How The Hunger Games became a global symbol of… | Little White Lies

Long Read

How The Hunger Games became a glob­al sym­bol of resistance

26 Nov 2014

A woman in a black outfit stands defiantly amongst a crowd of people in a dimly lit, industrial setting.
A woman in a black outfit stands defiantly amongst a crowd of people in a dimly lit, industrial setting.
With Kat­niss Everdeen’s salute being adopt­ed by pro­tes­tors, Clarisse Loughrey looks at what can hap­pen when cin­e­ma inspires polit­i­cal action.

In the midst of a crowd, five fig­ures rise. Before the shock of their pres­ence rip­ples through the gath­ered faces, before it reach­es the atten­tion of the watch­ing author­i­ties, five hands thrust sky­wards; a three-fin­gered salute of defi­ance. Only this isn’t Panem, this is Khon Kaen Province, Thailand.

These five indi­vid­u­als were local uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents protest­ing a speech deliv­ered by Gen­er­al Prayuth Chan-Ocha, self-appoint­ed prime min­is­ter and leader of the mil­i­tary jun­ta that seized pow­er last May. Swift­ly seized upon and removed from the scene, the stu­dents were tak­en to a near­by mil­i­tary base, inter­ro­gat­ed, and threat­ened with the charge of vio­lat­ing mar­tial law. They refused to back down and, at one point in their protest, the halls of the base echoed with the Thai ver­sion of a heart-felt protest song from Les Miserables’:

Do you hear the peo­ple sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a peo­ple
Who will not be slaves again.

These are words that become all the more potent when you read of Thailand’s his­to­ry, the vic­tim of a num­ber of mil­i­tary coups through­out the past two cen­turies, from the Cold War to as recent­ly as 2006. The three-fin­gered salute itself has grown to become a sym­bol of resis­tance across Thai­land and for the pro­tes­tors who mir­ror the franchise’s YA audi­ence. It’s these peo­ple who have been assem­bling at cin­e­mas across the coun­try screen­ing the lat­est in the fran­chise, Mock­ing­jay Part 1, and rais­ing that now icon­ic salute. It didn’t take long for the first cin­e­ma chain to drop the film from its sched­ule for fear of polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions”, not much longer than that for the first arrests to occur.

In a coun­try in which protests and polit­i­cal gath­er­ings have been made ille­gal, it’s not alto­geth­er sur­pris­ing to see a desire to politi­cise the act of cin­e­ma itself. There’s a defi­ant sub­ver­sive­ness in turn­ing an innocu­ous prod­uct of the Hol­ly­wood machine into an act of protest, and to throw open the doors and show the rest of the world the luna­cy of a gov­ern­ment which would find par­al­lel and a sense of threat in a film in which chil­dren are sent to mur­der each oth­er for a tele­vi­sion audi­ence. And per­haps, most impor­tant­ly, it’s the age of these pro­tes­tors that have seen them turn to Kat­niss Everdeen as a politi­cised fic­tion­al leader; these are the same peo­ple that in anoth­er cor­ner of the world would instead have the lux­u­ry to argue over Gale vs Pee­ta for hours on end.

It’s easy to dis­miss The Hunger Games fran­chise as the cyn­i­cal prod­uct of an indus­try that trades on teenage angst, but we’d ques­tion any cinephile who isn’t deeply moved by this exam­ple of cin­e­ma inspir­ing action. These stu­dents look to Kat­niss and see their future placed in their own hands. It would be a stretch to imply that this movie has direct­ly led to an act of polit­i­cal protest, but Kat­niss has pro­vid­ed a fig­ure of reas­sur­ance and hope that action can inspire pos­i­tive change. And cin­e­ma has giv­en them the lan­guage to express the rage that has tak­en over their hearts.

This isn’t the first time in recent his­to­ry that a protest group have tak­en on a fic­tion­al leader to guide their ranks; we need only think of Anony­mous and their sup­port­ers, the sea of Guy Fawkes masks march­ing through the streets. Orig­i­nat­ing from Alan Moore’s graph­ic nov­el V for Vendet­ta’, yet made famous through the 2006 film adap­ta­tion, these masks have grown in pop­u­lar­i­ty to become a cen­tral sym­bol of mod­ern rebel­lion. In 2011, The Guardian was quot­ing a sale of over 100,000 masks a year, which led to ques­tions over whether the mask had now indeed over­tak­en Alber­to Korda’s pho­to­graph of Che Gue­vara as the height of rev­o­lu­tion­ary iconography.

Yes, some­one will always be quick to point out the fal­lac­i­es behind this mask, which remains a licensed image of Time Warn­er and thus a source of tow­er­ing prof­it for the com­pa­ny; the masks them­selves a prod­uct of mass pro­duc­tion fac­to­ries in either Mex­i­co or Chi­na. Nor is it hard to argue that V for Vendet­tawas any­thing much more than a cyn­i­cal cash-grab placed at the dawn of the super­hero mega-fran­chise; these peo­ple changed V’s back­sto­ry to include super-human abil­i­ties gained from the injec­tion of exper­i­men­tal chem­i­cals. That’s not even men­tion­ing the prob­lem­at­ic under­cur­rent in the hero­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of ter­ror­ism, regard­less of whether it remains a jus­ti­fied response to the reign of ter­ror enact­ed in this dystopi­an future.

