May 1, 2012 - 10:54 am
Does The Hunger Games advance a conservative or liberal message? Does this movie even have a political message? Find out as a new and improved Poliwood returns to examine this dystopic hit. Also, Poliwood looks at the television programs “Smash,” “Scandal,” and “Don’t Trust the B — in Apartment 23,” especially each program’s treatment of Republicans and homosexuals. Are these shows insulting to both gay people and Republicans? Hear what Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd think. Plus, get the latest on new releases hitting the theaters from Rotten Tomatoes Editor-in-Chief Matt Atchity.
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Wonderful! I am glad Poliwood is back.
Welcome back!
And I saw “Safe”, and apart from all the confusing action, it wasn’t bad, the little girl and the Hero was nice.
Now, the “Avengers” is on its way: it’s directed with my own hero, Joss Whedron. May it be half as great as “Serenity”!
“Serenity” politics is right up there with the hunger games as confusing or fun to debate. Josh is a lefty so he likes to claim it is about the USA forcing its values on the world… but one of his lead writers is an uncloseted libertarian… so in the movies you have the operative saying things out of Heaven on Earth (re: talking about a new man and other collectivist pap).
To the point of the political message in The Hunger Games, here’s a part of Lefty Ebert’s review:
“At the top of the society is the president (Donald Sutherland), a sagacious graybeard who harbors deep thoughts. In interviews, Sutherland has equated the younger generation with leftists and Occupiers. 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.”
Gee, Mr. Ebert, how about the old folks in the Capitol representing BIG GOVERNMENT, which they are in the movie, deciding who gets what and who doesn’t, who lives and who dies? We have a government in power that is working toward this goal. But — oh, no doubt, it’s those evil right-wingers, not the benevolent Left. They care about people. Righties don’t. Talk about bigotry.
Overall, Ebert does a good job of critiquing the art aspects of movies. But when he gets political (see his shameless defense of his “buddy,” the rapist Roman Polanski) he becomes a partisan fool.
In fairness to Ebert, he was quoting Sutherland’s viewpoint rather than expressing his own in your excerpt. I agree that it’s difficult to envision the Capitol as a right-wing oligarchy, especially in the context of our current political landscape. Who is pushing for more and more government intrusion? Certainly not the right.
The Hunger Games is art imitating life. How so you say. When Islam (ottoman turks) conquered the Balkans, they harvested the children of these conquered peoples and placed the young boys in to army training camps and the girls into their harems. The boys became the backbone of the muslim armies and ghe girls produced more muslim population. This technique of slavery achieved at least two positive things for Islam. It kept the conquered peoples from populating an army with their young men and it also built up the armies of Islam because the young slaves were brought up as good little muslims. These children formed an army known as Janissaries and were a formidable army indeed.
It is too bad that our educational system does not teach these things to our children. They would enjoy the symbolism in the Hunger Games and know the truth behind the movie.
you left out the part where at the beginning the muslims took the Princes so as to islamify the royalty..
that’s what made it so easy for the Turks to take what they wanted after..
Since a Conservative agenda would have to flow out of our current notion of those values, even an SF movie would have to reflect contemporary values in this regard. A slippery slope where it becomes okay for kids to be killed would not be Conservative but Liberal. Breaking that system would be a Conservative act, as was the act that failed to break the central bureaucracy and created the conditions, if not the reaction to those conditions – the reaction is Liberal. Liberals posit solutions in the wrong places due to being out of touch with the real world – they see a world based on PC faith, not pragmatism. In that world, it is impolite to say Nepalese are not equal – therefore they are equal for the sake of the notion, which then becomes their reality. But cardboard space stations don’t take up the slack between that unreality and Mother Nature’s imperatives.
