There is indeed a lot to consider in these films, and lately I feel like doing character write-ups.
Deep down, we tend to value strength, defined as the capability and willingness to use force. By these standards, the Morphlings are considered cowards. Since our value system is not so much different from Panem's, most of us probably think they're cowards too. That was my initial conclusion even. They hid, and did not engage anyone in battle to win.
Other tributes are not the only dangers on the Hunger Games. Game-masters create adversities, such as extreme cold, computer generated creatures that have actual substance, the poisonous or otherwise dangerous fog, rain, insects, birds, and etc. The Morphlings are bit parts, but so are the all the tributes in the alliance called The Careers, and people seem (perhaps unhealthily?) interested in them.
Both of the Morphlings in Catching Fire won their first times in the Hunger Games by hiding until all the other tributes died.
Remember, these were children that were yanked from their families and friends and sent to battle for no reason. The Morphlings managed to protect themselves and stay hidden, always dodging the game-master's hellish creations, while the others killed each other. Eventually, they must have evaded the last actually-fighting tribute(s) until an element created by the game-masters eliminated them. After surviving the Hunger Games, they both became drug addicts. I wonder if winning by means not really respected by the society they lived in fed in to that? Winning the Hunger Games supposedly brought "pride to your district." How proud would their district have been of these two, really? The culture of The Hunger Games' Panem ran on violence and subjugation, it was part of life for about everybody.
In this situation, doesn't choosing not to fight equal defiance? How is that not rebellion? In a society that values force, and runs on force, doesn't winning non-violently say something? When you have been thrown into a sort of cage and ordered by the powers that be to fight and kill until only one is left standing, how is not fighting anything other than counter-culture? Katniss did not want to fight anyone either, she only killed in self-defense when she was being attacked, or out of mercy when Cato was dying very painfully.
Are they really cowards? Well, let's see. The female Morphling was hiding in the trees, camouflaged, when the computer-generated killer monkeys cornered Peeta. She jumped out of her hiding place which happened to be behind where Peeta was, and got right in the way of the vicious beasts. She had no weapons, no way to fight back. She was instantly attacked and savagely had her throat torn into by the game-masters' creatures. It is not fully clear from the film alone whether she acted out of supportt for the rebellion or not, but she may have. In a very touching scene that reveals Peeta's gentleness, she is carried out to the safety of the waters to see the sunset, and passes away in comparative peace, mesmerized by the artificial but realistic sunset. Peeta said, "She sacrificed herself for me and I didn't even know her name."
Was this Morphling a coward? I think not.
The Lesson: Again, we think too much like Panem. Too much emphasis on brutality and combat-worthiness-type of stuff. Too much judgment of people.
The Morphlings may have been hiding from their feelings in substances, which was indeed cowardly. However, that doesn't mean that "coward" is all they were, or were capable of. Strength is not only measured in combat ability and such like. It is not even measured in getting your way or "winning" whatever that means. It is measured in the positive impact one makes, and how much one is willing to risk or pay to give all that they have, or to give their very best to the world.
Godspeed.
~ Mother Star.
About Me
- Mother Star
- Welcome to my humble abode. Feel free to sit down a while and warm yourself by my fire. I write here mainly to inspire, encourage, perhaps confront, to empower, and to change. If you leave with a lighter step, an answer to a question, really questioning long held ideas that may not be taking you where you need to go, or with a lot of new things to consider, I will have done my job. Please enjoy your stay. With love, ~Mother Star
Showing posts with label hunger games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hunger games. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Lessons From the Hunger Games - Part 5
If somebody put real Hunger Games on tv or a webcast, would you watch it? Would you feed the monster and help it grow?
Suzanne Collins put, in my opinion, an allegory to our time in a book and on a screen. Ironically, it may only be lost in the mix of media messages for most people.I offer some thoughts on how the world of The Hunger Games is really parallel to our own. There are a lot of questions here to ask yourself, I am not really looking for people to give me their answers, some of these are quite personal. Just answer them to your God and yourself.
