The Sociology of The Hunger Games Baruch Summer Leadership
Academy Presented by Sara Zweig 7/17/12
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What is Science Fiction? Looks towards Future Deals with
man-made products or events Often take place in worlds alternate to
ours but still similar Shows how our wishes and societies are bound
by ideology and production.
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Fantasy
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Science Fiction
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Fantasy Science Fiction Dragon Spaceship Magic Science Society
Man-made
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Whats the Point? SF is literature of cognitive
estrangement...whose main formal device is an imaginative framework
alternative to the authors empirical environment. -Darko Suvin
novum Frederic Jamesons Identity and Difference
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SciFi and Society Puts Identity and Difference at the heart of
the plot. Allows reader/viewer to compare and contrast Introduces
radically other possibilities
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The Hunger Games Summary
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Capital and Labor Capital and labor increasingly tend to exist
in different spaces and times Manuel Castells, urban sociologist
District 1 v. District 12 & 13 How do their home districts
determine the tributes chances in the Hunger Games?
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Karl Marx 19 th century German philosopher Witness to the
Industrial Revolution Said the everyday worker was suffering under
industrialization and capitalism Worker = Thing, not a Person
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Alienation and Commodity Worker from Product Worker from Worker
Worker from Work Worker from Self Commodity= object separated from
mode of production
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Worker from Product What it must be like, I wonder, to live in
a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I
spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if
it were so easy to come by? (65).
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Worker From Work Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam,
is usually crawling with coal- minersMan and women with hunched
shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped
trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails (4).
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Worker From Worker the tesserae are just anotherway to plant
hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can
generally count on supper (14). The capital will show the winning
district giftswhile the rest of us battle starvation (19).
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Worker From Self I want to die as myselfI dont want them to
change me (141). Tribute as Commodity
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False Consciousness
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False Consciousness Cntd.
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Madonna-Whore Dichotomy To win approval, we must be both sexy
and wholesome, delicate but able to cope.
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Media and Spectacle Functions to promote false consciousness
and state power Who are We?
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Media Reaction
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Media Continued Big Gov't? Or Against the 1%? Atlantic Monthly:
"The Hunger Games offers the populist hero the Occupy movement
wasn't able to deliver.... Katniss's awakening is political...When
she strews flowers over a fallen friend's corpse, she seems, for
the first time, alert to the systemic perversity of her situation.
She gives a coded salute to viewers, her first act of rebellion. It
works: Laborers in the dead tribute's district, most of whom are
black, revolt against the Capitol's rule. One protestor is hosed
against a wall, an allusion to the Birmingham campaign that may
well slip past Katniss's teenage fans. But whether or not they
recognize its specific references, The Hunger Games ' devotees
clearly get the story's urgency, its now-ness."
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And More Media Keith Ablow, FOX News Psychologist 1) Females
will be further distanced from their traditional feminine
characteristics 2) Young teens and many pre-teens will be awakened
to the fact that they are capable of extreme violence 3) A few
psychologically vulnerable teens who would have come to no good
anyhow may be inspired to replicate the films violence.