My understanding is that trust around an Ottoman Sultan was hard to come by. They would often have their brothers strangled on coming into power. The harem in Ottoman, as well as Mughal India, became popular as a political, administrative and bureaucratic institution (informally) not because of sex but because the women were in power only so long as the Sultan was, were beholden to him, and so could be trusted. Same with the Janissaries. It’s why the British used Sikhs in Africa and China.
So glad to see Poliwood is back!
I’m sorry. This is made my dumb retarded, old white men who can’t get their eyes out of America.
The Hunger Games is not a story about American politics. Its about the way we live as a human species, as a globalized economic system. “The Capital” is Europe and north North America. The outlying districts represent everybody else. The huge economic disparity is all that matters. The disregard for non-Capital life by the developed, Capital folk represents our Euro-America disregard for Africa (see: the Sudans, Azaward, Ethiopia), and Asia (see: Burma, Tibet, Kyrgistan, Syria).
You *have* to be a close-minded, American-centric individual to constantly see political drama and metaphors in places that it doesn’t exist. “OMG! The Tea Party!” The books were written before there *was* a Tea Party.
Your second sentence is an Idiot’s masterpiece, and your first is absolutely correct.
You have to be more than “close-minded”, you have to be simply insane to see The Hunger Games [a parable on the war between tyranny and freedom as much as any "1984"] as a commentary on European disregard for Ethiopia or American disregard for Kyrgyzstan.
And Suzanne Collin’s Capitol and Districts are as indebted to the American setting of her story as the IngSoc and proles of George Orwell are indebted to the British setting of his story.
Now brew yourself some Tea, and reflect a little over the huge economic disparity [say] between Shanghai and Xinjiang. It’s quite a Party over there.
I don’t like it but I think the guy has a point. He could be spot on even if we don’t like what the movie might mean… and even if it was meant as a dig on west as oppressor of the rest of the world… the author might have screwed up and been too creative… because the best real world use of rationing (food and other) to control people were the socialist countries. The USSR took out more undesirables with food ration cards than in the gulags… many many times more.
The books are pretty specific that the Capitol and Districts are North American, not a worldwide empire.
Your second sentence is an Idiot’s masterpiece, and your first is absolutely correct.
You have to be more than “close-minded”, you have to be simply insane to see The Hunger Games [a parable on the war between tyranny and freedom as much as any "1984"] as a commentary on European disregard for Ethiopia or American disregard for Kyrgyzstan.
And Suzanne Collin’s Capitol and Districts are as indebted to the American setting of her story as the IngSoc and proles of George Orwell are indebted to the British setting of his story.
Now brew yourself some Tea, and reflect a little over the huge economic disparity between [say] Shanghai and Xinjiang. That’s perhaps a Party more your style.
All countries have a centric view of the world. Go to Guatemala or Egypt and you’ll learn that. However, since the world doesn’t wear turbans or sport huipiles, but sports American freeway signs and baseball caps, our view is closer to reality.
I just thought it was interesting that as the movie was being released, the national news organizations looked and sounded so much like the inhabitants of the Capitol.
I’m not someone who sees a political message in everything, but The Hunger Games did seem to play on a lot of the cultural conflicts and stereotypes that plague Blue vs Red state relations.
“The Hunger Games is not a story about American politics…”
Neither are metaphors actually their referents. That something on the grand scale you propose shares common symbolic ground with more granular local sensibilities shouldn’t seem the least strange to you, yet you deem the prospect absurd.
It’s a film for everyman, and your view of it is writ-large version of many people’s smaller experience of helplessness against power masquerading as magnanimous beneficence.
The plutocracy’s faux noblesse oblige was a sight to behold — the nanny state supreme. You should be grateful! Rebellion shows how much your pitiful kind needs vanguards. As tribute, offer sacrifice in a purification rite; a secular Hierarch.
Lots of fodder in this film.
I think the Hunger Games author was pretty much a genius in that she wrote a book that is appealing to both boys and girls (let’s not forget it is a “young adult” story) and also to both conservatives and liberals. Lefties, even.
