man” (novella): Where the 1987 Arnold movie errs on the side of cheesiness, the 1982 Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) novella is dark. Dark to the point of being downright cynical. The Ben Richards character doesn’t enter the game because someone coerces him, but because he needs money and really has no other options. Instead of a game arena, the game is played out in the real world in a dystopian future U.S., and in addition to “hunters” tracking him, anyone else can bring him in or kill him. He wins money for every hour he stays alive, and if he can survive for 30 days, he wins the grand prize of $1 billion. Much like The Hunger Games, the “Games Network” is ubiquitous in society, and there is even a mention, after televisions become required in all households, of instituting a requirement that they always be on. In a strange foreshadowing of today’s YouTube culture, Richards must make a video recording of himself every day and mail it to the Games Network. This keeps the audience updated on his doings and, of course, allows the powers that be to track him. In a final bit of foreshadowing, easily the most troubling of all, Richards brings the Games Network down, literally, by crashing an airplane into the Games Building. The novella ends with “…and it rained fire twenty blocks away.”
  • “The Long Walk:” This is another Stephen King book written as Richard Bachman and first published in 1979. It is set in a dystopian alternate United States controlled by a military dictatorship of some sort. Young men volunteer to participate in the annual “Long Walk.” The prize for the last man standing is, essentially, everything. Winners supposedly receive whatever they want, which must be tempting in what is described as a desperately poor and subjugated society. Losers “buy a ticket,” a term whose meaning is not made clear at first (I’m getting to that). The “Walk” starts at the Maine/Canada border and proceeds south for as long as it takes. Walkers must maintain a pace of four miles per hour, monitored by trained soldiers accompanying them on half-tracks. If their pace drops below that, they receive a warning. If they walk for an hour with no subsequent warning, the warning is removed. They get three warnings, and on the fourth warning they “buy their ticket.” The meaning of this becomes clear several hours into the walk when someone on his third warning gets a Charley horse and drops back. Despite his pleas, his ticket is called, and a soldier approaches him, pulls out his carbine, and shoots the man in the head. This being Stephen King, the carbine fires with sufficient power to eviscerate the man’s skull. Of course, all of this is televised. The remainder of the book is a psychological study of (a) the effect of nonstop walking under penalty of messy death, and (b) the factors that would possibly compel people to volunteer for this event.
  • “The Lottery:” A 1948 short story by Shirley Jackson, this may be the most disturbing of all, because it offers no hints at all that it is going somewhere creepy. Early on in the story, it might as well just be a standard small-town America story. Everyone is preparing for a big event, “the lottery,” held every year. The heads of the town’s families draw slips of paper from a box, and the family that draws the slip with the black spot is “chosen.” The members of that family draw slips of paper again, and the person who gets the one with the black spot wins, so to speak. The rest of the town then stones that person to death. It is fair to say that, based on the tone of the rest of the story, the reader does not see this coming.

I’m heading to the “Hunger Games” movie in a few hours. I’ll let you know how it is.

Photo credit: Running Man Theatrical Poster [Fair use claimed] via Wikipedia.

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A watered-down “Battle Royale” with hints of the “Handmaid’s Tale,” all wrapped up in “Twilight”

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(WARNING: Might contain spoilers) It’s not really fair to compare The Hunger Games to Twilight, especially since I’ve never actually read Twilight (and, FSM willing, I never will.) I watched the first “Twilight” movie with a vaguely annoyed expression over a three- or four-day period, since I couldn’t sit through more than about thirty minutes at a time. I only mention it because of a gnawing fear that the forthcoming “Hunger Games” movie will drop the threadbare scraps of its dystopian themes of oppression and alienation and throw itself at a tween-swoon-inducing love triangle that only barely rears its sparkly head towards the end of the book.

Actually, I know that’s going to happen, because this review says so.

I actually quite enjoyed the book (I haven’t read the second or third books yet), even if I’m not the main target demographic. It was pretty derivative of quite a few things, but I like the way it took some disparate scifi elements and put them together in an innovative, if not altogether immersive, universe.

Here are a few things I liked about the book, in terms of its homage material:

