Violent Entertainments & Hungry Games

Yesterday I finished reading Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, which I thought was quite good. Collins has crafted strong, intriguing characters, and placed them in a believable fictional world. As I have two more volumes of the series to go, I shall keep my speculation on further developments to myself for the moment, though I shall say that I am eager to see what happens next. Also, I hope to keep this post free from spoilers.

So, instead of plot mechanics, I would like to touch upon theme this afternoon. For those unfamiliar with the narrative, it revolves around a future society in what was once termed "North America." In the aftermath of a crushed social revolution, the elite have instituted an annual competition (the titular Games) in which 24 youngsters between the ages of twelve and eighteen are tossed into the wilderness and manipulated into killing each other. The last remaining survivor wins. This contest is broadcast live throughout the nation for the great pleasure of well-off city folk and to the poorer classes as a reminder of their utter subservience. For the benefit of both audiences, the more bloody and harrowing the competition, the better.

One of the reasons this book works is that Collins gets the tone right. It is, after all, a fine line to write a critique of violence as entertainment without your story becoming entertaining violence itself. Collins' keeps her story dark, never portraying her main characters reveling in any of their kills. When death happens it is quick and usually gruesome. This is not violence that has been sanitized for your protection. What is extra chilling is imagining all the citizens of the nation's posh Capital sitting around their living rooms, munching on snacks (popcorn anyone?), laughing and simply having a jolly good time watching all the maiming. Roman gladiators are clearly one reference, as are more contemporary sports and pastimes -- even someone who has viewed as little reality television as myself can pick up on the tropes riffed on by the packaged presentation of the Games to the populace. It would seem once again that from the Coliseum to today to the future there is precious little alteration in human nature.

Which leads me to the fact that somehow this story has been turned into a "major motion picture." I do not believe that there exists an "unfilmable" book, though some offer more challenges than others. What Collins merely described in her novel must now be rendered into moving images. In the process, the filmmakers have to find a way not only to maintain the balanced edge of Collins' narrative in their screenplay, but also transfer that tone to the screen. In other words, for this movie to work, in my mind, it should disgust the viewer. The violence should make your stomach turn, sicken you. Like the novel, there should be no catharsis in the kill, even if it saves a beloved character's life. This is not the type of story to elicit an audience reaction of "oh man, did you see how the spear just pierced her throat like that? Awesome!" If it is, well then, what's the difference between you and the citizens of the Capital placing bets on these young kids and hoping that this year's bloodbath will be even more thrilling than the previous?

This is not to say that violence cannot be entertaining (I read superhero comics, OK?), but that I feel it is the wrong tone for this particular story and the message its author wishes to convey. It is also true that intentions and reception are two different things (i.e. those viewers who somehow thought that A Clockwork Orange was a fun film worth imitating).

While reading the book, my mind was brought back to Peter Watkins' film Punishment Park. Made in the early 1970s, the British director imagines an America where political dissidents (read leftists & hippies) are arrested for sedition. They are given the option of prolonged prison sentences or a short stay in "Punishment Park." The park, as it turns out, is a dessert that they must cross (without supplies) in order to win their freedom. Only, it slowly dawns on the viewer that the whole thing is a set up, as National Guard troopers start killing them off one by one. It is a highly brutal and disturbing movie, yet also the closest example I could think of what I believe a Hunger Games film should resemble.

Not that Hollywood would let anyone like Peter Watkins near a property with as much profit potential as this one. Nope, instead we get Gary Ross. Gary Ross? The guy who made Pleasantville, a film that copped-out at any & every opportunity at nuance? A film that refused to truly challenge the audience or ask of it any question for which the filmmakers did not have a ready-made pat answer? A movie that avoided addressing any real issue of how actions have their consequences, both good and bad? This is the director to whom they've entrusted the book? Sorry, I'll pass. (At least they didn't find some way to cast Tobey Maguire in this one. Come on, you know that he auditioned for Thresh . . . :)).

As I said at the beginning, I have only just finished book one of the trilogy, and apologize if anything I have written is contradicted by the following two volumes. (Though, if they are, please be kind and do not respond to this post in such a way that spoils them for me. Thanks). I feel as though I have a sense where Collins is headed and that "the center shall not hold." Oh wait, I said that I would avoid second-guessing the author at this stage . . .

Cheers

Postscript, 3-22-12: So, I was on the subway yesterday, reading Catching Fire as part on my morning commute, when it suddenly occurred to me who should have been handed the job of adapting The Hunger Games: Alfonso Cuaron. The man has experience adapting children's/young adult literature (A Little Princess, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). The latter film also demonstrated that he can deliver profits on a big-budget fanchise Event -- gotta keep the accountants happy, you know?  At the same time, he has shown an ability to see into the more complicated aspects of young psyches (Y Tu Mama Tambien). Most importantly, there is Children of Men. One of the reasons I have always admired this film is the starkness of Cuaron's presentation of violence; it is sudden, often short, and always harrowing. In other words, just how I would imagine that The Hunger Games should be faithfully handled on screen, especially now that I have a glimpse of where the second book is going (only a little over a hundred pages into it so far). True, Cuaron has had his misses (though, if the only good thing that came out of his Great Expectations is Pulp's song "Like a Friend", well, then that whole movie might have worth it anyhow). Still, maybe, if I cross my fingers long enough The Powers that Be will give Senor Cuaron a chance at Catching Fire. One can hope at any rate . . .

I have yet to read any of the advanced reviews of the Hunger Games film, so it is always possible that my pessimism shall be proven wrong. We'll find out soon enough . . .

Cheers.

