I wanted to mentioned and encourage people who like the Hunger Games series to watch the Battle Royale series.

Battle Royale is about a Japanese student resistance movement where the students go on strike, and the government rounds them up and forces them to kill one another, while the second film is about the attempts of those who survive the Battle Royale going on to form a revolutionary organization.. and another wave of students being kidnapped and forced to come kill them.

The second film in particular was deeply radical, and has a focus on the outrages of imperialism. The revolutionaries constantly discuss their revolution as being the same as the people of Palestine and many other countries. And ultimately

*SPOILER ALERT*

they end up regrouping in Palestine for another attempts at revolution, where the third movie would have launched from, had its director not died before it could be produced.

***

The second film was attacked and vilified for its politics, being labelled anti-American in post 9/11 America.. and was buried. It is a gem that few people have seen.

Enjoyed Mike's thoughts on the film.

I'd read it initially as being pretty radical for a Hollywood film, and having all sorts of thoughts about "repressive tolerance" and Hollywood Marxism - then realised the right were also claiming it.

It's interesting and I think summed up quite well here:

<blockquote>"In some ways, this picture of social hostility straddles the populist terrain which both left or right can appeal to."</blockquote>



Battle Royale was great, should get around to the sequel...
Have people seen Series 7: The Contenders? That's an independent US film about reality TV with strong similarities to The Hunger Games (moreso than to Battle Royale.)

Wrote a review of the film here, a couple of weeks back, that falls into a couple of leftist traps:
http://workersparty.org.nz/2012/04/05/movie-review-the-hunger-games/

TBH the only thing that rang alarm bells on an initial watch were the campy costumes of the Capitol. There's an element of the "heartland" against the amoral rootless cosmopolitans there.

One thing I find interesting is how it's described as "Big Government" by the right. The books talk about how the heaviest direct control in District 12 is focused just on making sure they make their coal quota, and in a lot of ways (especially compared to the more brutally oppressed, darker-skinned District 11) people are left to their own devices - for better or worse.

I can completely see how both left and right can find things in this movie to their taste, but the response of one of my coworkers was pretty interesting. He's apolitical, but open-minded and always curious about my Occupy activities. So he went to the movie here in New York City right by Union Square, and walked up to the square afterwards to find everything closed off by lots of swaggering cops. He reported that it gave him pause to see a movie about a dystopian police state and then to walk around the corner and find that he seemed to live in an actual police state.

--

Separately, somewhere I was reading that some right-wing audiences were outraged to find that the sympathetic characters from District 11 were portrayed by African-American actors (which I thought was pretty clear in the books).

My impression is that it was more ignorant teens than consciously right-wing audiences, something about that here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/04/11/_racist_hunger_games_tweeters_speak_out_deny_being_racist.html

The right seems to have more claimed it as a portrait of "Big Government."

Mike E writes:

<blockquote>"But we should also understand how Christian conservatives, Tea-Party populists (and even perhaps white nationalists) might view this same stream of cultural depiction "</blockquote>

I actually don't think this is an accurate analysis of the film at all.

Almost a third of the film centers around the friendship between Katniss and Rue, a younger contestant who is a New Afrikan womyn.

Katniss is from District 12 which corresponds to modern-day Appalachia and Rue is from District 11 which corresponds to the modern-day Black Belt, specifically Georgia. Both districts are portrayed as impoverished colonies of the Capitol. In fact, in the fictional "Hunger Game" universe, it is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, light-skinned elites from the wealthy, privileged District 1 who are portrayed as greedy, sadistic and opportunistic) The two womyn band together as sisters and comrades.

Katniss's friendship with Rue deliberately parallels her relationship with her younger biological sister) Rue is sadistically murdered, in the course of the Games, by a white male antagonist from District 1. There is a very emotional and powerful scene where Katniss is seen giving her fallen comrade Rue a makeshift funeral rite, a display that provokes mass-riots among (mostly-Black) crowds in District 11, where they rise up and attack Penam security forces.