The real, res­onat­ing core of this movie arguably all lies in this sin­gle line: peo­ple should not be afraid of their gov­ern­ments. Gov­ern­ments should be afraid of their peo­ple.” Like Kat­niss, V became a ral­ly­ing cry for those who want­ed to take back the reins of change, specif­i­cal­ly here by the force of one col­lec­tive unit. The masks have their own prac­ti­cal use, ini­tial­ly embraced as they were by Anony­mous when they staged their first pub­lic demon­stra­tion against the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy. In a prob­a­ble com­bi­na­tion of want­i­ng to main­tain the anonymi­ty and free­dom of the inter­net, and the fact Sci­en­tol­o­gists are the last peo­ple you want to make your­self known to, the code of con­duct which cir­cu­lat­ed before the demon­stra­tion clear­ly stat­ed mem­bers should cov­er their face.

Yet the masks soon gained their own sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance: in the film’s clos­ing moments, Evey Ham­mond (Natal­ie Portman)’s words that V was all of us”, speak to the masked crowd as a col­lec­tive force of pow­er. As indi­vid­u­als we may feel too weak to bring about change, but empow­er­ment comes from a free­dom from the indi­vid­ual body and voic­es which min­gle into a sin­gle roar.

The issue becomes a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed when you realise that Kat­niss Everdeen has been co-opt­ed as much by the polit­i­cal­ly right-learn­ing as it has been by the left; a her­ald­ed fig­ure­head of Amer­i­can Tea Par­ty pol­i­tics on the hunt for younger vot­ers, where a Hunger Games-themed youth event and sim­i­lar short film has instead paint­ed Everdeen and her cohorts as rebels fight­ing against gov­ern­ment hand-outs because… erad­i­cat­ing pover­ty… is bad…?

If we’re look­ing for co-opt­ed inter­pre­ta­tion that real­ly rep­re­sents the antithe­sis of our own assump­tions, there’s noth­ing quite as anti­thet­i­cal as John Hinck­ley Jr’s attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Ronald Rea­gan in 1981. It’s dif­fi­cult to infuse Hinck­ley Jr’s actions with polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, as the courts deemed it an act of insan­i­ty dri­ven by an ero­toman­ic fix­a­tion with a pub­lic fig­ure; yet there is an inter­est­ing par­al­lel to be drawn between this extreme action and its cin­e­mat­ic inspiration.

Much of the atten­tion sur­round­ing the Hinck­ley Jr case focused on his obses­sion with Jodie Fos­ter, which saw him move to New Haven, Con­necti­cut just so he could post love let­ters under her door while she stud­ied at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Lat­er he devel­oped schemes to get her atten­tion, from hijack­ing an air­craft to com­mit­ting sui­cide in her pres­ence, yet it seems beyond sim­ple coin­ci­dence that the method he set­tled on, the assas­si­na­tion of the pres­i­dent, so close­ly mir­rored Travis Bickle’s own inten­tions in Mar­tin Scorsese’s Taxi Dri­ver. Was this real­ly a straight­for­ward case of ero­to­ma­nia? Or was this a man who became con­sumed by a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter manip­u­lat­ed by mad­ness to reflect his own hatred of the world?

Just look at the inter­views Fos­ter gave the police after Hinck­ley Jr’s arrest, in which she reveals a few of the let­ters she received: It’s all for you, Fos­ter” and Jodie Fos­ter, love, just wait. I will res­cue you very soon. Please coop­er­ate.” When asked whether they seemed famil­iar to the actress, she replies: In the movie Taxi Dri­ver the char­ac­ter Travis Bick­le sends the char­ac­ter Iris a res­cue let­ter.” The tri­al indeed revealed Hinck­ley had slow­ly been mould­ing him­self in the image of this dis­turbed, fic­tion­al lon­er: in his cloth­ing, his drink choice (peach brandy), and in his grow­ing col­lec­tion of firearms.

The point is, Hinck­ley Jr missed the deep and per­va­sive irony that anchors Bickle’s last reel redemp­tion; yet, as extreme an exam­ple as it may be, it speaks to a wider notion on how we con­sume and inter­pret cin­e­ma. We, as indi­vid­u­als, all live in des­per­ate search for self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, to bridge the gap between our own inter­nal strug­gles and a seem­ing­ly indif­fer­ent world: some­times cin­e­ma becomes that key. Since in real­i­ty we’re far too com­plex and con­tra­dic­to­ry to under­stand our­selves by our own means, we can mould both cin­e­ma and our own self-per­cep­tions to cre­ate a sin­gle coher­ent state­ment to present to the world and, most impor­tant­ly, to our own deeply con­fused selves.

That’s one way of explain­ing how Hinck­ley Jr might have been blind to Bickle’s hypocrisy, or how Kat­niss Everdeen can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly be a hero to both protest­ing stu­dents and Tea Par­ty lead­ers alike. How­ev­er right or wrong our own inter­pre­ta­tions might be, we seek in cin­e­ma a kind of reas­sur­ance for own exis­tence: to know we’re not lost in this world; we know our path and we know our place in the grand scheme of things. And so we shout:

I am a sur­vivor. I am Scar­lett O’Hara.
I am a fight­er. I am Rocky Bal­boa.
I am a rebel. I am Kat­niss Everdeen.

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