Violence In the Media Reaches its Apex

The Hunger Games

Directed by Gary Ross

Two Stars

I have not read Suzanne Collins’ young adult book series, “The Hunger Games”. Occasionally a film adaptation comes along that demands this information up front from its critics. But the multiple failings of director Gary Ross’s effort are not uniformly cinematic. They begin at the basest levels of the narrative, and indeed the central premise of the film was a pill I simply could not swallow.

“The Hunger Games” takes place in a rather ambiguous future. A capital populated by a class of media elite with neon hair and twelve outlying districts of varying degrees of poverty. We are told early that long ago these twelve districts dissented against the capital, were defeated and, in remembrance of this failed mutiny, are now subject to an annual lottery in which one boy and one girl from each district are selected to compete in the “Hunger Games”, a gladiator-style reality television extravaganza whereupon these 24 “tributes”, ages 12-18, fight to death in an expansive outdoor arena.

In the twelfth (and most impoverished) district, the twelve year old Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields) is drawn for the girls. Her stoic older sister Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers in her stead, an unprecedented moment for the beleaguered district. Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) is selected for the boys, while Katniss’ hunky crush Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) survives the lottery, in spite of having his name in the pot nearly fifty times for various petty crimes.

Katniss and Peeta are taken to the capital where, alongside the other 22 tributes, they are pranced about in a narcissistic display for an aristocracy that doesn’t seem to do anything besides swoon over their beloved human sacrifices, dolling them up in outrages outfits, parading them through what is apparently the only late night talk show in town, and bringing civilized society to a screeching halt for days while they all gather around projection screens with giddy delight to watch them slaughter each other.

Where to begin? It is a brutal display, and one that is criminally flippant about human history, but more on that later. Is this intended perhaps as a commentary on the vicarious masochism of reality television? If it is, it is not only shallow but late to the party. The film doesn’t do itself any favors by suggesting that these people have nothing else to watch. There appears to be only a single state television channel, and that channel devotes the whole of its programming to the Hunger Games. If it is intended to illuminate violence in the media, Ross has shot himself in the foot by presenting teenagers murdering one another in hand to hand combat with PG-13 violence.

And where is the moral center here? Where is the pressure from the international community to put a stop to such behavior? And are we simply supposed to believe that such a ritual could continue unabated for 74 years without any sort of organized movement against it? I’ve heard comparisons of this tale to Lord of the Flies, which I presume alludes to the factions that emerge amongst the tributes once the games have started, but in premise and political theory, I think it owes more to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” or Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Orwell’s novel was first released in 1949, four years after the death of Adolf Hitler whose Shoah was similar to the central setup of “The Hunger Games”, in that a resented minority is subjected to the most inhuman atrocities while an entire nation falls in line behind those responsible, or are otherwise unwilling to mobilize against it.

If there is one thing the Holocaust ensured, it is that such a thing as the Holocaust will never happen again, that the human species will never allow such an egregious repetition. Either “The Hunger Games” expects us to believe that the developed world would tolerate this kind of totalitarian genocide twice, or it exists in an alternate world where such things never happened before. If that’s the case then what’s the point? Fascism is alive and well in the Middle East, but only in fanatic theocracies that have stifled their own human progress and will never produce the kind of technology or economic value that make such income inequality as this possible.

I don’t mean to over-evaluate such a menial pop entertainment, but the film’s relentless self-seriousness kept floundering its political shortcomings about in plain sight, and certainly the ending suggests that subsequent installments of the series intend to get very political indeed. But if the allegorical failings of “The Hunger Games” are illegitimate, its multiple cinematic failings certainly aren’t.

Director Gary Ross has an inexplicable aversion to establishing shots. His spastic camera is not only never still enough to appreciate an image, but only occasionally in focus, racing through space with a rack focus that doesn’t so much guide the eye as short-circuit it. One gets the sense when watching the film that the chintzy romance between the wholly incompatible Katniss and Peeta was not as prominent in the books, which is one of several moments in this film that suggest Hollywood’s condescending doubt in the public’s capacity to understand a story’s literary ambitions.

I’m hard pressed to provide a single redeeming quality for “The Hunger Games”, and yet I can’t bring myself to call it a failure. The film has an energy to it, and at its core is Jennifer Lawrence, who is always mesmerizing, even if she seldom has much to do. The target audience of the books will probably leave satisfied, but I couldn’t stop doubting the possibility of this scenario, and the film did little, if anything, to abate those insecurities.