While the Hunger Games is a large exaggeration of any society, the similarities it bears to ours can be unsettling. Granted, we live in a much safer world. Instead of being killed, all children are schooled, fed, and even given extras like field trips and toys. That said, much of the dystopian world created by Suzanne Collins was inspired by our own, and some have even ventured to say we are already living in a dystopia. With our fixation on tragedy, our obsessions with celebrities, and our love of violence on television, some could see our peaceful society as backwards.
Whether it be our disconnect from other countries, our freakish fashion choices, or our worship of celebrities and modern sports, our world may be closer to Panem than we realized.
One of the more obvious similarities is thankfully one of the more harmless. It’s easy to look at a citizen of the Capitol, and find their clothes and fads ridiculous. However, as we evolve our own fashion, and explore clothes which are more avante garde, our tastes actually become closer to that of somebody like Effie. Many of us would happily sport her bubblegum pink hair; people straighten or curl their hair, filling it with sprays to make it unnaturally large in comparison with the head.
For those who keep up with the fashion world, the clothes are becoming ever more eccentric. Patterns are being mixed together. Neon colours are coming back in. Gender is being removed from clothes, so that anyone can sport a glittering ensemble of colours and ruffles.
The most terrifying aspect of our fashion evolution, though, is not the clothes or the hair, but the body modifications people can undergo. In Panem, the citizens of the Capitol dye their skin, and have surgery to make themselves resemble cats; some goes as far as to have tails, whiskers, and claws added to their bodies. In real life, talk of similar attachments are in the works: people are talking about having wings, horns, and more fused to their chests. One woman tattooed her eyeballs so that they would be purple, to disastrous results. Yet another woman already seems to be emulating the character of Tigris, having tattooed her entire face to look like a cat.
While the infamous cat lady is an outlier, more people are considering body altering surgeries to make themselves appear more otherworldly or animalistic. As the fashion industry looks into creating clothes to accommodate such trends, we grow closer to resembling the bizarre citizens of the Capitol. A quick glance at our films shows we love abnormal looking characters, with characters who are green or blue being especially popular. In one hundred years, there’s a good possibility many will be dyeing their skin green so they can look like Gamora, or having whiskers added to their face to embrace their inner cat.
2) First World Problems VS Third World Problems
Readers of the Hunger Games are often unsettled by the disconnect between the Capitol’s residents and those of the other districts. We tend to align ourselves with Katniss, and to share in her revulsion when she sees the decadence of the Capitol. Unfortunately, our society, when compared with many other countries around the globe, is every bit as decadent.
In other third world nations, orphaned children starve, kids are made to hide while bombs are dropped around them, diseases ravage villages, citizens work for pennies to access terrible food, and water is a luxury. In first world countries, meanwhile, we complain when something is forgotten from our orders. We bombard forums to bemoan a glitch in our video games. We tear our hair out because our favourite celebrity made a bad joke. We throw fits if we have to wash dishes. We complain because that snazzy dress doesn’t come in our size, involving the manager if we have to. While a family struggles to survive elsewhere in the world, we worry if Starbucks will add that extra whipping cream to our fancy beverage, or if our Amazon order will arrive soon.
While we would like to think we’re more aware of global issues, it’s all too easy for us to acknowledge how horrible they are…before returning to our idyllic lives. Once we’ve had our fill of genocide in the news, we return to dyeing our hair pink, ordering food at the press of a button, and eating an excess of sugary foods (which some, like the Capitol party goers, will even regurgitate later, before continuing to stuff their faces).
The reason the Capitol makes us uncomfortable might not be because of our pity for the districts, but because the excess displayed casts a mirror on us.
3) Nuclear War
If our relative comfort in comparison with the rest of the world wasn’t an unsettling enough parallel, the existence of nuclear bombs is enough to keep anyone up at night. In the Hunger Games, District 13 is in charge of manufacturing weapons. Even when they defect, the Capitol finds other ways to develop bombs—which they eventually drop on District 12, destroying not only Katniss’s home but many of the neighbours she grew up with.
The scene where Katniss returns to her home after the bombing is a harrowing one. Ash litters the ground. Buildings are blackened shells. Worse, bones coat the streets—as Katniss steps over them, she has to wonder who was who. Is this skeleton over here all that remains of an old teacher? Is this one a child her mother treated? Could this body be somebody she cared about?
Many books highlight the horrors of war, and of weapons of mass destruction, but the remains of District 12 create an image which stays with us. The people killed were innocents, loved by their families. There was no escaping their fate; with little warning, their whole world was suddenly gone, their lives ended.
