there was a moment when the people in the movie theatre and the capitol audience in the stands were laughing at the same things, having the same reactions to the games, to the deaths, to flickermans jokes, to the doctor's announcement...i wonder aren't we watching it for entertainment too
suzanne collins' books may exist in popular culture as "dystopian", but they have always been a meticulous and startlingly close social critique of our world. at what point does our own idolization of the movies and the books repeat that story? we watch just as the capitol audience does.
all dystopia eventually crosses a line from realistic futurism to current relevancy. how long will it take us to realize we've already crossed that line with these books? and the very people who need to realize this are the ones in that audience...real or fake, we're the same: consuming and consuming.
I think that's really true and probably way scarier than people even realize. When we talk about The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins literally just reflected real capitalist-caused issues to fit into a dystopian world, but it's literally here, from the most obvious thing to the simplest detail:
How the riches and concessions from the Capital to District 1 made people from 1 think of themselves as closer (in nature) to people of the capital than people in the poorest Districts? That's middle-class thinking, stopping them from realizing they're just as pressed by the Capital as the poorest Districts (the guy from 2 in the last movie, saying he wasn't Snow's slave when WE KNOW he is, everyone is?)?
How the electric fence around 12 is THE ONLY THING stopping people from starving to death since they could very well USE the land? That's literally the argument for legalized occupation movements on unused land, like MST and MTST in Brazil.
The use of addictive drugs and the idea of a "war on drugs" in District 6 to control the population and quite literally render them useless to weaponize such an important thing as medical supplies against the Capital (not that this should happen, but still)? That's literally happening in most poor countries in the world, just as much with legalized drugs - like the COVID vaccine (which Africa had and is still having trouble acquiring because of the Global North) - as with illegal drugs like weed, which is used as justification for police to invade favelas in Brazil, kill innocent people (children especially) and brutalize dozens more each time in a war against poor POC in special.
What they did to Finnick, Cashmere, and Gloss? Lemme tell you two words: Epstein Scandal.
The dehumanization of the people from the Districts suffer by the people of the Capital? How billionaires see the working class, how white people view POC, how the North looks at Global South countries - that's exactly there, people.
The control of the media? Comms people can tell you: media always has a side, it's not bad in itself, but most of the mainstream media is right-wing and/or conservative, and I'm not talking just regionally, but globally, hence what we're seeing at mainstream media trying to hide important news, manipulate or maintain the narrative of equivalence between Israel and Palestine when we know what is happening is a genocide, an ethnic-based genocide.
It's literally there.
It's not just in fashion or dehumanization, it's everything. But we're not the Capital.
