A Colorful Dystopia: Review of *The Hunger Games*

Last night a whim took my sister-in-law, wife, and I to see The Hunger Games. 

I hadn't read the book. I didn't know anything about it, other than that it was a movie based on a novel about a dystopic future. A gallon of soda and a bucket of popcorn later, I am happy to have seen it and am eager to read the novel.

Let me be clear: there are elements of the story and plot that I might criticize. For example, I couldn't help but dwell on the obvious structural crisis that pervades the narrative: the protagonist, in order to be the hero, must refrain from killing sympathetic characters in a battle where only one person survives; thus, though an corollary narrative logic, any sympathetic characters have to die unfortunately, on accident, or murdered by one of the bad guys. This seemed a little forced to me.

But what did I expect? Should the protagonist have taken out a sympathetic character? The audience would have had a very different, vexed relationship with her then.

Anyhow, with that aside, this was a really, really interesting movie.

Of primary interest to me was the setting. This dystopic future was so intriguing, visually and conceptually. Visually it was intriguing because you had such intense contrasts in terms of the many layers of society: the rural and naturally simplistic district 12 that suggested an idyllic, Appalachian village in early America; the urban, cosmopolitan, technological, and decadent Capital where all the folks were dressed in crazy colors.

This visual contrast suggested a conceptual one: you see the late post-industrial civilization at every level, from the rustic base of production upward and trough the highest level of society, the decadent and perverse aristocrats. Thus, the film encapsulates a "totalizing" impulse: in the manner of a secondary world fantasy, it wants to "map" a complete society.

Another issue. I was really intrigued by the relationship between the female protagonist and the male protagonist. I read a lot of pulp adventure, and always, always there are scenes where the huge-thewed male hero rescues the scantily clad female "prize-wife" from trouble, who then lolls like a rag doll in his arms, all hair and limbs, as he bumps along and slays with sword and gun.

Here--this did not happen. The main protagonist was the female; the person who needed her help and protection was the male. I know this is not so unique these days; it is, however, exciting to see this narrative structure exhibited in a mainstream Hollywood film. That's worth something.

The last thing I want to note was the image of technology in this film. Technology was presented as being so very powerful in this film, almost to the level of magic; and yet--(and here it where things get weird and interesting)--the technology presented didn't seem to me to be very implausible. All of the over-the-top technology--even the arena where the distinction between the natural and the virtual collapses--didn't feel to me to deviate from a "reality principle" too very much. What does that say about me?