• HarryLime [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Hunger Games has imagery of humble and stolid country folk who make their living by their hands being oppressed by fancy and decadent city people. It's arguably coded as somewhat conservative-leaning, at least in terms of American culture war.

    • Sen_Jen [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Well yeah, but also its a series where the working class kill each other for the entertainment of the rich, the villain is literally called capital, the revolution is co-opted by people obsessed with image and optics, and so on

      • HarryLime [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        No, I get that. But I'm saying that a Republican or a conservative can still easily watch Katniss and her friends fighting the evil Capital and be like "that's me!"

      • AcidSmiley [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        revolutionary movements that are meant to be likeable are usually coded in such ambiguous ways, with dog whistles both for radlibs and reactionaries to latch on to. for example, in early seasons of The Expanse, when Belters weren't yet clearly sorted into "Polish or Irish = libertarian and good" and "Latinx or Middle Eastern = racist and bad", they were simultaneously coded as IRA crust punks and redneck truckers, and also all kinds of other stuff, just as easily being read as inusrrectionist leftist or as rebel chuds.

    • Animasta [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Yeah. There's a ton of people who think Hunger Games is some sort of communist dystopia or at least that the whole thing is just broadly "anti-authoritarian".

      • ZZ_SloppyTop [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It’s anti-imperialist it shows a core-periphery extraction and the displays of cruel violence sustaining it, it’s very heavy handed with it

        • CyberMao [it/its]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          It’s so heavy handed and spot on, but I really just wished it didn’t trip at the finish line.

          spoilers

          Coin’s proposal to reinstate the hunger games didn’t make any sense. It was obvious to me that her actions had to be worked backwards from the conclusion. She was always suspect, but we needed to learn why in order to show that performing a revolution just to reinstate the same systems of oppression is wrong. But it wasn’t clear that anyone else was any better or that this death wouldn’t simple destabilize the people further.

          • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago
            cool tips for cool people

            Put stuff between the top : and the bottom : where the ____ line is

            spoiler

            ___<---

            • CyberMao [it/its]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I don’t use the version from the text editor I just type it out. But I accidentally typed “spoilers” instead of “spoiler”. Fixed now. Thank you

    • ZZ_SloppyTop [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      It’s just showing imperialist extraction in a very simple and didactic way for teenagers. It’s true that rich empire core often has material decadence extracted from the periphery through brutal exploitation. The premise of the entire series is rested on the capital being so comically decadent to host a TV reality show where they make poor kids murder each other for fun.

    • LoudMuffin [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      not to mention the only reason the revolution is kicked off is because District North Korea literally has nukes and sends fucking UFOs to support them lmao