Hunger Games & Systems of Oppression

Cross-posted from my blog, Scribbles & Sonnets. 

There are no spoilers in this post.

Although I read all of the articles for lecture and conference this week (as well as the mountain of other work for other courses), I must confess: my thoughts have been wholly consumed by The Hunger Games, a young adult series by Suzanne Collins that I started reading for Carolyn’s conference which is actually quite relevant to this week’s discussion of intersectionality and power. When I started reading this book, I wanted to examine it through a social-science lens. I had heard great things about it from friends, but it was only when I had the opportunity to read it for an academic setting that I even had the time to devote to it. There were a few questions that I asked myself as I read:
How does this book engage ideas about systems of oppression?



  I’m impressed with Collins’ portrayal of systems of oppression in the form of the games themselves and the authoritarian government which uses them as a way to maintain social control. Every district of Panem (the state which rose from the ashes of North America according to Collins) must send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to an arena where they will fight each other to the death.The arena is a vast outdoor environment that comes with its own hazards. If the tributes refuse to fight each other or if they are too far away from each other, the omnipotent Gamemakers will introduce external threats to harm them or to bring them together. Out of the twenty-four tributes, only one will come out alive. 
This event is treated as a festivity; the citizens of Panem are supposed to celebrate. The wealthier districts do. For them, it is an honor to volunteer for the games. The glory that comes with winning is enough to motivate young men and women to train all of their lives to take part. For the poorer districts, it is clearly a death sentence. Collins introduces the issue of class early on. An element of class that I found chillingly reflective of real life is something Collins calls the tesserae. Poor children who are eligible to have their names submitted for tribute can opt to submit them multiple times for however many family members they have. In exchange for submitting their names extra times, they can receive food and oil for their families. This puts poor children at a significant disadvantage: a wealthy child will not have to put their name in more than once. 
  The other unequal aspect of the tribute raffle system is that the process is cumulative. This means that the names are not removed every year - they are added from the time the child is twelve until they are eighteen. By the time Katniss, the protagonist, is sixteen years old, she will have her name in the tribute raffle forty two times. This reminded me of the way the military has become an option for low-income adolescents to afford college. They must put their lives on the line in order to afford an education, where their wealthier counterparts do not. Wealthy teenagers who wish to join the armed forces will more often do so through military academies, where they will graduate and take a position of leadership right from the start.



  The games are publicized the same way the Super Bowl is. They occur annually and the entire year is spent in dread of them. The tributes are styled with a new wardrobe, extreme make-up and hair styles so as to create more of a spectacle. Collins exposes the grotesque aspects of our own culture in this fantastical world; she uses Panem as a way to critique  our fascination with violence and our commodification of the suffering. 



Using adolescents of the focal point of this demonstration of control changes the conversation significantly. Normally these ideas are reserved for adults. The world that Collins creates may be fantastical in nature, but it is more real than other young-adult novels which are supposedly set in the real world (Twilight being the most notable example). Collins introduces concepts of oppression and violence to an audience who may have never taken a critical look at their collection of Call of Duty games or their love of the World Wrestling Federation. 
  1. angrytrekkie posted this