I have said how the world of The Hunger Games resembles our world in how media redirects our attention from serious issues onto non-issues, hoe many of the effects are harmful, and how we need to genuinely stand up to the system and attack the problems at the root. In The Hunger Games the people of Panem need to recognize that the violence they and their countrymen, their children, are subjected to is senseless.
That is often true in our lives today. Every day in America, young people die in gang violence. Every day in America and around the world, people consume media glamorizing this real-life bloodbath and get the same things out of it that Panem got from watching the Hunger Games: sense of identity, and excitement. Like The Hunger Games' characters, real people relish the "action," while refusing to face the hideous reality affecting people in our cities or at least our states. We focus on non-issues, like how this media puts minorities in the limelight, how they "represent" their socioeconomic class or their "race." Likewise, The Hunger Games' media personalities went on about how Peeta and Katniss raised their hands together "I am proud I come from District 12," putting a little band-aid on the compound fracture of District 12's problems. Some of those problems were right in front of them, in the form of two young people who were not really there by choice. The celebrity commentators made lots of emotional appeals that shifted focus and ignored the real issues. They went on and on about superficial things like clothes and mannerisms. They made very significant mountains out of some psychological molehills in order to justify celebrating such extreme tragedy - tragedy that can be equaled, if not exceeded, by the realities in some of our own communities.
Suzanne Collins put, in my opinion, an allegory to our time in a book and on a screen. Ironically, it may only be lost in the mix of media messages for most people.I offer some thoughts on how the world of The Hunger Games is really parallel to our own. There are a lot of questions here to ask yourself, I am not really looking for people to give me their answers, some of these are quite personal. Just answer them to your God and yourself.
I have said how the world of The Hunger Games resembles our world in how media redirects our attention from serious issues onto non-issues, hoe many of the effects are harmful, and how we need to genuinely stand up to the system and attack the problems at the root. In The Hunger Games the people of Panem need to recognize that the violence they and their countrymen, their children, are subjected to is senseless.
That is often true in our lives today. Every day in America, young people die in gang violence. Every day in America and around the world, people consume media glamorizing this real-life bloodbath and get the same things out of it that Panem got from watching the Hunger Games: sense of identity, and excitement. Like The Hunger Games' characters, real people relish the "action," while refusing to face the hideous reality affecting people in our cities or at least our states. We focus on non-issues, like how this media puts minorities in the limelight, how they "represent" their socioeconomic class or their "race." Likewise, The Hunger Games' media personalities went on about how Peeta and Katniss raised their hands together "I am proud I come from District 12," putting a little band-aid on the compound fracture of District 12's problems. Some of those problems were right in front of them, in the form of two young people who were not really there by choice. The celebrity commentators made lots of emotional appeals that shifted focus and ignored the real issues. They went on and on about superficial things like clothes and mannerisms. They made very significant mountains out of some psychological molehills in order to justify celebrating such extreme tragedy - tragedy that can be equaled, if not exceeded, by the realities in some of our own communities.
The Lesson: Like the Capitol of Panem in The Hunger Games, middle-class Americans and Europeans get most of the resources the rest of the world breaks their back to produce, and enjoys the services of those who must slave at three jobs to make ends meet. There are numerous inequalities built into the system we have in our real world, too. Violence will not solve the problem. Being amused by a problem does not solve it, either. There are things that can be done, things that must be done. Step one is calling reality exactly what it is. Media that presents these problems in a way that does not inspire people to take serious action is probably not "calling attention" to it effectively.
Some info on what's really driving there unpleasant realities: I grew up in a minority neighborhood, a black neighborhood, though I am white. People finished school there without learning how to read. Teachers did not really teach them and did not really grade their work. I was homeschooled and learned to read "The Cat Sat on a Mat" the first day. One of my childhood friends who was a year older than me, Latoya, did not believe that I could read. I read her a story from my reader. She asked to borrow it, went into my house and asked my mom to teach her to read. There were, and I think are, laws on the books that might have gotten my mom in a lot of trouble if she had done so, so she refused. I have no idea if, or how well, Latoya ever learned because we moved away.
I had heat in my house during winter, usually. During middle school, some of my friends wore their heavy winter coats to some of the their classes at school because the heat did not work on the second floor. The teacher had a small heater under her desk that helped keep her warm but the students shivered while they tried to learn. THAT will bring your grades down very quickly! It went on like that for years.
