This year, America and the rest of the western world experienced a long overdue Hunger Games renaissance. Mostly due to the November release of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and the subsequent rewatching of the original series spawned a collective revival in popularity of the iconic series. Although the novels will eventually join the ranks of other critics of American society such as George Orwell’s 1984 dystopian and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby similarly critiquing American society’s warped view of wealth and classes, the movies will continue to be viewed as entertainment for decades to come.
Even looking back at TikTok trends from the last few months (looking at you Josh Hutherson-whistle jumpscares) conveys the relationship we have with The Hunger Games media in the 2020s so far; a critique of America disguised as highly-entertaining books and films that we slowly analyze as a fictional world separate from our current society. Yet, I believe the reality of Panem is closer to us than we are able to fathom.
America is beginning to find itself further and further from the rest of the western world as we hurtle towards a purely capitalistic hellscape that is becoming increasingly difficult for the general public to merely live in. I believe that the current path we’re on has two possible endpoints, both of which are eerily-reminiscent of the world of Panem Suzanne Collins created; a Capitol-esque capitalist hellscape or a district-style revolution.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, every day Americans have begun to see the fatal flaws in our current society. Between the physical isolation and subsequent social isolation of the pandemic, the number of lives lost despite quarantine efforts, the rising cost of living due to inflation, and the failure of the political system to place a competent leader or take any accountability, there’s only so much Americans can deny before we admit that we need a drastic, Katniss-style revolution.
Slowly, Americans are coming to terms with the depressing reality of the country and The Hunger Games resurgence is part of this reckoning. This is partially because it provides a palatable media that can be deconstructed and analyzed as a fictional piece, which is easier to digest than actual commentary on our day-to-day reality. Creators across social media platforms descended upon the trends, not only producing fun content but also in-depth analyses about every aspect of the source content from Katniss and Peeta’s slowburn to Snow’s sociopathic tendencies. But one thread of content began to emerge: America’s similarities to Panem.
Considering that the Hunger Games is a dystopian set in an ambiguous timeframe that falls sometime in the future of North America, it makes sense that there are recognizable aspects of the country in Panem. This is, of course, intentional by the author but it is still jarring for many casual consumers of the series that don’t normally engage with social commentary. So although some of the analogies in the series are not necessarily ground-breaking, they can be revelations for the general population.
One of the most obvious examples of Capitol values infiltrating American society is their over-the-top fashion. The bold colors, unconventional materials, dramatic silhouettes, and unnatural body modifications all contribute to the physical differences between Capitol and District citizens. Yet, more and more “innovative” fashion trends that occur in America today seem to be scarily similar to the trends we see in the Hunger Games era. This concept is most clearly seen by the general public in regards to the Met Gala because it is such a phenomenon in popular culture known for its extravagant fashion moments that are supposedly in the interest of a charity.
This concept gets even crazier when we consider how we view the same celebrities that parade around the Met carpet in a similar way the Capitol views the tributes. Partially due to the prevalence of social media and an increase of odd, codependent relationships with public figures, the dynamic the general public has with celebrities is shifting into something almost sinister. These public figures are still only humans, like us, placed on a pedestal due to their career, with real lives and real emotions. Yet, fans idolize these figures so much so that it is becoming impossible for some of them to even go to the grocery store while others are viewed as a “friend” who the internet can hold accountable for every small misstep (and some experience an unfortunate mixture of both). Then, you begin to think about how the tributes were only mourned as a character in the Games as opposed to a human being when they were well-liked by viewers, which sounds oddly similar to the reverential, back-and-forth relationship we have with celebrities and public figures today.
There is also a deeper theme of desensitization here that we cannot overlook. The central plot point of the Hunger Games is the annual violent killing of impoverished children by other poor children that is normalized and seen as an entertainment event akin to the Olympics. Although it is undeniably horrifying, I believe that the reality of an event like this is not that far off considering how many awful things we are already desensitized to as a culture, especially in younger generations. For example, a graphic photo of the current violence in Gaza is posted on a platform like Instagram next to an ad for the newest trending water bottle and we are supposed to be content, if not pleased, by clicking through jarring atrocities while mindlessly consuming entertaining content. Does that sound a bit similar to you? It should, because those horrors and many more are not the only example of how desensitized we as a society are nowadays.
Growing consumerism and the system of capitalism is another concept of American culture that is not only hurtling us towards an economic-centric dystopia similar to Panem’s own state of disarray but is also another aspect of society that we are experiencing increasing desensitization to. We are currently attempting to survive in a late-stage capitalistic society that has not been seen in history before, yet we can still speculate where we are headed next and it could be much more similar to Panem than we think. First off, the cost of living for an average person is rapidly rising out of reach, which is beginning to cause a widespread rise in poverty levels, similar to what we see in the socioeconomic struggles within the districts of Panem. The upper class is rising to new levels of wealth while the middle class disappears as the lowest grow in numbers exponentially and struggle to stay alive, which is a less-extreme form of the class divide seen between the Capitol and the districts. There’s even a few obvious examples of this divide already, such as the TikTok homestead trends popping up more and more across younger generations searching for meaning and means in a supposedly-simpler life seen in both America’s past and the districts’ reality (need I mention cottagecore my friends?). As capitalism continues to increase in America along with the wage gap, warmongering, and especially global warming, we as a society are edging closer and closer to not only echoing the Hunger Games but becoming members of a real, maybe even worse warped version of the country of Panem.
Featured image from Murray Close/Lionsgate.
