Five reasons childish leftists (if that’s redundant) love it.
8 thoughts on “The Hunger Games”
I don’t think Hunger Games is a straight lefty play.
I think this is more of a feminist thing. Something that would be popular with WisCON. That gathering of aspiring science fiction writers who are drift compatible.
Paul,
Norwescon here in Seattle is now a hangout for partygoers who rent hotel rooms and don’t even register for events. For the few that are interested in SF, they tend to be the pretentious literary types who are trying to elevate SF to Joyce or Pynchon. They are also feminists and man-bashers in general, ashamed of Heinlein and his ilk.
I don’t think Hunger Games is a straight lefty play.
What analogy is perfect? If it were, would it still be an analogy?
The caution is not too put everything in black and white. It’s not that the rich are evil or not evil. It’s that humans will go with their evil side when it suits them.
The point is to learn something from an analogy.
As I said last movie, if you haven’t read the books then you don’t understand why it is fantastic that lefties love this series so much.
Assuming they don’t change the critical plot points – so far they haven’t – this will be one delightful shocker for them.
Bah Hunger Games! I watched bigger games!
I just saw Harrison Ford go into space again!……and coincidentally, another planet was zapped to a cinder!
I don’t agree with the PJmedia article. I’m fairly sure that the author is leftist, and I while I read the entire series; I haven’t made it through either movie. According to the author, she wrote the book about media coverage of the start of Iraq war followed up by shows like Survivors. This a slightly larger phenomenon than the typical local news program that reports a horrific crime story followed by an immediate good news story. The author’s view was that if war was covered for what it is “selecting are young to go to battle to fight for our livelihood” then it would be more seriously considered before being used. Now, this is anti-war message written during the time of Bush, so to her, Washington was taking children to put them in a media covered war that was like a short nightly program to viewers. That is certainly a lefty view of Bush’s war.
But Hunger Games also has a libertarian message. I haven’t researched the author’s political views to closely (because I rather not have ruined the books). I know the above, because she discusses it at the end of one book. I suspect the author is a classical liberal. She’s not a fan of the media. The movie may ruin the message on the media, but the book makes it clear that it is media manipulation that keeps the people of the capital oblivious to the damage the games are causing the country.
In the book, Kat wins her following because of the way she treated the other children she fought against. Yes, there is a bit of “hope”, but not anything as vacuous as Obama’s campaign. She actually faced a life and death situation and found a way to win while being honest about who she was. Arguably, she even attempted suicide rather than go along with Capital’s plans. Of course it is a story, so things are a bit convenient in support of Kat, but the back story makes clear that any victor gets a following just for being a victor.
I can’t comment about the black condescension. The book seemed non-racial. However, the book did have various classes of society. The book also had very simplistic lefty stereotypes for the various sectors. I think this is why it seems like it portrays the Occupy Wall Street message. The book could not have portrayed it, because it was written before OWS. The book does have the rich and poor, but the very rich are most definitely the members of the capital. It’s very much like noting that bureaucrats in Washington seem to make far more money than their salaries while they make rules and regulation that harm the greater country. The movie seems different, but the book suggests the people in the sectors would have disdain for Lois Lerners of its fictional world.
The central motif is a cop-out, even in the book. There is no question about it. Kat eventually does kill a person with her bow and arrow, but even that was pathetically a cop-out. There is quite a number of deaths because of Kat’s action, that the character of the book realizes and takes responsibility. In fact, her self-guilt appears to intentionally conflict with the strength that makes her successful in the games. This seems understandable considering the author’s simplistic understanding of war and why people willingly volunteer for battle. To that, the author is definitely leftists. But the author’s simple view is that people do what the government makes them do. That if the government couldn’t make them do it, then fewer would participate. That notion seems classically liberal to me.
Note again, I’m discussing the books and not so much the movies. I have no doubt that Hollywood will produce something that fits their own viewpoints.
C’mon people, is everything to be judged on the Libertarian-statist axis of free minds and markets vs you-know-what? Is everything to be compared against an Ayn Rand novel for literary merit?
Hunger Games is derivative from the Theseus and the Minotaur story, where buff fighter Theseus stands in for one of the Athenian teens sent in tribute to King Minos. Only the hero in our story is a woman, the feminist angle.
