Are You Not Entertained?

I watched The Hunger Games for the first time today and liked it more than I thought I would. Actually, it's not that I thought I would DISLIKE the movie, it's just that I didn't realize how emotionally involved I would be with it. When I was younger, teenagers killing each other just seemed like a good way to get rid of annoying teenagers. In this case, I actually felt a lot of emotional loss when those kids would die.

As much as I hated Rue's death, and that one was certainly difficult, the one that got to me the most was Cato's. It's so easy to hate Cato through most of it. He's a vast dick who seems to get off on harming others, but in the end, when he has the emotional breakdown and begs Katniss to kill him because he was supposed to die anyway (as he'd been edited to be a villain), you can't help but feel sorry for him.

People have a lot of strong theories about The Hunger Games. From what I understand, many conservatives love the movie because they feel like it's about how horrible the world would be if liberals were in charge and allowed to suck 'real, ordinary hardworking Americans' dry of all their resources and freedoms. A lot of liberals like the movie because they think it shows what society would be like if a soulless, totalitarian corporation was in charge of making decisions. Human life would mean nothing if a profit could be made.

If anything, I think the story is a critique on our current obsession with reality television. Yes, I do remember that I watch a lot of reality tv, but I also realize that it can have a huge negative impact on people. Just this week, I watched as someone had a complete emotional breakdown on Survivor. We tune in to shows to watch the plotting and tactics. We watch people display their skills and work through challenges. On some reality shows, we get to watch amazing things being made.

At the same time, every reality show has its own element of freak show about it. A reality show season is considered boring by many if there are no fights or meltdowns or buckets of tears. In fact, some shows understand this so much, they make extra episodes just to show you the drama (lookin at YOU, RuPaul, even though I know that Untucked is my favorite part of Drag Race).

Really, the most sickening part about the Hunger Games isn't the fact that 23 children are going to die. That part is bad, yes, but even worse than that is the fact that millions of people are going to watch them die and comment on how entertaining it was. Oh, that kid had a great death. Oh look, that one burned part of her leg off. That was great television.

In Gladiator, Maximus finds himself at one of the lower ranking arenas. He kills everyone quickly, like a good soldier would.  The crowd felt it was TOO quick, however, and began to boo him. He gets angry and begins to shout at them, "Are you not entertained?" His anger is understandable. People died. What more could the crowd possibly want?

The problem is, death is never enough. We always want more. We want it to be dramatic and climatic. We want everyone to die in a glorious way and for our protagonists to just narrowly escape with their lives. To us, to the crowd, we're just watching something play out. We're just here for the ride and we want it to be as dramatic as possible.

The fact that people's lives are at stake is completely beside the point.