Just Entertainment?: The Hunger Games Movie Review

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They have called it “mesmerizing”, a “winner”, “the best American Sci-Fi Film since 'The Matrix'” and a blockbuster record-breaker but I call it sick. Now before you write this off as some moralizing sermon, you should know something about the person whom you are reading .

Going into the local cineplex, I was all-too-familiar with the Hunger Games Franchise written by Suzanne Collins about a dystopian future society that forced children into an arena to kill each other for the entertainment of the wealthy Capitol government and its people. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the first book and began tearing into the second, all while pushing others to do the same. I am also no bleeding heart when it comes to...well...bleeding. Historically, I have always appreciated a film with a significant element of bloodsport: I watched as Maximus decapitated a fellow combatant in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, it was my favorite part; when Jaguar Paw delivered a head crushing blow to one of his pursuers in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, resulting in the spurting of brain blood, I gasped ―then cheered. I have even written more than one movie in which the premise has been little more than: one guy kills everybody, horrifically.

But it must have been over an hour into the Hunger Games movie, when yet another child had been fatally maimed, and the person I had attended the film with lost it; a novice to violent cinema, she could barely keep her composure during the film. “This is sick,”she tearfully cried into the air of the dark theater, “What kind of world is this?” “This is sick”

To say the words hit me, would be cliché, but in that moment I asked myself what cinephiles hate to: Why am I watching this? And no morally-sufficient answers came, so I led her out of the theater and demanded our money back from the customer service counter.

“Oh, its just entertainment” I imagine one thinking. It is reported Suzanne Collins came up with the premise while flipping channels on television, between news coverage of the war and reality television. The whole appalling idea behind the Hunger Games is that an entire nation of people would watch the innocent killing of 12-18 year olds as entertainment. By all accounts, the film is an international box-office success―for what reason―because nations of people:logically thinking adults like myself, teens and yes, even children are purchasing movie tickets to watch―the innocent killing of 12-18 year olds as entertainment. The truth is we are the Capitol.

“Oh c'mon, its just fantasy, its not even real, they're paid actors” And isn't that the problem? That film corporations would pay actors and actresses handsomely to portray these stories because they know we will watch? And what effect does this have on the young actors specifically?

Having attempted to make my living in acting at one point, I can tell that your choices effect our work. Sex and violence sell, so someone has to have the sex and someone has to be violated, its just supply and demand. Many are the stories of my female colleagues asked to shed clothing or my male colleagues, myself again included, to portray monster killing machines, a la the Hunger Games' Cato. At what point do we turn off the tap and say 'that's it, this far and no farther'? At what point will we crave peace and purity as much as we apparently crave sex and death? When our hearts change.

In the end, this isn't about the money you paid or didn't, the book you read or wouldn't but about the problem of my and your deep desires. The problem is, that I have been a part of the problem, and if you are honest, you are too―but you don't need to stay in that place.

More importantly than being the second week of the Collins' film release, this week marks the release of our guilt and shame in the person of Jesus Christ. He was in no arena. Had no weapon with which to defend himself. He had to die. For your sinful heart. For my sinful heart. So we would not be pushed and pulled by what others tell us to do, like and condone, but so we could have freedom from unjust influence and bondage.

There are no “odds” with God. No matter what you've done or what's been done to you He still calls for you: hoping and believing that this Easter, you would recognize that when He died for the world―that included you.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
   for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
   for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
   for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
   for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
   for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
   for they will be called children of God.”

-Matthew 5:3-9

In Him,

Jean-Marc

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