Many students in poor and/or minority dominant schools, receive even decades-old, outdated textbooks that are basically destroyed. When I was in college, I attended a meeting with local organizations, high school students, and members of the local NAACP chapter. The problems in my old neighborhood are common across the nation, and are getting worse. There was no heat in Eisenhower High School (in Decatur, IL) at that time. I do not know if the heat was ever fixed, but I do know they now have to strip down and surrender their coats, sweaters, and jackets when they arrive at school so that they cannot hide drugs or weapons in them. They get their coats back at the end of the day. There were flat screen TVs (a luxury at the time) on the walls in every hallway but they were never turned on or used for education. The books they used remained tattered and outdated. The building has been renovated,and is almost made of windows now. If the pattern I have heard of in other cities persists here, they still will not have new books and the higher heat bills will be an excuse for even less effective education. A friend in social work found out at a conference the same thing was happening in our state's capitol.
In all of these communities, drugs and gangs are a serious problem. A SERIOUS problem. I said, a serious PROBLEM, not a serious charade or show. The forces driving these problem are largely in the majority's control. People can and should hold school boards accountable. People can and must and demand transparency about whether books in poorer school districts are up to date, whether the buildings have climate control, and etc. Few, if any, ever do. People in power are not inclined to pay attention to letters written in Ebonics or street slang, and that is how a lot of people, from my old neighborhood at least, would write. People with good enough education to be taken seriously need to write the letters and they don't. Often they have no idea what is going on, and rely on an entertainment oriented news media to tell them.
People showed up at the local community college needing remedials for material that should have been taught them in Kindergarten; this includes both math and English. I heard an English tutor say he was helping someone with a paper that said, "Ain't nobody gonna PMD" which, he was told meant "put me down." The student actually planned to hand that in to a (remedial) English teacher in their freshman year of college. Seriously. Imagine trying to get a job as a secretary with math and language skills like that. Imagine trying to write a resume with that education level. Forget it.
The kids know that they do not have decent books and adequate facilities that other schools do have, and they deduce that no one believes in them. People of every race and class need to stand up and fight for them, and make education truly equal and right. Unlike people in The Hunger Games it will not cost you floggings, executions and war to make the needed changes. It only costs the time to write a strong letter to your local elected officials. It will probably save you a lot in taxes later too, honestly.
Many middle class whites from the U.S. and Europe plug in every day, getting their adrenaline fix off of glamorization of real people's real problems. Media commentators glorify how those "artists" are so rebellious and courageous, and how the violence and misogyny and references to drugs are understandable because of where they come from. "They are black people in the media representing their community. Don't expect them to act responsibly." Thus, "gangsta" media puts minorities in the limelight much like black-face did in the 1930's. Do the middle class knuckleheads who carry on about how those "artists" are "telling it like it is" ever do anything to change "how it is"? No. If ghettos ceased to exist, if people of every race and class got the same opportunities, if organized crime disappeared tomorrow, where would they get their entertainment? Who would smuggle in their drugs? Who would they pretend to be a part of, rather than facing their own "boring," relatively privileged lives? Do those who allegedly "call attention to" these issues explain why minority-dominant schools score so poorly and their students do not get jobs? Do they tell what specifically can be done about it? No. They exploit these problems, and the broken emotions of their genuinely poor-minority fans, for personal wealth. That is not admirable.
The Lesson: What is going on in your city, your country, and your world that you need to stop getting entertained by and start standing up to? Are you willing to raise the three-fingered sign, like Katniss and District 11 did, and start the revolution? If you had to bring the news to one of those boys' mothers that her son has become a statistic, or had to watch her get the news like District 11 watched Katniss weep over Rue, I bet you would be ready to stop enjoying and consuming, and start acting and resolving. Immediately.