To me, it is a very conservative story.
It talks of self-sacrifice, seeing through bullshit, dealing with reality how it is.
I loved it.
But I know lefties and I really feel that if I was the biggest leftie in the world, I’d still love “Hunger Games”.
Conclusion: Suzanne Collins is a genius.
I think the Hunger Games movie is more or less a Rorschach test. However, I take issue with their mention of Don’t Trust the B, my new favorite sitcom. The creepy next door neighbor is not only a Democrat or some other leftist, but he is also a gov’t employee, a health inspector. So the leftist, meddlesome (arguably), goo goo type is clinically insane and is portrayed as such. I count that as a win for the Right.
I predict the next YA book to hit the big screen will be “Matched” by Ally Condi. It is a very libertarian take on the nanny state and how a society that takes away choices and decisions based on what’s best for individuals within a large society, kills the best things that people have to offer – their unique point of view and stories.
This book has a huge wait list at my library and I remember Borders pushing it hard back in the day. If this is what our youth are absorbing while entertained by the romantic side of things, we’re on the right track.
The Hunger Games rocks. so. hard. I’m grateful that my teen daughter has a heroine like Katniss to look up to.
Box Office MOJO says “Even after making over $230 million in March, The Hunger Games dominated April box office with $139.4 million. It held first place for the first two weekends before dropping down to third place for the last two frames (it even remained ahead of three out of four newcomers on its sixth weekend). The box office sensation has now made $372.7 million, which makes the highest-grossing movie so far in 2012 by a large margin.”
So it’s a success and good for them. It’s the latest “big thing”. Having read some reviews, for me it seems to be just another Hollywood fantasy movie. Rightly or wrongly include me out. I’ll never know what I missed.
Welcome back guys. There’s a whole lotta chattering going on here.
The Hunger Games: It’s about revolution and how one gets started throughout history. There’s a repressive government in charge, or a monarchy such as King George before the American revolution.
People go along for a while, playing by the rules, dying by the rules like they’re supposed. Sometimes the powers change the rules unexpectedly and people try to play by the new rules.
Then one day, someone—say two kids facing certain death playing a heavy game by the rules dictated to them—suddenly realize they want to make up their own rules, even if it’s their rules about dying their own way. They have nothing left to lose, so they both decide to take the poison pill rather than one kill the other.
Suddenly everything changes and that small decision starts an unexpected cascade of events. Of course neither kid in this movie cares anything about intentionally starting a revolution. But that’s what happens. They start a revolution because they refuse at the last minute to play and die by Big Daddy’s rules.
I haven’t read any of the books, but I’m willing to bet in the next two movies, the revolution will spread….and spread….and spread.
So to the extent revolutions are started by someone resisting repressing regimes on the left or the right, it’s a movie for all political persuasions.
But again, it’ a movie—wittingly or unwittingly—about revolution.
Hunger Games (as a movie) makes and/or reinforces several points (in no particular order): First is “Losing a rebellion is really, really bad and has consequences that last a long, long time.” Second is “All governments will tend toward tyranny.” Third is “Governments of men aren’t safe.” Fourth is “Equally rich or poor really means equally bad off.” Fifth is “Never completely trust what the media tells you.” Sixth is “Bread and circuses will quiet the mob. For a while.” Seventh is “Individual effort is important even when luck plays a part in the outcome.” Eighth is “Almost everyone loses the lottery.” Ninth is “It is bad to fail, but worse when failure is measured solely in someone else’s mind.”
No doubt those making the movie have their own politics, but the movie itself is almost anti-political, nearly into the anarchistic camp. Few of those viewing it will feel their opinions have been questioned or threatened. The movie gives only enough background to justify the action portrayed and draws no historical comparisons or parallels (though they surely exist). Only those who think on their own will walk out thinking “Thank God and the Founders for our Constitution. We need to protect it or we may live like that.”
Ron Pittenger, Heretic