In real life, we have cities like District 12, full of empty buildings, ruins, rooms still set as if a family were about to have lunch, and remains which point to people but which are too obscure to reveal who these individuals were. Bombs are, and have been, dropped on civilian cities. The war displayed in The Hunger Games is terrifying, because we’re already there. In fact, some of the weapons which exist in our modern world might actually be worse than those used in the books—the bombs dropped on District 12 would be considered tiny next to some we have since developed.
4) Oppressive Governments
With war comes your standard oppressive government. We all complain about our governments: we cite taxes as being too high, mistrust our leaders for withholding information, and criticize them for poor decisions. Despite our complaints, we have it relatively amazing in comparison to other governments. Other countries aren’t mentioned in The Hunger Games, but it’s not a stretch to a) suppose they exist and b) suppose they are comparatively better to their citizens than the Capitol is to its people. If there are other countries, people like Katniss wouldn’t hear about them, or be given access to them; instead, she, along with everybody else, would be kept in a bubble, exposed only to her own country, her own district. This would keep more people from rebelling, and as they are sucked deeper into that bubble brainwashing becomes easier.
The country Katniss lives in seems exaggerated, until you look at certain countries on our own globe. There are a handful which not only encourage war, but which repress their citizens to a degree which make District 12 look like a pleasant locale. Children are forced into work camps. Everyone is literally starving to death, while being force fed colourful propaganda. The citizens, in addition to having neither rights or food, are also cut off from the rest of the world—they are denied global internet access, so that they remain within the bubble of their oppression. Even when people escape from such countries, they struggle to let go of the lies which have been ingrained in them; even safe, some continue to believe them.
Katniss’s world is a scary one, but it’s only mirroring countries which exist in real life. The struggles she faces are faced by real people. The suffering she endures, whether it be that of shell shock or famine, are real. The fact that children are targeted in Panem is also a sad reality in our own world—in oppressive countries, children are punished as much, if not more, than adults. Whole families are killed if one member angers the government, and children are not exempt from being enslaved or executed when the government wants to prove a point.
5) Reality Television & Celebrity Culture
While war and oppression are heavy comparisons, the next topic on this list can be garish in it’s own way. After showing the horrors of poverty in a dictatorship, the books dive into the hideous underbelly of celebrity culture. The Hunger Games books parody our obsession with figures like Kim Kardashian or Kanye West.
Before the actual Hunger Games begin, the tributes are molded into celebrity figures. They are dressed to impress, given television interviews with known hosts, and tasked with building the fan bases which will keep them alive throughout the Games. When tributes become victors, they become celebrities in the truest sense: they attain great fame, amass wealth, and come away with a following. As celebrities, though, their private lives are gone—they are required to attend interviews, impress fans, and put on the charm (along with their latest outfit). Fans of Katniss even start emulating her, putting their hair in braids and sporting the colours and symbol of the mocking jay in their wardrobe choices.
In our modern world, we have talk shows, interviews, and trends. We try to emulate the celebrities we admire by adopting their hairstyles and outfits. We pour over their lives, literally following them into their homes to revel in their dramas and gossip about who is dating who. Gossip magazines delve into how star struck a starlet is—a trend which is explored when “fans” of Katniss and Peeta obsess over their steamy romance.
After struggling through poverty, Katniss’s life as a celebrity isn’t easy either. While our own celebrities usually have more choice than Katniss to even become celebrities, they still pay the same price. As a celebrity, your every action is scrutinized. You’re expected to make public appearances, and to only show your happy side as you do so. You have to play to the cameras, dress in uncomfortable but flashy outfits, and mind every word you say. Katniss mourns the loss of her private life, but her family is dragged into the limelight with her.
Celebrities in our world are hounded by paparazzi, obsessed over, and splashed over magazines which are all too happy to smear their names to sell themselves. Their spouses and children are also slapped on the covers of such magazines, and denied privacy. We’ve heard the horror stories of helicopters shining lights into a celebrity’s window to catch a picture, or of famous figures even being killed when trying to avoid the camera deluge. The intrusiveness Katniss contends with is all too real for popular people in our own society, and the glamour—the Caesar Flickerman interviews, the minutiae of the tribute’s hobbies and lives, and the latest outfits being worn by the victors—is ever present in our celebrity obsessed world.
