Mediaculture: Reflections on the effect of media and culture on our faith

On occasion a book and/or film catches the imagination of a large audience. This can provide insight into our society but also nudge people to think in new ways.

Now a popular film, The Hunger Games is based on the best-selling young adult novel by Suzanne Collins. It’s the first of a trilogy that includes Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

For any who aren’t familiar with The Hunger Games phenomenon, the first book came out in 2008. Collins says she got the idea when channel surfing and flipped between a reality show and footage of the Iraq War. The book is narrated by Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem, where North America is now. The country is ruled from a metropolis called the Capitol. Every year a boy and a girl aged 12-18 is chosen by lottery from each of 12 districts to take part in the Hunger Games, a televised competition in which the lone survivor of the 24 contestants wins.

Katniss, who is skilled as a hunter, takes her younger sister’s place in the competition. She represents the moral voice of the novel. But the situation is so insane it’s hard to imagine remaining moral at all.

The book is written as an engaging story, but it implies other messages, including a critique of violent entertainment. The tricky thing about that is its use of violent entertainment to speak against violent entertainment.

Collins largely succeeds. Marty Troyer, pastor of Houston Mennonite Church, has written a thoughtful analysis of Collins’ critique of violence (http://blog.chron.com/thepeacepastor/2012/03/hunger-games-indicting-violence/).

As he points out, she is good at helping readers feel the effects of violence. It never seems gratuitous. And you can’t help wondering, What would I do in such an insane situation?

We in this country are largely protected from such lethal situations, though soldiers and many in poor, crime-ridden areas face such dangers every day. For them, it’s not a fictional fantasy but all too real.

The movie version is weaker because it cannot include the inner turmoil of Katniss and she seeks a moral path through this insanity. It also softens the violence of the book, mostly, I imagine, to achieve a PG-13 rating. While faithful to the book’s story and well-acted, the film lacks the emotional core of the book. It never matches the suspense the book creates. We watch Katniss deal with this ordeal, but we don’t feel her struggle in much depth.

Nevertheless, The Hunger Games should help us think about the violence we’ve come to accept and the violent entertainment we consume so readily. I hope it makes us hungrier for a saner world where peace is sought.

Another film this spring presents a different take on young people’s struggles with violence. Bully, which I haven’t seen, is a documentary that follows five kids and families over the course of a school year. The film confronts bullying’s most tragic outcomes, including the stories of two families who’ve lost children to suicide and a mother who waits to learn the fate of her 14-year-old daughter, incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus.

The film received an R rating for language. The Weinstein Co. protested this rating, which will prevent many of its intended audience from seeing it. Director Lee Hirsch said he declined to edit the documentary’s offensive language because it would diminish the painful reality of bullying.

Bully depicts not a future fantasy but a current reality.

Gordon Houser is associate editor of The Mennonite.