Only not only is our hero (heroine — are we permitted to say that?) practiced with the bow (an athletic gift that goes against type because recurve and compound bows notwithstanding, shooting a high-power bow requires considerable upper body strength that I as a dude don’t have), unlike Theseus and the Athenian “tributes” who were merely sacrified, our hero is a gladiator as the tributes are expected to fight each other
So fighting and single combat is largely a guy thing, look at homicide statistics if you doubt me. But the most lethal killer in this story is Jennifer Lawrence, again the feminist-fantasy angle triumphs over any kind of human realism. At least Ayn Rand cast her hero alter-ego personalities as men.
But just because she is a killer with a bow doesn’t mean she gives up here (hetero) female feelings, she has an affection for one of the male charecters, right? So she has to play this corrupt, evil, and deadly “King of the Mountain” game without having to kill her romantic interest or she has to at least square her desire to win the “game” against the possibility of having to shoot the dude? And this dude she “likes” (they are teens, and it is a family movie -apart from the killing — and this is a “chaste romance”, right — I didn’t fork over the 10 bucks or whatever they charge these days to the “content industry”), she has to “trust” that the dude doesn’t share her “feelings” and will kill her before she gets to him?
This whole thing has gotten as stoopid as that Twilight thing. “So dear, you are ‘dating’ this guy, and he tells you he is a ‘vampire’, only he respects you as a person, his intentions are honorable, and he has no intentions of ‘biting’ you? Honey, dear, your Dad wants you to have a talk with Mom about this vampire thing, dating, and about men in general, even if they are not vampires. And we are going to want you home by 9 PM, sharp.”
Which is as stoopid as Pacific Rim. To operate the combat robot, these two pilots have to “drift”, and the pilots can be two guys, two women, or a hetero pair. They have to open up all their “feelings” to each other — none of this tough-guy act and not “sharing” — and no, you can’t operate the robot alone, and it is a woman scientist who figured all of this out.
In this whole feminist fantasy/sci-fi genre, I would like to see a character with a Scotts brogue with a stock line, “Aey keh-nah change the laws of human nature!”
The first book was OK…the second and third…meh. Whatever the author’s political standing, the fact is that the captial in the book WAS meant to refer to Washington, D.C., and how it became a parasite to the rest of the country. That’s enough for me. It was a set of teen novels that I read as a favor to a friend. I enjoyed the first book and enjoyed the first movie because it hit all of the right points of the book.
Lefties are gonna see what they want in the movie. Righties are gonna see what they want in the movie. I can accept that as opposed to being preached at…
I don’t think Hunger Games is a straight lefty play.
I think this is more of a feminist thing. Something that would be popular with WisCON. That gathering of aspiring science fiction writers who are drift compatible.
Paul,
Norwescon here in Seattle is now a hangout for partygoers who rent hotel rooms and don’t even register for events. For the few that are interested in SF, they tend to be the pretentious literary types who are trying to elevate SF to Joyce or Pynchon. They are also feminists and man-bashers in general, ashamed of Heinlein and his ilk.
I don’t think Hunger Games is a straight lefty play.
What analogy is perfect? If it were, would it still be an analogy?
The caution is not too put everything in black and white. It’s not that the rich are evil or not evil. It’s that humans will go with their evil side when it suits them.
The point is to learn something from an analogy.
As I said last movie, if you haven’t read the books then you don’t understand why it is fantastic that lefties love this series so much.
Assuming they don’t change the critical plot points – so far they haven’t – this will be one delightful shocker for them.
Bah Hunger Games! I watched bigger games!
I just saw Harrison Ford go into space again!……and coincidentally, another planet was zapped to a cinder!
I don’t agree with the PJmedia article. I’m fairly sure that the author is leftist, and I while I read the entire series; I haven’t made it through either movie. According to the author, she wrote the book about media coverage of the start of Iraq war followed up by shows like Survivors. This a slightly larger phenomenon than the typical local news program that reports a horrific crime story followed by an immediate good news story. The author’s view was that if war was covered for what it is “selecting are young to go to battle to fight for our livelihood” then it would be more seriously considered before being used. Now, this is anti-war message written during the time of Bush, so to her, Washington was taking children to put them in a media covered war that was like a short nightly program to viewers. That is certainly a lefty view of Bush’s war.
But Hunger Games also has a libertarian message. I haven’t researched the author’s political views to closely (because I rather not have ruined the books). I know the above, because she discusses it at the end of one book. I suspect the author is a classical liberal. She’s not a fan of the media. The movie may ruin the message on the media, but the book makes it clear that it is media manipulation that keeps the people of the capital oblivious to the damage the games are causing the country.