In fact it is this event in the story that causes President Snow's anxiety about Katniss's popularity as an "underdog". Later in the film, a black male Tribute from District 11 named Thresh refuses to kill Katniss due to her loyal relationship to Rue. Also, like in Battle Royal, the sadistic subject of the Hunger Games is explained as a punishment for a past failed revolution against the wealthy elites.

There are plenty of legitimate cultural criticisms you could make of The Hunger Games, (including anti-urban populism) but white supremacy is not one of them. Katniss is portrayed in the film, by the blonde-haired Euro-Appalachian actress Jennifer Lawrence, but in the novel, she is an olive-skinned Native womyn.

Eric's description of Battle Royales sounds similar to Peter Watkin's 1970 film Punishment Park:

<blockquote>The movie takes place in 1970. The Vietnam War is escalating and United States President Richard Nixon has just decided on a "secret" bombing campaign in Cambodia. Faced with a growing anti-war movement, President Nixon decrees a state of emergency based on the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which authorizes federal authorities, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security". Members from the anti-war movement, civil rights movement, feminist movement, conscientious objectors, and Communist party, mostly university students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at their top capacity, the convicted face the option of spending their full conviction time in federal prison or three days at Punishment Park. There, they will have to traverse 53 miles of the hot California desert in three days, without water or food, while being chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers as part of their field training. If they succeed and reach the American flag at the end of the course, they will be set free. If they fail by getting "arrested", they will serve the remainder of their sentence in federal prison.[2]

European filmmakers follow two groups of detainees as part of their documentary; while Group 637 starts their three day ordeal and learn the rules of the "game", the civilian tribunal begins hearings on Group 638. The film makers conduct interviews with members of Group 637 and their chasers, documenting how both sides become increasingly hostile towards the other. Meanwhile, back at the tent, the film crew documents the trial of Group 638 as they argue their case in vain for resisting the war in Vietnam. The first group splinters into one group that refuses to accept the rules of the game and tries to resist with violence and another group that goes on towards the goal. The violent group are all killed. As the others come near the flag they find a group of police waiting for them; it turns out that there is no way to win the Punishment Park course as the system controls it from start to finish.[3]</blockquote>

from Wikipedia.

Yeah, I agree that the film can just as easily be appreciated through a rural right-populist anti-federalist lens as through a revolutionary communist lens. I just don't necessarily see the white nationalist undertones...if we are going to have a serious study of the subjective reaction of the mass-audience of this film, we will have to take into account the fact that it provoked outrage from broad segments of the reactionary white population (when racial tensions are already running high) due to the portrayal of a strong friendship between Black and White womyn.

Our own review, very similar on many points: http://feudeprairie.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/au-sujet-du-film-hunger-games/
Il like the idea of individual revolt leading to solidarity and mass struggle for liberation present on the film.

** POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT**

This has very little to do with the article above, so I'm sorry if it's inappropriate.

Just because I like to be radically honest and wish everyone was, I'm going to tell you a horrible thing about me: I read these books and loved them. LOVED them. I ate them up and finished all three in a matter of a few days. I loved the rebellion and I loved that Katniss was a super-reluctant hero and I loved that people were so split down the middle about what they were willing to do about the problems of oppression and the horrible Capital. I also loved that there was overt discussion about what types of rebellions are ok, which methods of fighting back are acceptable, and which are not. Loved it.

None of that is what's horrible. I'll get to it soon, I promise.

I'm an English teacher, too, you know? So I feel like I read things closely, just like I teach my students to do. I feel like I read them critically, just like I teach my students to do.

When I found out there was a black actress playing Rue in the film, I was not shocked or outraged. That was fine. I was confused about why people were so mad about it, though, so I looked into it. It turns out they were mad because they thought the character was white.

Well, so did I.

I was not shocked that a black actress was playing Rue, but I was shocked that Rue's character was black in the book itself. Apparently, I'm subconsciously racist enough to completely have skipped over that fact. In reality, there are multiple descriptions of Rue and the people of her district as "dark-skinned" and whatnot; in my mind, there was nothing but white people.

How awful is that?

