Abrams' New "Star Trek" Loaded with Political ...
End Times: Violence and Destruction at Cannes ...
All Tomorrow's Parties: "The Great Gatsby" ...
Will Aronofsky's "Noah" Inflame Religious ...
The Best and Worst of Sundance 2013
Where is Jafar Panahi's "The White Ballo ...The Politics of "The Hunger Games," from Fox News to Salon to Ebert
As I suspected, "The Hunger Games" is becoming hot political fodder for the mediasphere, with outlets on both the right and the left geting on board the politicizing bandwagon and making an issue of the teen-film phemomenon. Is it feminist? Is it anti-government? Is it anti-capitalist? Apparently, it is anything you want it to be. Here's a rundown of some of the political interpretations of the film. And like any good mass-market product, its ideology is, of course, extremely conflicted and all over the map. Remember 'The Matrix"?
Fox News: "A furious critique of our political system, in which the central government grows rich from the toil of the masses, even as that same political elite finds entertainment in the contrived and manipulated death of its subjects....Ordinary folks are good, government is bad--really bad. There are no evil corporations in this movie; the bad guys are bureaucrats and TV hosts."
Salon: "Katniss is moody, rebellious, deeply committed to protecting her mother and baby sister, and can incidentally shoot a man’s eye out through his windpipe. Right now, millions of nice young ladies all over the world want to be her. This should probably worry Rick Santorum more than it seems to."
The Atlantic: "The Hunger Games offers the populist hero the Occupy movement wasn't able to deliver.... Katniss's awakening isn't sexual. It's political...When she strews flowers over a fallen friend's corpse (a scene that would have been more effective at half the length), she seems, for the first time, alert to the systemic perversity of her situation. She gives a coded salute to viewers, her first act of rebellion. It works: Laborers in the dead tribute's district, most of whom are black, revolt against the Capitol's rule. One protestor is hosed against a wall, an allusion to the Birmingham campaign that may well slip past Katniss's teenage fans. But whether or not they recognize its specific references, The Hunger Games' devotees clearly get the story's urgency, its now-ness."
Roger Ebert: "The old folks in the Capitol are no doubt a right-wing oligarchy. My conservative friends, however, equate the young with the Tea Party and the old with decadent Elitists. “The Hunger Games,” like many parables, will show you exactly what you seek in it."
ThinkProgress.org: "Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced," he wrote. "The Hunger Games makes that challenge a literal and hyper-violent one."
Forbes: “On its face, the book reveals the oppressive cruelty that is big government... While the global political class and their enablers in the media to this day try to explain away droughts and the resulting famines from an 'Act of God' point of view, the simple truth is that economically free countries don’t suffer them.”
Latest Tweets
-
@x7o Yes, that is why I included the link to the annotation in my tweet.
Posted 2 hours ago -
@antkaufman Please update with our response for extra credibility http://t.co/WoxKkuRH53 + http://t.co/YOShV6iFVM #wikileaks
Posted 3 hours ago -
@antkaufman This, of course, contradicts your claim that it is "impressively researched" - it is either negligent or malicious.
Posted 3 hours ago -
@antkaufman See here: http://t.co/EkQOpKipi5 There are glaring factual inaccuracies. Just ask @carwinb
Posted 3 hours ago
4 Comments
AlisaIsbel | September 10, 2012 3:14 AM
This is great information.I appreciate the sincere appreciation.Thank you.
ewald struggl
Vladimir Escalante | April 18, 2012 5:27 PM
"The Hunger Games" is a clear allusion to the new "World order," wherein a superpower with a wealthy class (USA-Western Europe) dominates the rest of the Word (the "Districts") for its own benefit ("they have things we need") with relative ease through an appropriate use of moderate repression and psychological mass control. This was the only way to put this film on the commercial screen.
Frank DeMartini | March 30, 2012 1:48 PM
Here is my new article comparing "The Hunger Games" to the Obama Administration and a totalitarian society.
http://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/2012/03/hunger-games-a-lesson-in-totalitarianism/
andy | March 23, 2012 8:31 PM
much like orwell's 'animal farm' or '1984,' which can only be understood within the context of his lesser known 'homage to catalonia,' this film appears to be both anticapitalist and antistatist. this is to say, it appears to be anarchist in its orientation. both right and left (errr... center, really) grab onto what seems to confirm their own beliefs, oblivious to the fact that they live on opposite sides of the same coin. markets and states are born and die togetherâ folks need to brush on up david graeber's 'debt.'