Some info on what's really driving there unpleasant realities: I grew up in a minority neighborhood, a black neighborhood, though I am white. People finished school there without learning how to read. Teachers did not really teach them and did not really grade their work. I was homeschooled and learned to read "The Cat Sat on a Mat" the first day. One of my childhood friends who was a year older than me, Latoya, did not believe that I could read. I read her a story from my reader. She asked to borrow it, went into my house and asked my mom to teach her to read. There were, and I think are, laws on the books that might have gotten my mom in a lot of trouble if she had done so, so she refused. I have no idea if, or how well, Latoya ever learned because we moved away.
I had heat in my house during winter, usually. During middle school, some of my friends wore their heavy winter coats to some of the their classes at school because the heat did not work on the second floor. The teacher had a small heater under her desk that helped keep her warm but the students shivered while they tried to learn. THAT will bring your grades down very quickly! It went on like that for years.
Many students in poor and/or minority dominant schools, receive even decades-old, outdated textbooks that are basically destroyed. When I was in college, I attended a meeting with local organizations, high school students, and members of the local NAACP chapter. The problems in my old neighborhood are common across the nation, and are getting worse. There was no heat in Eisenhower High School (in Decatur, IL) at that time. I do not know if the heat was ever fixed, but I do know they now have to strip down and surrender their coats, sweaters, and jackets when they arrive at school so that they cannot hide drugs or weapons in them. They get their coats back at the end of the day. There were flat screen TVs (a luxury at the time) on the walls in every hallway but they were never turned on or used for education. The books they used remained tattered and outdated. The building has been renovated,and is almost made of windows now. If the pattern I have heard of in other cities persists here, they still will not have new books and the higher heat bills will be an excuse for even less effective education. A friend in social work found out at a conference the same thing was happening in our state's capitol.
In all of these communities, drugs and gangs are a serious problem. A SERIOUS problem. I said, a serious PROBLEM, not a serious charade or show. The forces driving these problem are largely in the majority's control. People can and should hold school boards accountable. People can and must and demand transparency about whether books in poorer school districts are up to date, whether the buildings have climate control, and etc. Few, if any, ever do. People in power are not inclined to pay attention to letters written in Ebonics or street slang, and that is how a lot of people, from my old neighborhood at least, would write. People with good enough education to be taken seriously need to write the letters and they don't. Often they have no idea what is going on, and rely on an entertainment oriented news media to tell them.
People showed up at the local community college needing remedials for material that should have been taught them in Kindergarten; this includes both math and English. I heard an English tutor say he was helping someone with a paper that said, "Ain't nobody gonna PMD" which, he was told meant "put me down." The student actually planned to hand that in to a (remedial) English teacher in their freshman year of college. Seriously. Imagine trying to get a job as a secretary with math and language skills like that. Imagine trying to write a resume with that education level. Forget it.
The kids know that they do not have decent books and adequate facilities that other schools do have, and they deduce that no one believes in them. People of every race and class need to stand up and fight for them, and make education truly equal and right. Unlike people in The Hunger Games it will not cost you floggings, executions and war to make the needed changes. It only costs the time to write a strong letter to your local elected officials. It will probably save you a lot in taxes later too, honestly.
Many middle class whites from the U.S. and Europe plug in every day, getting their adrenaline fix off of glamorization of real people's real problems. Media commentators glorify how those "artists" are so rebellious and courageous, and how the violence and misogyny and references to drugs are understandable because of where they come from. "They are black people in the media representing their community. Don't expect them to act responsibly." Thus, "gangsta" media puts minorities in the limelight much like black-face did in the 1930's. Do the middle class knuckleheads who carry on about how those "artists" are "telling it like it is" ever do anything to change "how it is"? No. If ghettos ceased to exist, if people of every race and class got the same opportunities, if organized crime disappeared tomorrow, where would they get their entertainment? Who would smuggle in their drugs? Who would they pretend to be a part of, rather than facing their own "boring," relatively privileged lives? Do those who allegedly "call attention to" these issues explain why minority-dominant schools score so poorly and their students do not get jobs? Do they tell what specifically can be done about it? No. They exploit these problems, and the broken emotions of their genuinely poor-minority fans, for personal wealth. That is not admirable.
The Lesson: What is going on in your city, your country, and your world that you need to stop getting entertained by and start standing up to? Are you willing to raise the three-fingered sign, like Katniss and District 11 did, and start the revolution? If you had to bring the news to one of those boys' mothers that her son has become a statistic, or had to watch her get the news like District 11 watched Katniss weep over Rue, I bet you would be ready to stop enjoying and consuming, and start acting and resolving. Immediately.