6) Competition Shows
With our love of celebrities comes a love of competition shows. While the Hunger Games is altogether darker than the Olympics or Project Runway, the same structures are in place. Tributes, the professional athletes of their world, are given extensive media coverage around not only their “sport,” but, if popular enough, their personal lives. Like our own athletes, the tributes also earn sponsors which improve their chances of winning.
The tributes are often lined up before everyone, after a memorable introduction, in a way that’s not unlike Project Runway or Inkmasters. In such shows, each person, along with their talents and quirks, is introduced. Afterwards, the competition begins and the competitors are eliminated one by one—those who remain, especially the winner, can attain a certain level of fame and admiration from fans. The major difference between these shows and the Hunger Games, of course, is that the losers aren’t killed—they simply leave the show.
Reality competition shows also run for multiple seasons, with a single winner emerging from each. In some cases, after a show has amassed enough winners, these winners are then called back to compete with each other. When looking at the Hunger Games, each of the Games, especially as they appear on television, could be treated as seasons. A winner emerges, and everyone has their personal favourites among them. Unfortunately, the Hunger Games is a popular show, with seventy plus seasons. Like our popular reality shows, it also has a season lined up just for previous winners.
The way the books parody our sports coverage and the dramatics of the reality competition show are brilliant—instead of making the Games seem more ridiculous, the introduction of our reality culture makes them more believable. It’s not hard to see something like the Hunger Games happening in the wrong society.
In Conclusion
The Hunger Games can be a dark series, especially when you consider that it was marketed towards teens. Reading it as an adult, however, one begins to pick up on the deeper parallels the story draws to our world. The ignorance and excess of the Capitol, the horrors of war and poverty, and the ridiculous obsession with celebrities and imagery, are all elements we can relate to.
The books might exaggerate the tendencies of our society, and the world we live in, but not by much. The more you read them, and the more you look at the world, the more you realize the similarities aren’t really exaggerated at all. The true terror of The Hunger Games isn’t in the Games themselves, but in how we’re already becoming a world where they could happen. Our inward shudder as we read the books comes from our fear that we are reading about not just our futures, but our current realities.
What similarities have you noticed between Panem and our world? Could you see any of this happening in real life? Let me know!
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6 Ways the Hunger Games Parallels Our World
Published by rnblundell on
While the Hunger Games is a large exaggeration of any society, the similarities it bears to ours can be unsettling. Granted, we live in a much safer world. Instead of being killed, all children are schooled, fed, and even given extras like field trips and toys. That said, much of the dystopian world created by Suzanne Collins was inspired by our own, and some have even ventured to say we are already living in a dystopia. With our fixation on tragedy, our obsessions with celebrities, and our love of violence on television, some could see our peaceful society as backwards.
Whether it be our disconnect from other countries, our freakish fashion choices, or our worship of celebrities and modern sports, our world may be closer to Panem than we realized.
Video version available:
https://youtu.be/PCK9WMMzDDk
1) Exaggerated Fashions
One of the more obvious similarities is thankfully one of the more harmless. It’s easy to look at a citizen of the Capitol, and find their clothes and fads ridiculous. However, as we evolve our own fashion, and explore clothes which are more avante garde, our tastes actually become closer to that of somebody like Effie. Many of us would happily sport her bubblegum pink hair; people straighten or curl their hair, filling it with sprays to make it unnaturally large in comparison with the head.
For those who keep up with the fashion world, the clothes are becoming ever more eccentric. Patterns are being mixed together. Neon colours are coming back in. Gender is being removed from clothes, so that anyone can sport a glittering ensemble of colours and ruffles.
The most terrifying aspect of our fashion evolution, though, is not the clothes or the hair, but the body modifications people can undergo. In Panem, the citizens of the Capitol dye their skin, and have surgery to make themselves resemble cats; some goes as far as to have tails, whiskers, and claws added to their bodies. In real life, talk of similar attachments are in the works: people are talking about having wings, horns, and more fused to their chests. One woman tattooed her eyeballs so that they would be purple, to disastrous results. Yet another woman already seems to be emulating the character of Tigris, having tattooed her entire face to look like a cat.
While the infamous cat lady is an outlier, more people are considering body altering surgeries to make themselves appear more otherworldly or animalistic. As the fashion industry looks into creating clothes to accommodate such trends, we grow closer to resembling the bizarre citizens of the Capitol. A quick glance at our films shows we love abnormal looking characters, with characters who are green or blue being especially popular. In one hundred years, there’s a good possibility many will be dyeing their skin green so they can look like Gamora, or having whiskers added to their face to embrace their inner cat.