In the book, Kat wins her following because of the way she treated the other children she fought against. Yes, there is a bit of “hope”, but not anything as vacuous as Obama’s campaign. She actually faced a life and death situation and found a way to win while being honest about who she was. Arguably, she even attempted suicide rather than go along with Capital’s plans. Of course it is a story, so things are a bit convenient in support of Kat, but the back story makes clear that any victor gets a following just for being a victor.
I can’t comment about the black condescension. The book seemed non-racial. However, the book did have various classes of society. The book also had very simplistic lefty stereotypes for the various sectors. I think this is why it seems like it portrays the Occupy Wall Street message. The book could not have portrayed it, because it was written before OWS. The book does have the rich and poor, but the very rich are most definitely the members of the capital. It’s very much like noting that bureaucrats in Washington seem to make far more money than their salaries while they make rules and regulation that harm the greater country. The movie seems different, but the book suggests the people in the sectors would have disdain for Lois Lerners of its fictional world.
The central motif is a cop-out, even in the book. There is no question about it. Kat eventually does kill a person with her bow and arrow, but even that was pathetically a cop-out. There is quite a number of deaths because of Kat’s action, that the character of the book realizes and takes responsibility. In fact, her self-guilt appears to intentionally conflict with the strength that makes her successful in the games. This seems understandable considering the author’s simplistic understanding of war and why people willingly volunteer for battle. To that, the author is definitely leftists. But the author’s simple view is that people do what the government makes them do. That if the government couldn’t make them do it, then fewer would participate. That notion seems classically liberal to me.
Note again, I’m discussing the books and not so much the movies. I have no doubt that Hollywood will produce something that fits their own viewpoints.
C’mon people, is everything to be judged on the Libertarian-statist axis of free minds and markets vs you-know-what? Is everything to be compared against an Ayn Rand novel for literary merit?
Hunger Games is derivative from the Theseus and the Minotaur story, where buff fighter Theseus stands in for one of the Athenian teens sent in tribute to King Minos. Only the hero in our story is a woman, the feminist angle.
Only not only is our hero (heroine — are we permitted to say that?) practiced with the bow (an athletic gift that goes against type because recurve and compound bows notwithstanding, shooting a high-power bow requires considerable upper body strength that I as a dude don’t have), unlike Theseus and the Athenian “tributes” who were merely sacrified, our hero is a gladiator as the tributes are expected to fight each other
So fighting and single combat is largely a guy thing, look at homicide statistics if you doubt me. But the most lethal killer in this story is Jennifer Lawrence, again the feminist-fantasy angle triumphs over any kind of human realism. At least Ayn Rand cast her hero alter-ego personalities as men.
But just because she is a killer with a bow doesn’t mean she gives up here (hetero) female feelings, she has an affection for one of the male charecters, right? So she has to play this corrupt, evil, and deadly “King of the Mountain” game without having to kill her romantic interest or she has to at least square her desire to win the “game” against the possibility of having to shoot the dude? And this dude she “likes” (they are teens, and it is a family movie -apart from the killing — and this is a “chaste romance”, right — I didn’t fork over the 10 bucks or whatever they charge these days to the “content industry”), she has to “trust” that the dude doesn’t share her “feelings” and will kill her before she gets to him?
This whole thing has gotten as stoopid as that Twilight thing. “So dear, you are ‘dating’ this guy, and he tells you he is a ‘vampire’, only he respects you as a person, his intentions are honorable, and he has no intentions of ‘biting’ you? Honey, dear, your Dad wants you to have a talk with Mom about this vampire thing, dating, and about men in general, even if they are not vampires. And we are going to want you home by 9 PM, sharp.”
Which is as stoopid as Pacific Rim. To operate the combat robot, these two pilots have to “drift”, and the pilots can be two guys, two women, or a hetero pair. They have to open up all their “feelings” to each other — none of this tough-guy act and not “sharing” — and no, you can’t operate the robot alone, and it is a woman scientist who figured all of this out.
In this whole feminist fantasy/sci-fi genre, I would like to see a character with a Scotts brogue with a stock line, “Aey keh-nah change the laws of human nature!”
The first book was OK…the second and third…meh. Whatever the author’s political standing, the fact is that the captial in the book WAS meant to refer to Washington, D.C., and how it became a parasite to the rest of the country. That’s enough for me. It was a set of teen novels that I read as a favor to a friend. I enjoyed the first book and enjoyed the first movie because it hit all of the right points of the book.
Lefties are gonna see what they want in the movie. Righties are gonna see what they want in the movie. I can accept that as opposed to being preached at…