Godspeed.
~ M.S.
~ M.S.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Lessons from The Hunger Games pt 3
If somebody put real Hunger Games on tv or a webcast, would you watch it? Would you feed the monster and help it grow?
Suzanne Collins put, in my opinion, an allegory to our time in a book and on a screen. Ironically, it may only be lost in the mix of media messages for most people.I offer some thoughts on how the world of The Hunger Games is really parallel to our own. There are a lot of questions here to ask yourself, I am not really looking for people to give me their answers, some of these are quite personal. Just answer them to your God and yourself.
How many in our society can relate to Heymitch? What does he do with his life? To save his life, he sends kids like he once was to their death every year. All the money/winnings he has came from killing other kids, back when he was a kid. He does something that he doesn't believe in to survive. Within that system, he does his best to try to help, but more often than not they still die.
Before we go off on Heymitch for what he does, remember he grew up with it. When he was a kid he probably had some amount of expectations and hoped for how his life might go. Now, he hides in his alcohol and does his best to stay alive. He feels he has no control over the situation. Something that has not changed for him since he was sent to the hunger games, is he just tries to stay alive. He dares not bond with his charges, since they will probably die. Meanwhile, he is not really living, he lives to escape from his life with booze. There are many people who do that in our society, either through substances, or media, or other activities that takeover and become their consolation prize for perpetually surrendered hopes, dreams, or ideals.
The lesson: Sometimes people become - or believe they've become- trapped in circumstances that force them to participate in what they know is wrong. Pharmacists who do not believe in abortion go through this because the laws now force them to carry abortion drugs, at least in Illinois. Many trafficking victims may go through this as well. This is a terrible thing to experience and a terrible thing to do to other people. It is a sign that something is horribly wrong in the society, or with the laws thereof.
Sponsors – Create a demand that tributes kiss-butt and be someone else in order to please, so that they might be given some necessities for survival.
The corporate world – Expectations for how to dress, and how to talk and the impression you must give. Why? Essentially, in order to literally stay alive. How is “I will take your livelihood away from you, or not give it to you in the first place,” that much less severe than “I will beat you up, or shoot you”? The whole, “I will not allow you any of the wherewithal you need to survive, no matter how hard you work, or what you do, unless you impress me. Most grounds I expect to be impressed on do not relate to what anybody even needs from you, and I am also looking for reasons not to be impressed.” Sounds a lot like a job interview to me. “Pretend you are passionate about this company and everything we do and stand for, or else you have no reason to exist.” Why do employers do that? To survive. Just like the sponsors. They adapt to their environment without really changing it the ways that it needs. Perhaps they do not know how, or perhaps they also have surrendered.
The system becomes very complicated, very dishonest, and very self-serving and all the while, the idea is to look like you are not self-serving, complicated, or dishonest.
The lesson: life in a system that forces everybody to lie, or to refuse to face some truth, in order to get by is a system that requires change.
Godspeed.
~Mother Star
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Lessons from The Hunger Games - Part 2
If somebody put real Hunger Games on tv or a webcast, would you watch it? Would you feed the monster and help it grow?
Suzanne Collins put, in my opinion, an allegory to our time in a book and on a screen. Ironically, it may only be lost in the mix of media messages for most people.I offer some thoughts on how the world of The Hunger Games is really parallel to our own. There are a lot of questions here to ask yourself, I am not really looking for people to give me their answers, some of these are quite personal. Just answer them to your God and yourself.
As, promised, we continue the topic of what serious and life-altering lessons we can learn from Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. One challenging thing we find is their world differs from ours only in the extreme, and in some of the details. The basic problems are the often same.
How many Haymitches do we have? We no longer have a draft, but veterans from the drafts are still with us today. We have many warriors walking wounded, trying to drown their misery in substances. What did Katniss want to do after she won? To forget. Many veterans want to forget. While we honor our veterans for their service, many of us and many of them do not believe the missions our rulers send them on are necessarily in our best interests. The only thing in the world more painful than losing people you love to violence -or really any other tragedy - is to believe that there was no pupose in the tragedy, or that the purpose was worth less than it cost.