Forms of Education (& their discontents)

"And how could I resist the old misogynist
Who brought me up according to a fantasy?" -"Bishonen" Momus

The Greek film Dogtooth centers on the lives of three young adults: two sisters and a brother, who are being subjected to a rather extreme sort of upbringing (or "homeschooling" as netflixs not so helpfully puts it). They have been denied nearly all contact with the outside world, or what little they do receivee, such as a Frank Sinatra song, is delivered to them only through their parents' filters.  Even everyday objects, such as table salt, are given new names that sound as much nonsense to the viewer.  (Not recalling my high school Greek, I do wonder if the film contains puns or wordplay which are lost on my foreign ears).  The three children know nothing except what they have been taught by their stern, cold parents.  They are physically well kept, healthy and living in a spacious modern home.  For their exercise they have a small outdoor pool, resembling a pond more than anything else, as well as a large, lushly green yard.  This yard is surrounded, of course, by towering walls. The parents employ tales of certain death outside this gated paradise in order to keep their children at bay.

While stories of deadly cats may sound fantastic, the parents are not above including violence among their tools of discipline.  When the eldest daughter is caught with contraband videos of popular Hollywood films, her father savagely beats her over the head with a video cassette.  These foreign objects were acquired from Christina the only outsider allowed inside their home.  Christina is hired by the parents in order to service the sexual needs of their son.  (A sure sign that you are watching a European film -- no American movie would so frankly acknowledge their child's sexual drives).  That said, no consideration is given to the daughters' desires.  Nor does Christina herself seem to take much pleasure from the arrangement.  Thus, she offers a deal to the eldest daughter: "lick" her, Christina, between her legs, and the daughter will receive gifts from the outside world.  The eldest daughter, in turn, coerces her younger sister into licking her.  Late in the film, it is suggested that the youngest is about to offer a similar enticement to her father, before he wakes up and nudges her aside.  For his part, the son is shown to have no emotional connection to his partner, caring for nothing but his own pleasure, which, naturally, is what sends Christina searching for other forms of satisfaction. 

Thus, each child learns from those with authority over them, thoroughly assimilating the only power structure they know.  Deeply ingrained within this perspective is the threat of violence overshadowing the children.  Ultimately, the eldest child will attempt rebellion against this system, only, she lacks any of the tools necessary to envision a type of life different than what she knows.  Without any means of escape from the home, literally or otherwise, she turns her anger inwards, internalizing her father's stories into self-mutilation.  She may not be aware of what she is doing, however, her only act of resistance, it turns out, is self-destruction.
The singer Momus has also explored such states of minds in his work, which follow similar patterns.  First, there is his song "Bishonen" which tell the story of a boy adopted at a young age by "an old Italian bachelor."  This stepfather is obsessed with the legends of the ancient East in general, and, in particular, with the idea of beautiful youths dying gloriously.  He trains his new ward for this archetype, conditioning him with "words [which] were to cut down and to kill the muscle-bound/[And] swords to fell my intellectual enemies."  Every facet of the boy's development is controlled.  He is groomed to be effeminate in his beauty, to outshine an inferior gender of women ("charm is essential to misogamy").  When the hero protests that he wishes a female for his bride, the stepfather instead insists on a male "retainer" for his companion.
As the decades pass, the stepson, now twenty-eight, begins to gain his independence.  (It is never stated how this occurs, though, I have always assumed that his elder simply died of old age).  He settles down with both a wife and a successful job at a merchant bank.  Yet, he is troubled.  He cannot shake pangs of guilt for abandoning his stepfather's path, for failing to die young and beautiful, as he was always taught was his destiny.  Laying awake at night, while his wife sleeps, he can only find one solution: to have a son of his own, one whom would be more deserving of this great honor, and who the hero will raise "to die young/
And lay him in the grave that you[the stepfather] prepared for me."  As in Dogtooth, the father's programing remains until the end.  The cycles of violence keeps spinning, while the indoctrination of the next generation is ensured. 

 Finally, in "Pygmalism", a riff on the legend of Pygmalion, Pygmalion the play, and, presumably, My Fair Lady, there is a portrait of direct confrontation with the tormentor.  Here the singer is a creation of a certain Herr Professor Pyg.  He has obliterated any trace of her previously existence, leaving behind only what he wants her to be.  He is so entirely successful that she is left with only "memories [which]have been implanted/No ancestors you can trace/An accent from no place invented."  Here is fulfillment of all the wildest dreams of the parents of Dogtooth or the stepfather of the Bishonen: complete mastery.  This child knows nothing, but what her father has taught her, has no frame of reference outside of the teacher's.  He is her lover as well, filling her with the breath of life, as well as more sticky substances.  Simply put, she is nothing more than "a figment of his huge imagination."

Or is she?  Even within the limited knowledge she has, she can find an outlet for rebellion.  Her spirit lashes back while her hatred simmers.  At night she finds herself alone, singing the songs of conditioning he has taught her while "Cutting up with scissors/All the stupid sexy clothes he's bought me."  Unlike the daughter of Dogtooth this woman is not willing to simply turn her rage inwards, but outwards, back at her tormentor.  First she vows to prove her intellectual superiority, beating him at his own games, before driving a blade into his chest, reminding him how "the things we whip can whip us."  A bloody liberation it may be, but it remains a liberation nonetheless.

Or does it?  After the creator is dead, is the creature any better?  Is the poor soul any less scarred or haunted than the other conditioned children?  How can a figment survive outside the mind which dreamt it?  Or has she become now even more truly her father's child?

(B., if you're reading this, and I never said it before, you are so right about Grant Morrison ripping off this song for his own purposes.  You'd think then that he could at least meet his deadlines . . . ).

"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" indeed . . .

And, next time, I'll try for something not quite so disturbing.
Cheers all