2) First World Problems VS Third World Problems
Readers of the Hunger Games are often unsettled by the disconnect between the Capitol’s residents and those of the other districts. We tend to align ourselves with Katniss, and to share in her revulsion when she sees the decadence of the Capitol. Unfortunately, our society, when compared with many other countries around the globe, is every bit as decadent.
In other third world nations, orphaned children starve, kids are made to hide while bombs are dropped around them, diseases ravage villages, citizens work for pennies to access terrible food, and water is a luxury. In first world countries, meanwhile, we complain when something is forgotten from our orders. We bombard forums to bemoan a glitch in our video games. We tear our hair out because our favourite celebrity made a bad joke. We throw fits if we have to wash dishes. We complain because that snazzy dress doesn’t come in our size, involving the manager if we have to. While a family struggles to survive elsewhere in the world, we worry if Starbucks will add that extra whipping cream to our fancy beverage, or if our Amazon order will arrive soon.
While we would like to think we’re more aware of global issues, it’s all too easy for us to acknowledge how horrible they are…before returning to our idyllic lives. Once we’ve had our fill of genocide in the news, we return to dyeing our hair pink, ordering food at the press of a button, and eating an excess of sugary foods (which some, like the Capitol party goers, will even regurgitate later, before continuing to stuff their faces).
The reason the Capitol makes us uncomfortable might not be because of our pity for the districts, but because the excess displayed casts a mirror on us.
3) Nuclear War
If our relative comfort in comparison with the rest of the world wasn’t an unsettling enough parallel, the existence of nuclear bombs is enough to keep anyone up at night. In the Hunger Games, District 13 is in charge of manufacturing weapons. Even when they defect, the Capitol finds other ways to develop bombs—which they eventually drop on District 12, destroying not only Katniss’s home but many of the neighbours she grew up with.
The scene where Katniss returns to her home after the bombing is a harrowing one. Ash litters the ground. Buildings are blackened shells. Worse, bones coat the streets—as Katniss steps over them, she has to wonder who was who. Is this skeleton over here all that remains of an old teacher? Is this one a child her mother treated? Could this body be somebody she cared about?
Many books highlight the horrors of war, and of weapons of mass destruction, but the remains of District 12 create an image which stays with us. The people killed were innocents, loved by their families. There was no escaping their fate; with little warning, their whole world was suddenly gone, their lives ended.
In real life, we have cities like District 12, full of empty buildings, ruins, rooms still set as if a family were about to have lunch, and remains which point to people but which are too obscure to reveal who these individuals were. Bombs are, and have been, dropped on civilian cities. The war displayed in The Hunger Games is terrifying, because we’re already there. In fact, some of the weapons which exist in our modern world might actually be worse than those used in the books—the bombs dropped on District 12 would be considered tiny next to some we have since developed.
4) Oppressive Governments
With war comes your standard oppressive government. We all complain about our governments: we cite taxes as being too high, mistrust our leaders for withholding information, and criticize them for poor decisions. Despite our complaints, we have it relatively amazing in comparison to other governments. Other countries aren’t mentioned in The Hunger Games, but it’s not a stretch to a) suppose they exist and b) suppose they are comparatively better to their citizens than the Capitol is to its people. If there are other countries, people like Katniss wouldn’t hear about them, or be given access to them; instead, she, along with everybody else, would be kept in a bubble, exposed only to her own country, her own district. This would keep more people from rebelling, and as they are sucked deeper into that bubble brainwashing becomes easier.
The country Katniss lives in seems exaggerated, until you look at certain countries on our own globe. There are a handful which not only encourage war, but which repress their citizens to a degree which make District 12 look like a pleasant locale. Children are forced into work camps. Everyone is literally starving to death, while being force fed colourful propaganda. The citizens, in addition to having neither rights or food, are also cut off from the rest of the world—they are denied global internet access, so that they remain within the bubble of their oppression. Even when people escape from such countries, they struggle to let go of the lies which have been ingrained in them; even safe, some continue to believe them.
Katniss’s world is a scary one, but it’s only mirroring countries which exist in real life. The struggles she faces are faced by real people. The suffering she endures, whether it be that of shell shock or famine, are real. The fact that children are targeted in Panem is also a sad reality in our own world—in oppressive countries, children are punished as much, if not more, than adults. Whole families are killed if one member angers the government, and children are not exempt from being enslaved or executed when the government wants to prove a point.