There were even people in Panem who sent their kids to special schools to make them bloodthirsty killers, brainwashed them to "bring pride to our district." Perhaps it was to avoid the pain of losing two kids every year, for no reason. Perhaps they got caught up in the lie that it was about pride, and that the kids were there to show that they really were better than the other districts. Hide from the fact that you have no power against this injustice by actively choosing what you have no choice but to choose. Make yourself feel empowered that way, raise your kids to have no respect for human life so they will have a better chance of winning. Give your community an ego-boost about something that is really quite shameful. Don't stand up to the system that makes you economically better off than most. Take your losses in your morals, not your sense of security. In this film, it backfires and none of those kids return home.
The people of Panem in The Hunger Games need to face the pain of losing their children for no reason, especially in Districts 1 and 2. They need to face reality, and call it by its true, ugly name. Turning an oppressive system meant to put you under the oppressors shoe into a source of pride and identity, and raising your kids to "win" these atrocious "games" to "bring pride to the district" is to try to get rid of the pain caused by a problem without addressing its cause. The games were there to make sure they knew their "place," by taking their children away to fight and die for no reason. The idea was to make it clear there was nothing they could do about it, to let them know who was "really in charge". They "empowered" themselves and prided themselves on "thriving" in that system, training their kids think that it elevated their district if they killed all the other kids every year. They perceived this as empowerment and pride because they accepted the lies and ideology of the corrupt system that instituted the Hunger Games in the first place.
The Lesson: Not everything that makes you feel better is healthy or helpful or good. There are many applications for this. Calling yourself by racial or gender slurs could resemble this, because that is also surrendering while priding yourself on how well you are fighting. I see this everywhere. Women calling themselves b****es, black people calling each other n****s, and saying it means something they must know - at least deep sown inside - that it does not. Hide from the pain and call oneself courageous for doing so. Ease the misery at the cost of perpetuating the problem.
I see this frequently in the feminist movement. To some people, any time a woman does something conforming to male gender roles, it is seen as liberating. Self-identified (though not necessarily qualifying for the label) "feminists" do not consider whether the things being imitated are negative, or even oppressive and unproductive to men as well as to women. Taking on males' shackles is not going to free us, it only adds additional or different chains.
In the same vein, an abused woman who prostitutes herself to try and turn an abusive system into cash and calls herself "empowered" is lying to herself. She is never treated with any respect, so she declares war on the idea of respect and spurns her humanity by volunteering to be an object rather than declaring was on the objectification of women and confronting the source of the problem. She is not empowered, she is too weak, or weakened, to even face reality. Not a good candidate for a "Mockingjay" for herself or anyone else. She is not elevating or empowering herself or anyone. These decisions are founded on conformity to the mindset of the perpetrators who think they exert power over others by sleeping with them, it's built on never solving the problem.
Calling yourself a b**** and acting like a stereotypical, pig-headed male by pushing your way to the top and not caring about anyone else, or being rude,or being odious and vulgar, or making hateful words into "good words" and reversing hateful imagery is very unhelpful and hypocritical. The key to destroying oppressive systems is not to imitate anything said or done by the oppressor. Do not allow people that hate you to name you, keep their hateful words out of your vocabulary - all of them. Keep their actions not worthy of being called human, and that make the world an unhappy place, out of your behaviour. Women who prostitute other human beings,women who emotionally manipulate men, women who are physically and verbally violent, are not "empowered." They do no more to elevate womanhood than the tributes of Districts 1 and 2 in The Hunger Games elevated their districts.
Godspeed.
~ M.S.
Suzanne Collins put, in my opinion, an allegory to our time in a book and on a screen. Ironically, it may only be lost in the mix of media messages for most people.I offer some thoughts on how the world of The Hunger Games is really parallel to our own. There are a lot of questions here to ask yourself, I am not really looking for people to give me their answers, some of these are quite personal. Just answer them to your God and yourself.