  • “Battle Royale:” I’m referring to the profoundly-disturbing Japanese movie, not the Manga series. If The Hunger Games is not at least partly inspired by this, then it is a truly remarkable coincidence. The Hunger Games takes the children-fighting-to-the-death premise and improves on it by making the rationale for the event actually make sense. In “Battle Royale,” if I recall correctly, society has decided that children (defined as anyone under 20 years of age) constitute a grave threat to the safety and stability of society. As a disincentive to misbehaving, every year a ninth-grade class is selected to participate in the Battle Royale, in which they are deposited on an island and given a set period of time to fight to the death. It’s more disturbing than Hunger Games in the sense that these are classmates, who have known each other their whole lives, suddenly compelled to kill each other. Each child is fitted with an explosive collar to give them an extra incentive–if they refuse to fight, then the game master (whatever they’re called) will kill them anyway. The problem is that the premise makes no dang sense. The children are chosen at random, meaning that there is no value as a deterrent to crime or other misbehavior, because even model children could find themselves picked for the Battle. At least the Hunger Games are acknowledged to be random, as a demonstration of the Capitol’s complete dominance over society.
  • “The Handmaid’s Tale:” This is actually another one where I’ve only seen the movie (1990, starring Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, and Aidan Quinn), and I’m pretty sure it leaves a lot of the book’s elements out. It posits a near-future dystopian America, the Republic of Gilead, with an uber-conservative religious leadership. Women who have managed to retain their fertility are literally treated like cattle. The main parallel I can see is in the portrayal of an all-powerful state that dominates all features of life, although it occurs to me that just about everyone, from hardcore liberals to hard core libertarians, could see some relatable material here
  • A Storm of Swords: This would be Book 3 of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series (the one that starts with A Game of Thrones). Specifically, the effete, peacock-y people in the Capitol remind me of the people in the cities of Slavers’ Bay in Storm of Swords. Daenerys Targaryen and her entourage go there early in the book and are generally horrified by what they find. The three cities, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, were once part of a great empire, but they are now in a strange state of denial about their own decline. The warriors and merchants dress ostentatiously, fashioning their hair into horns and other strange shapes and dyeing it bright colors. The warriors in particular do not make for a very effective fighting force because of their ornamentation, and they prefer to rely on their slave armies. As fans of the book know, things do not go well for the slavers. The capital of Panem rests on a fragile foundation, depending on the Districts to maintain their lives of luxury while needing to keep the Districts brutally suppressed.

Of course, there are a few things I don’t like so far:

  • Backstory: The Hunger Games does not appear to have any. At all. All we know is that something very bad happened, possibly a nuclear war and/or severe climate change, and that the oceans have risen. After some amount of time, the Capitol united all the remaining areas of North America. The Districts, which had apparently already been established, rebelled against the Capitol, but lost in a major way. The Capitol destroyed District 13 entirely, and started the Hunger Games as a reminder to the Districts that it was in charge. That’s literally all we know. It makes sense that Katniss wouldn’t know any more than that, since it would be in the Capitol’s interest to keep the District populace in the dark. The audience does not need to be that much in the dark. Try Googling a map of Panem–it’s remarkable how many different interpretations you’ll find. One person thought District 13 was in the DC area, while someone else thought it was in Quebec (apparently the Quebec theory makes the most sense, but I forget why.) At least one fan has put a remarkable amount of work into developing a map and history of Panem.
  • Economics: Matt Yglesias has a review of economic theories that make a society like Panem plausible at Slate. I did not finish reading his article because it has Book 2 & 3 spoilers, so I’ll just summarize my thoughts on the matter. The Capitol uses some very scifi technology. “Hovercraft” that either use cloaking devices or can do some sort of teleportation. Ointments that can heal second-degree burns in a matter of hours. Genetically-engineered animals with rudimentary intelligence. And so on. The Districts supply all of the raw materials used by the Capitol, it would seem, and they seem to enjoy few of these technological advances. District 12 could be part of the 1930’s or the 95th century, but it seems odd that they wouldn’t have any of the technology enjoyed elsewhere, or that they could meet the needs of the Capitol without such technology. Which leads me to my next point…
  • Geography of the Capitol: District 12 is in Appalachia. The Capitol is somewhere in the Rockies. If climate change has caused ocean levels to rise and flood low-lying areas of North America, then those areas would probably have a warmer climate than they do today. Which would be good, because it is difficult to imagine building an imperial capital city in the middle of the mountains, around 8,000 feet above sea level. Just about any city that has ruled over a large area with any degree of control (think Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, Tenochtitlan, and so forth) had ready access to some amount of natural resources. The middle of the Rocky Mountains does not offer that, at least not in today’s ecosystem. So how did they get to be the biggest kid on the block? Perhaps their geographic isolation worked to their advantage in a nuclear war, with mountains shielding them from the worst of the fallout. Or maybe they rode out a climatic or geological upheaval by being so far away from sea level, and were then able to roam the continent, picking up the scraps. All we know for sure from the first book is that the mountains protected the Capitol from the rebellious districts. The problem is that geography is a two-way street. If it’s hard to get into an area, it might also be hard to get out.
  • Geography of the Districts: District 12 produces coal for the Capitol. District 11 handles agriculture. District 1 makes luxury goods. There is a problem with monocultures like this. Does District 11 produce good for all of Panem, or just the Capitol? Panem would need a highly sophisticated distribution system if it had to get food and other supplies from one District to all the others with little to no contact between the Districts. The mind boggles at the logistics.
  • The word “Capitol:” the book keeps referring to the capital city of Panem as the “Capitol.” One small, grammar-nerd problem with that. “Capitol” refers exclusively to a building. Anything else, i.e. a city, is referred to with “capital.” That’s been bugging me for a while.

Anyway, I’m going to see the movie on Saturday. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I can finally start reading A Dance with Dragons.

Photo credit: aimmyarrowshigh at livejournal.

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