What The Hunger Games Tell Us About Ourselves

Midnight last night, the next blockbuster movie series opened in theaters across the country.

The Hunger Games is a futuristic trilogy that depicts a desolate, yet believable, post-apocalyptic world in what was once North America. After a rebellion from the outlying districts, the central government of Panem works hard to keep the losing side under their thumb through acts of control and cruelty.

Most horrifying is an annual reality show featuring young people chosen from the land’s various outlying districts. Every year on Reaping Day, a boy and a girl (ages 12 to 18) from each of the 12 districts are chosen by lottery to fight to the death in a televised gladiator event. The participants are called “tributes.” Residents of the Capitol, who prevailed in the rebellion aren’t required to participate in them.

Most of the districts despise the Games because they serve as a constant reminder of their defeat in the rebellion 70 years before, and of course, it costs them two of their beloved children every year. Viewing the Hunger Games is mandatory.

The protagonist in the story is a wily 16 year old girl named Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who volunteers to take her younger sister’s place in the games.

Our family missed the Harry Potter and Twilight fads. However, this book series has mesmerized us. Despite not being much of a fiction reader, I found the story extremely compelling. I haven’t seen the movie (we’re going tonight!) although my niece attended last night’s midnight premier and loved it.

What The Hunger Games Tells Us About Us

The book series portrays the Capitol as an unmistakable cross between the ancient Roman empire and a futuristic United States.

Residents of the Capitol wear outrageous clothing and extravagant make-up. They gorge themselves at banquets and then purge so they can gorge themselves again. Their bloodlust is seemingly never satisfied, which is why they  absolutely adore the Hunger Games.

Sounds a little like us.

I don’t know a great deal about Suzanne Collins, the author, although my compadre Eugene Scott reported in an earlier blog post  that the idea for the story is the result of Collins channel surfing between a reality show and war footage late one night. She confesses, “I was really tired, and the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way.”

Some critics complain that the story lacks any religious influence or redeeming value. I disagree.

My niece made an interesting comment about her experience in the movie theater last night:

The worst part? When the audience cheered the death of a tribute…I wanted to yell at them all, to say that they were no better than the Capital[sic].

Perhaps Collins is describing what we’re becoming: a godless, bloodthirsty, reality-TV driven, consumeristic  society. What’s the fastest growing sport in America? Mixed Martial Arts fighting. Viewers can’t can’t get enough of the bloody brawls. Reality TV seems to be driving the media. And all the while, we become increasingly narcissistic.

Ironically, the Lenten theme at our church is entitled “Hungry?” All of us are hungry. To satisfy it, we often reach for anything sensational,  titillating, and adrenaline-producing. Yet we can never get enough. Ultimately, the logical end of our futile pursuits brings us to the destruction of our souls.

Jesus, on the other, offers something that does satisfy. Himself.

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

Michael co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, Colorado with Eugene Scott. If you don’t have plans for Palm Sunday (April 1) or Easter (April 8), and you live in the Denver area, please join us at The Neighborhood Church.

Is Black Friday our Non-fiction “Hunger Games”?

By Eugene C. Scott

The recent near riots on “Black Friday” prove once again truth is at least as twisted as fiction.

In her Young Adult novel “The Hunger Games,” Suzanne Collins invented a science fiction world in which television is used to manipulate and control people (Far fetched, I know). Through fiction, Collins explores the power and danger of a self-serving media in control of information.

Panem is a country where the wealthy province called the Capitol rules the other eleven districts through media promoted fear and manipulation. The height of this manipulation are the yearly nationally televised “Hunger Games.” These Games are simultaneously revered, hated, loved, and feared by the population of Panem. The Games consist of the ruling elite choosing one 12-18 year-old boy and girl from each district who must then enter a fantastic, futuristic arena created by the Capitol and there fight to the death. The sole survivor is then further manipulated for the Capitol’s purposes. Omniscient TV cameras promote and exploit every bloody detail and death of the Games.

In a previous blog I asked the question, “What if ‘The Hunger Games’ Were True?” The media hype before Black Friday and the simultaneous delight and shock over people trampling, pummeling, and pepper spraying each other during Black Friday suggests in an eerie way they are.

Lest you think I’m overreacting, notice how the media promotes the Black Friday shopping frenzy and then in the name of ratings run clip after clip of the hysteria they helped cause. These alarming newscasts are then surrounded by commercials for the very products we have been sent out to beat each other up to purchase. Worse yet, during Christmas most news hours will contain one story–or more–decrying the state of our economy and not so subtle pleas for us to save the economy by buying more. Again, this “news” story will be sponsored by products we can’t live without. Try sitting  down in front of your TV this Christmas season and count how many “news” stories are really nothing more than commercials.

Our media may be more subtle and less overtly evil than in Panem. Yet, Collins says she got the idea for “The Hunger Games” in part from TV. She was channel surfing between a reality show and war footage late one night. She says, “I was really tired, and the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way.”

Blurred and unsettling indeed. And our blurring of reality is destructive in more ways than people punching each other over “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.”

Our free fall into rampant consumerism is not just the fault of the media, however. Most often we are willingly duped. We want to need the latest 60 inch flat screen iPod. At its core Collins’ “Hunger Games” is about complacency, about uncritically believing what you see and hear on TV, what those in control of information tell you. We have been told and many (most?) have come to believe we are defined by what we purchase. And we need to buy these things that define us on Black Friday, or at least before Christmas.

It’s ironic that we have transformed Christmas–of all holidays–into the main engine behind this consumerist lie. Because the truth of Christmas is the death knell to consumerism. The truth of Christmas is that God came to be among us, born as a naked baby who owned nothing and yet had everything to give. And God did this not because of our purchasing power. But because in our need–products can’t fill–God still loved us.

Collins’ novel does not point to this ultimate truth. But it certainly pushes us to strive for more than the game we are being sold on the big screen.

Last year Eugene C. Scott bought himself a really expensive Christmas present. It was cool but did not satisfy or define him. This year he will happily settle for much less. Eugene pastors the Neighborhood Church which is preparing for Christmas through an Advent series called “The Gift of Christmas Presence.”