As, promised, we continue the topic of what serious and life-altering lessons we can learn from Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. One challenging thing we find is their world differs from ours only in the extreme, and in some of the details. The basic problems are the often same.
How many Haymitches do we have? We no longer have a draft, but veterans from the drafts are still with us today. We have many warriors walking wounded, trying to drown their misery in substances. What did Katniss want to do after she won? To forget. Many veterans want to forget. While we honor our veterans for their service, many of us and many of them do not believe the missions our rulers send them on are necessarily in our best interests. The only thing in the world more painful than losing people you love to violence -or really any other tragedy - is to believe that there was no pupose in the tragedy, or that the purpose was worth less than it cost.
There were even people in Panem who sent their kids to special schools to make them bloodthirsty killers, brainwashed them to "bring pride to our district." Perhaps it was to avoid the pain of losing two kids every year, for no reason. Perhaps they got caught up in the lie that it was about pride, and that the kids were there to show that they really were better than the other districts. Hide from the fact that you have no power against this injustice by actively choosing what you have no choice but to choose. Make yourself feel empowered that way, raise your kids to have no respect for human life so they will have a better chance of winning. Give your community an ego-boost about something that is really quite shameful. Don't stand up to the system that makes you economically better off than most. Take your losses in your morals, not your sense of security. In this film, it backfires and none of those kids return home.
The people of Panem in The Hunger Games need to face the pain of losing their children for no reason, especially in Districts 1 and 2. They need to face reality, and call it by its true, ugly name. Turning an oppressive system meant to put you under the oppressors shoe into a source of pride and identity, and raising your kids to "win" these atrocious "games" to "bring pride to the district" is to try to get rid of the pain caused by a problem without addressing its cause. The games were there to make sure they knew their "place," by taking their children away to fight and die for no reason. The idea was to make it clear there was nothing they could do about it, to let them know who was "really in charge". They "empowered" themselves and prided themselves on "thriving" in that system, training their kids think that it elevated their district if they killed all the other kids every year. They perceived this as empowerment and pride because they accepted the lies and ideology of the corrupt system that instituted the Hunger Games in the first place.
The Lesson: Not everything that makes you feel better is healthy or helpful or good. There are many applications for this. Calling yourself by racial or gender slurs could resemble this, because that is also surrendering while priding yourself on how well you are fighting. I see this everywhere. Women calling themselves b****es, black people calling each other n****s, and saying it means something they must know - at least deep sown inside - that it does not. Hide from the pain and call oneself courageous for doing so. Ease the misery at the cost of perpetuating the problem.
I see this frequently in the feminist movement. To some people, any time a woman does something conforming to male gender roles, it is seen as liberating. Self-identified (though not necessarily qualifying for the label) "feminists" do not consider whether the things being imitated are negative, or even oppressive and unproductive to men as well as to women. Taking on males' shackles is not going to free us, it only adds additional or different chains.
In the same vein, an abused woman who prostitutes herself to try and turn an abusive system into cash and calls herself "empowered" is lying to herself. She is never treated with any respect, so she declares war on the idea of respect and spurns her humanity by volunteering to be an object rather than declaring was on the objectification of women and confronting the source of the problem. She is not empowered, she is too weak, or weakened, to even face reality. Not a good candidate for a "Mockingjay" for herself or anyone else. She is not elevating or empowering herself or anyone. These decisions are founded on conformity to the mindset of the perpetrators who think they exert power over others by sleeping with them, it's built on never solving the problem.
Calling yourself a b**** and acting like a stereotypical, pig-headed male by pushing your way to the top and not caring about anyone else, or being rude,or being odious and vulgar, or making hateful words into "good words" and reversing hateful imagery is very unhelpful and hypocritical. The key to destroying oppressive systems is not to imitate anything said or done by the oppressor. Do not allow people that hate you to name you, keep their hateful words out of your vocabulary - all of them. Keep their actions not worthy of being called human, and that make the world an unhappy place, out of your behaviour. Women who prostitute other human beings,women who emotionally manipulate men, women who are physically and verbally violent, are not "empowered." They do no more to elevate womanhood than the tributes of Districts 1 and 2 in The Hunger Games elevated their districts.
Godspeed.
~ M.S.
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