This is not the first time I've confronted some subconscious racism in myself. I guess the only good thing I can say about it is that I realized it. I kind of have to grapple now with whether I'm a horrible person, whether or not I can trust myself to read accurately (!!!) and what exactly I'm supposed to do about this pretty disgusting part of myself.....

There it is. I'm glad the people who are consciously racist at least prompted the realization for me, even if I wish they would never have become so hateful in the first place.

Interesting, post, Quorri.

Not sure you should be so hard on yourself though. Race as a "theme" as we grasp it today is really not very prominent--if it is even present--in the novels. Am I wrong? There is skin color, of course. But, I don't recall racial lines or racism or racial stratification ever really being discussed or called attention to as such. Yes, it's implied that District 11 is composed of mostly people who are not white, but this aspect isn't really developed, is it? (Perhaps I'm missing something.)

"As for the portrait of the Capitol…Aren’t just about all the people there white? Not that thier whiteness this negates the potential for an anti-urban populist reading (or appropriation), anymore than having a few people of color in the background means a film can’t be racist. But there doesn’t seem to be an equation here of the Capitol with “multiculturalism”/”race mixing” per se, right? Though how the Gaga-esque-ness of the culture figures demands more thought….."

Also in the film, the character of Cinna, a character from the Capitol, is portrayed by Lenny Kravitz, an actor of mixed Bahamanian-African and Jewish-Russian ethnicity. Cinna is portrayed (in the film at least) as a "metrosexual" urbanite who is not only comradely towards Katniss but who strives to help her cope and survive with her awful circumstances. In no way is his urbanism or cosmopolitanism portrayed as a negative character trait.

No one's saying "The Hunger Games" is on the same level as, say, "Battleship Potemkin", but comparing it to "Gone With the Wind" is a misstep.

For starters, the same network that described Nazis as "civil rights activists" endorsed The Hunger Games as a portrayal of big government. I largely agree with Ghan's analysis of the story, but it's not enough; part of our work is understanding how people come to incorrect ideas.

Eric, a few things on Battle Royale:

1) the first film is based on a book, that was then made into a graphic novel.

2) The director of the first film only shot one scene for the second before he died, his son continued the movie.

3) The film is available in Netflix as DVD as well for purchase from Amazon. It has not been seen because, quite frankly, inspite of the inspiring content, it is a bad, unwatchable film - and I loved the first and love pulp and earnest movies that others consider "bad"... I mean the production values alone were a notch above made-for-tv, it was clearly done by the son of a director trying to cash in.

On how hunger games relate to it - I will say the comparison limited to the "kill each other" aspect, that is the psychological terror aspect. But comparing the two (the books, I haven't seen the Hunger Games movie yet) is a fanboyish hipster crap. Not only are they written to two entirely different audiences, but what they are ultimately about is two completely separate things: Battle Royale is more of an allegory to capitalist workplaces and even schools-as-preparation-to-the-workplace, while Hunger Games is dystopia, that is world that is supposed to be worse than ours. Both speak to great preoccupations of their societies - some of them unspoken except in fiction. Both are also escapism - they tell us it could be worse.

@Mike - it seems to me, based on Ghan responses and your back and forth, that you were unsuccessful in transmiting what you wanted to say. I read the same thing as Ghan read into the bringing up "Gone with the Wind" - however, I can see with your further explanation what you meant to do. I mean this in the spirit of betterment, and also because I often end up in the same place when writing and find myself in the same position as you have here, but unlike when it happens to me, I have a benefit of non-involvement to make it clearer in the heat of the moment, so to speak. And also, having read you long before the Kasama Project existed, I do trust you when you say you are seeking nuance, because well, you do

That said, in the spirit of nuance, I think both of you are touching upon some truths, but I think committing too much to a single road.

It is a well known phenomenon that trans-culturally, people imagine characters in fiction as being like themselves. It is in fact, an area of study of the psychological impacts of white supremacy when non-white people do not do this expected process, and instead identify characters as white.

So I think it is a mistake to view the ideological significance of a piece of artwork without seeing first its context, and in this process, also how it is viewed by its peers. This is a problem I have with criticism in general, and Zizekian criticism in the particular, which is that it becomes in itself a projection of the critic's own preocupations, using the audience as leverage.

