The Hunger Games film thread

[pendell]

I agree with your last post; I believe we have a consensus. Between the two of us, any way :).

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Tyndmyr]

In my experience "enemy of my enemy" is a poor basis for a lasting relationship and rarely survives the common enemy by much. That goes double in a winner-take-all scenario.

At any rate, this discussion here has prompted me to research, and so far as I can tell from online commentary Rue really was trapped by an enemy and really was murdered and not by accident. So I misjudged her on that account. But my estimation of her sneakiness and cunning remains unchanged, and she is not someone I would turn my back on once our common enemy was eliminated.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I had no suspicions that such a thing was going to happen. They took obvious pains to carefully draw mustaches on the bad kids, and arranged things such that Katnis pretty obviously didn't have to kill anyone who wasn't "bad". Rue was pretty obviously set up to be the innocent girl. The other interpretation is interesting, but she's fairly obviously just there to give Katnis a push.

[pendell]

I had no suspicions that such a thing was going to happen. They took obvious pains to carefully draw mustaches on the bad kids, and arranged things such that Katnis pretty obviously didn't have to kill anyone who wasn't "bad". Rue was pretty obviously set up to be the innocent girl. The other interpretation is interesting, but she's fairly obviously just there to give Katnis a push.

I thought that undercut what I thought was the message of the movie , which was that the only winning move with regard to the Hunger Games was not to play at all. If you start designating some tributes as "bad" and some tributes as "good", then follow from that to it is okay to kill the "bad guys" so the "good guys" will win the games -- how is that any different from what the Careers are doing? It's falling into the masquerade and trap that's been sustaining panem for decades, the justification of kids killing each other for the entertainment of the watchers.

As towards Rue ... I would ask that you show me one action she took in the context of the arena that wasn't for her benefit. Some situation that gave someone else a better chance while worsening her own.

Show me that, and I'll believe she's innocent and selfless.

As from Battlestar Galactica

Apollo has Baltar's number. He accuses Baltar of never having made one truly selfless act in his entire life. Gaius Baltar has only ever acted in the best interests of Gaius Baltar.

Baltar: "My people can't get representation because I personally haven't passed Lee Adama's selfless altruism test. I haven't been goody-goody and worn a badge of honor."

Lee: "I don't think you've passed Gaius Baltar's test. Go ahead, look me in the eye and tell me about the time you made a truly heroic act of conscience which helped you not even in the slightest. Tell me, I'll even believe you!"

Baltar: "You're right. I wouldn't trust me either."

Perhaps you see differently, but I don't see that in Rue. She's displayed selflessness back in her home district, but selflessness to family is one thing, selflessness to stranger tributes who must die if you are to live is another. All her actions that *I* see -- with respect to the arena and the games, at any rate -- are to improve her own chances. Employing a scavenger strategy, she naturally seeks out a predator to follow behind. The two make a good partnership -- but it's a poor lion who trusts a jackal when he's wounded.

I don't see any innocents in the Hunger Games. If anything, I believe that the Hunger Games is about loss of innocent. You go in a child, and you either come out a survivor willing to do whatever's necessary to stay alive or you don't come out at all.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Reverent-One]

I thought that undercut what I thought was the message of the movie , which was that the only winning move with regard to the Hunger Games was not to play at all. If you start designating some tributes as "bad" and some tributes as "good", then follow from that to it is okay to kill the "bad guys" so the "good guys" will win the games -- how is that any different from what the Careers are doing?

Well, the Careers aren't making any moral judgements. They don't think X is a good person and Y is a bad person, they see X as a useful person (for the time being) and Y as useless and a target. By painting the Careers as the "bad guys" by making them vicious, possibly psychotic jerks that buy into the corrupt system though, it makes it easier for the reader/watcher to support the protaganist.

Of course, as I've said eariler in the thread, the fact that they do this is why I didn't buy the idea that the book was written to deconstruct the violence in YA novels. Though now that I've read the later books, I can see how those ones were written with that in mind.