5) Reality Television & Celebrity Culture
While war and oppression are heavy comparisons, the next topic on this list can be garish in it’s own way. After showing the horrors of poverty in a dictatorship, the books dive into the hideous underbelly of celebrity culture. The Hunger Games books parody our obsession with figures like Kim Kardashian or Kanye West.
Before the actual Hunger Games begin, the tributes are molded into celebrity figures. They are dressed to impress, given television interviews with known hosts, and tasked with building the fan bases which will keep them alive throughout the Games. When tributes become victors, they become celebrities in the truest sense: they attain great fame, amass wealth, and come away with a following. As celebrities, though, their private lives are gone—they are required to attend interviews, impress fans, and put on the charm (along with their latest outfit). Fans of Katniss even start emulating her, putting their hair in braids and sporting the colours and symbol of the mocking jay in their wardrobe choices.
In our modern world, we have talk shows, interviews, and trends. We try to emulate the celebrities we admire by adopting their hairstyles and outfits. We pour over their lives, literally following them into their homes to revel in their dramas and gossip about who is dating who. Gossip magazines delve into how star struck a starlet is—a trend which is explored when “fans” of Katniss and Peeta obsess over their steamy romance.
After struggling through poverty, Katniss’s life as a celebrity isn’t easy either. While our own celebrities usually have more choice than Katniss to even become celebrities, they still pay the same price. As a celebrity, your every action is scrutinized. You’re expected to make public appearances, and to only show your happy side as you do so. You have to play to the cameras, dress in uncomfortable but flashy outfits, and mind every word you say. Katniss mourns the loss of her private life, but her family is dragged into the limelight with her.
Celebrities in our world are hounded by paparazzi, obsessed over, and splashed over magazines which are all too happy to smear their names to sell themselves. Their spouses and children are also slapped on the covers of such magazines, and denied privacy. We’ve heard the horror stories of helicopters shining lights into a celebrity’s window to catch a picture, or of famous figures even being killed when trying to avoid the camera deluge. The intrusiveness Katniss contends with is all too real for popular people in our own society, and the glamour—the Caesar Flickerman interviews, the minutiae of the tribute’s hobbies and lives, and the latest outfits being worn by the victors—is ever present in our celebrity obsessed world.
6) Competition Shows
With our love of celebrities comes a love of competition shows. While the Hunger Games is altogether darker than the Olympics or Project Runway, the same structures are in place. Tributes, the professional athletes of their world, are given extensive media coverage around not only their “sport,” but, if popular enough, their personal lives. Like our own athletes, the tributes also earn sponsors which improve their chances of winning.
The tributes are often lined up before everyone, after a memorable introduction, in a way that’s not unlike Project Runway or Inkmasters. In such shows, each person, along with their talents and quirks, is introduced. Afterwards, the competition begins and the competitors are eliminated one by one—those who remain, especially the winner, can attain a certain level of fame and admiration from fans. The major difference between these shows and the Hunger Games, of course, is that the losers aren’t killed—they simply leave the show.
Reality competition shows also run for multiple seasons, with a single winner emerging from each. In some cases, after a show has amassed enough winners, these winners are then called back to compete with each other. When looking at the Hunger Games, each of the Games, especially as they appear on television, could be treated as seasons. A winner emerges, and everyone has their personal favourites among them. Unfortunately, the Hunger Games is a popular show, with seventy plus seasons. Like our popular reality shows, it also has a season lined up just for previous winners.
The way the books parody our sports coverage and the dramatics of the reality competition show are brilliant—instead of making the Games seem more ridiculous, the introduction of our reality culture makes them more believable. It’s not hard to see something like the Hunger Games happening in the wrong society.
In Conclusion
The Hunger Games can be a dark series, especially when you consider that it was marketed towards teens. Reading it as an adult, however, one begins to pick up on the deeper parallels the story draws to our world. The ignorance and excess of the Capitol, the horrors of war and poverty, and the ridiculous obsession with celebrities and imagery, are all elements we can relate to.
The books might exaggerate the tendencies of our society, and the world we live in, but not by much. The more you read them, and the more you look at the world, the more you realize the similarities aren’t really exaggerated at all. The true terror of The Hunger Games isn’t in the Games themselves, but in how we’re already becoming a world where they could happen. Our inward shudder as we read the books comes from our fear that we are reading about not just our futures, but our current realities.
What similarities have you noticed between Panem and our world? Could you see any of this happening in real life? Let me know!
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