Hunger Games (the book) is meant, primarily, as entertainment. It is not a pedagogical text, the author has said interviews that the origin was purely artistic (ie channel surfing and being unsettled by the contrast between a reality tv show and the iraq war coverage) and the themes she has said she touches upon can be called universal themes - poverty, war, depravation, love, family, loss, mortality, morality - and hence can be projected upon by the reader (or the watcher) to mean anything - specially in a day and age that turns Obama into a socialist, Mitt Romney into a fascist, and which the concept of "inverse racism" is mainstream, that is a society that cares more about labels than content.

But even works that have a more consciously pedagogical goal can be interpreted by the reader to mean what they want it to mean. For example, "Brave New World" - the first modern dystopian work - is a direct criticism of capitalism, to the point of the dates being measure "After Ford". You you ask any libertarian and he or she will tell you it is a celebration of the individual and individualism, and you ask any liberal and they will tell you it was like Animal Farm, a critique of totalitarianism. Does this invalidate the critique of capitalism?

A problem I perceive in this discussion is the leftist belief, or less charitably self-righteousness, on possessing a monopoly on the universal themes of solidarity, empathy, rebellion, etc, and when these are addressed in a positive, but not explicit manner, then they must be populism. No. Hitler loved his dog and Eva Braun, and his comrades from before the Beer Putsch and from the trenches of WWI. In fact, he had a portrait of the British soldier who failed to kill him in WWI in his office (poor guy, Captain Hindsight did a number on him!) These sentiments and feelings are no less real, touching, and human because they were felt by the most terrible political leader of the 20th Century. Hence, the appeal of Hunger Games, their appropriation, by conservative elements proves nothing, or rather, it doesn't prove anything beyond universal appeal.

In fact, in Stormfront (am not linking to the threads because of security, ie kasama as referrer), there are the exact mirror images of these discussions, with some fascists seeing in the movie the ills of liberal government and racial miscegenation, others arguing that the whitewashing in the movie is needed to counter the blackwashing in the general media, etc etc etc. Thread after thread, the arguments are almost a word for word bizarro version of what has been said here, and elsewhere among leftists, about this piece of entertainment. Perhaps their unique thing is that it should be boycotted because it is a product of "Jewlywood" - I have heard no argument among commies that the film should be boycotted because it is a product of capitalists. In fact, no one raises anything around this. Until now:

Lets not forget that whatever meaning and symbolism can be extracted, this movie is less work of art, and more commercial product intended to generate profits for the investors in the project. And like most blockbusters, to generate superprofits that are at times so large as to make imperialism seem benign. This requires careful calculation - you cannot alienate people too much, and yet you want a statement to be made that compels people to write about it. Mission accomplished I say.

This, of course, is true of all film produced in capitalism, but it is specially true of blockbusters, or films that aim to be blockbusters. So ultimately the intended effect is not to generate a specific opinion, but to reinforce the prexisting ones - reactionary or progressive, conservative or liberal, communist or fascist, anti-racist or racist. Of course, this necessitates to irk the liminal - its easier to develop loyalties when there are opponents.

In fact, like with Avatar, whatever "shortcomings" are perceived are related to pre-existing shortcomings in society at large, or whatever positives a reflection and projection of one own's hopes. We know this phenomenon all too well: its what creates leadership cults and fragments the left into shibboleth sects.

Meanwhile most people laugh, cried, shivered, rooted for, and were torn apart, and when the weekend was over, over the watercooler, they spoke about the next blockbuster...

One of the most bitter ironies is our own real world's celebrity chattering class, which managed to come up with an utterly demented idea you can find by going to your favorite search engine and typing "The Fatness of Katniss".

Yes, you heard right, some of these goons actually staked out the idea that, for some reason, a hardy Appalachian girl should be portrayed by a heroin-chic actress!

Someone really needs to pin such people to the wall and ask them if they are not being the ultimate argument against themselves by posing the idea that a 100% rail-thin population is the only valid portrayal of dystopia, as that also apparently happens to be their objective!

thankyou very useful
actually helped me for myasssignment