a small hunger games rant, feel free to ignore
Okay, I love the series. I got started when I read the first one for a Youth Literature class, and got hooked. I don’t plan on seeing the movie (because I’m a weak person who can read all kinds of blood and death stuff but I can’t stand actually seeing it), but I’m extremely happy it got made, and I think everything that’s been done with it has been the right choice. But of course I wouldn’t be ranting if I was happy, now was I?
I was checking out some articles in the news today, and came across this ( http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hunger-games-politics-jennifer-lawrence-303601 ) , which discusses why certain political groups like the film. Surprisingly, it’s a hit on both ends. (Though I’m sure Fox news will find some link to socialism and nazis in there somewhere.) I was nodding along and enjoying it, until…
Writing for the Frederick Douglass Foundation, Mack Rights argues that there’s not only a powerful conservative message in Hunger Games but a Christian one, as well, since the story takes place after “liberals have succeeded in erasing God and Christ from the culture completely by successfully creating their own utopia - which is really a dystopian nightmare for anyone not in the liberal ruling class.”
NO. YOU STOP RIGHT THERE. Now let me make something else clear before I go crazy capslock any further - I am an atheist. If you believe in something, I just nod along and wish you all the best, because I have no right to bash there. I believe that in the right hands, religion can sometimes do good. (Charity, bringing a sense of self worth, etc) However, the Hunger Games does not have a single drip of religion in it. No prayers, no holy books, nothing from the poor, rich, or middle to indicate they worship anything but their own greed and power. They never mention when they stopped believing, and when the end of the series takes a look at the future of their world, they still aren’t. And you know what? To me…
THAT’S AWESOME. Our characters have nothing to rely on - and nothing to blame on - but themselves. These books bring us to our most human instincts. Katniss finds strength within herself, and she fights for her family. Peeta strives onward for the one he loves. President Snow is a manipulative beast who gets power by maintaining fear and hope in the best balance. No character feels inclined to ask for the help of a higher power, they know they are on their own, and they come out better for it. When people do good, they don’t do it because a holy book or celestial being told them to, they do it because they already know it is the right thing to do. Humans have all kinds of capacity when the times call for it.
And yet Mack here feels the nightmare that is their world was created because ungodly liberals erased religion. Again, nowhere in the book has it said that this was the cause. It doesn’t say what happened to Christianity and the other branches, and I can admit it’s an interesting line of questioning. However, it has absolutely nothing with how the world of Hunger Games, how Panem, came to be. People in power seized control of a world that was crumbling in on itself due to global warming, wars, and extreme poverty. Does Mack honestly think that if religion was involved, that this world wouldn’t have existed, and everyone would have better off? I offer this counter-argument.
Panem would be an even more horrible place to live in. All terrible actions would be taken as being ‘acts of god’, ‘acts of the just’, and people wouldn’t fight strength to rise up against it, because it would be against god’s will. People’s hopes would be crushed under the weight of ‘well if God put me here, who am I to stop it?’ Prayers would be unanswered as they saw their children die in the Games, and be taught that ‘well you didn’t believe enough, it’s your fault your child is dead, not the fault of the government that chose your child.’ Don’t believe me? Take a walk outside, turn on the news! How many shootings do lunatics cry out was in the name of their lord? Why is the abortion debate still a debate? How many kids are kicked out into the street because they ‘chose’ homosexuality? In our legal system, we have to swear under God, and to swear in our president, he has to put a hand on a bible! Religion has us already by the stranglehold, and Panem doesn’t need any more hands around its neck!
So Mack, and anyone who thinks like him, needs to stop trying to shove a message where there wasn’t any. How desperate do you have to be to try and find a lesson about religious mortality in a series were religion doesn’t exist? I enjoyed this serious for many reasons, and the lack of religion was one of them. We had nothing to rely on and depend on but our characters and their strength and resolve, and at no point did they find God or need a passage from the bible to inspire them. Everyone was just human, pure and simple. I think that’s all I needed to say.
Happy Hunger Games.