Was Hunger Games type media political propaganda and brainwashing?

[Dom Cruise]

Remember that spate of Hunger Games and Hunger Games inspired YA fiction and movies? You had Hunger Games, Divergent etc, for years it was a popular genre in YA books and film.

Looking back on it today I can't help but wonder if it was brainwashing a generation of young people, in particular young women, into a desire to row row fight da powah, as well as appealing to their narcissism with chosen one narratives, from what I understand Divergent especially leans hard into the protagonist being a super ultra special snowflake.

The only one of these I experienced myself was seeing the first Hunger Games movie, I hated it, it gave me this creepy feeling that I didn't understand at the time but later frequently feel when watching modern Woke media, ie that feel when you know you're watching something that isn't just entertainment but is propaganda.

What's especially eerie looking back is in Hunger Games one of the first things that plants the seed for the revolution is an image of a dead black person being seen by everyone, this coming out the same year as the Trayvon Martin shooting, but it would have been filmed before that happened, really makes you think.

The timing of it all is also suspicious, you have the popularity of a genre about young people fighting to topple evil governments, then suddenly you have Woke young people wanting to topple the government, all in the name of multinational corporations, the type of corporations putting out movies like The Hunger Games, again, really makes you think.

 

[PaulBearer]

Go on carry on, you're really close.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The Hunger Games was a thoughtful work of literature and worldbuilding. It was inspired by an experience the author had flipping between two channels, one that was showing a game show and one that was showing Iraq war footage. She took the concept of gladiator games and the Minotaur myth from antiquity and combined that with a modern (post-apocalyptic) setting to make a sort of interesting myth. The idea of districts that have their own cultures based around specific sectors feeding a parasitic cosmopolitan core feels a lot like ancient imperialism with a decadent imperial capital feeding on tribes that provide specific luxuries.

You could maybe criticize it as a weak bit of dystopian literature if you take the view that dystopias should always criticize some aspect of real society, which The Hunger Games didn't really do. Alternatively, you could take it as just being a fantasy/adventure novel, and have fun.

Similarly, there was the Uglies series of books, which didn't have the 'fight each other" theme but instead played around with a setting where people's social status is rooted in their beauty and fame. I don't recall it really having anything to say either, just a thought experiment and some really interesting material attached talking about the evolutionary psychology that underlays beauty.

The later works were shitty because they were copycats of the formula, just like how 99% of all fantasy is shitty rip-offs of Tolkien.

I don't see any propaganda intent behind the originals. They're entertainment books for teenagers and middle-aged women.

 

[DicksOutForKiwigglers]

The Hunger Games was a thoughtful work of literature and worldbuilding.

Nah, the bitch watched Battle Royale once and decided to copy it as a shitty YA series.

 

[vulg]

Looking back on it today I can't help but wonder if it was brainwashing a generation of young people, in particular young women, into a desire to row row fight da powah, as well as appealing to their narcissism with chosen one narratives

yeah same, when I saw StarWars I identified so hard with the ZOG protagonist (((luke skywalker))) that it instilled a previously non existing hatred for nazis and totalitarians.

then suddenly you have Woke young people wanting to topple the government,

right! I’m also really fucking terrified of 13 year girls leading an uprising too! usually I get laughed at when I say this but thanks for having the courage to talk about this.

 

[The Spice boi]

All Hollywood media is propaganda. And propaganda is just information with a bias towards something.

When I say "Don't think of an elephant" that's propaganda. It gets you to think a certain way

 

[Pixy]

You might be going a bit too deep into the schizo end here. Hunger Games was the Harry Potter of its time (though perhaps not passed over by publishers in favour of a dolphin book); spawing a plethora of other dystopic-setting novels with teenage/child protagonists who had to survive some sort of 'trials' to win some sort of prize which ultimately isn't worth it.

Perhaps they weren't copy-cats, but rather readers finding books with similar themes that they enjoyed in the Hunger Games series and then popularising those books. Either way, it became a brief fad, much like all those natural disaster survival movies in the early 2010s/late 2000s.

 

[Dom Cruise]

One thing I forgot to mention is Coriolanus Snow's whole speech about hope being the only thing more powerful than fear, which could be read as a metaphor for what the movie itself is doing, as well as Woke in general, convince people they're fighting the power when in reality they doing exactly what the elites want them to do.

 

[Drkinferno72]

It's for the #youaretheresistance crowd

 

[Santiago_Nasar]

They are shitty books made to appeal for the period of time were teens want to rebel against their parents, and are looking for an identity, considering how little adults truly grown up these days, its less about propaganda and more about feedback loop caused by narcisist teens/adults that want to feel they are part of something bigger or a actually upper dupper important when in reality they are just annoying people nobody likes, they read about these stories and ended up writting more of the same shit.

 

[Mealy Mouth Spittle]

I actually really liked that series and perhaps even like it a bit more now given everything that is going on now. You have these degenerates in the capital dictating how the normal people live and looking down on them. The normal people struggle while the elites in the capital live luxurious lives that are unfathomable to the virtual slaves in the district. Blood sport for their entertainment and yet they still see themselves as the "good guys" -- the sophisticated crowd compared to the uncultured laborers who work to provide their every need and want. I see quite a few parallels with the way society is currently run today.

Unfortunately, what most kids took from that movie was the "fight to the death" hunger games part or the love triangle and none of the politics that led up to it or the eventual realization that the resistance leader was really no different than Snow. There's plenty of good criticism of society and even human nature in general within the story. The movies didn't put the focus on that. The books, of course, explored it a little more.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

Hunger Games turned my middle school library into a warehouse of shitty clones trying to be like it

 

[Troonos]

No, retard. It was a warning against the current scenario, where the elite establishment is trying to create an underclass (unvaccinated, anti-authoritarians) that doesn't have the same rights (going outdoors, attending social gatherings, having a job) as the overclass and is forcefully segregated by those in power in an effort to bring on a future where the underclass is forced to live in squalor (pods) and accept a tiny pittance of food (bug burgers and garbage juice) that the Capitol is generous enough to give while they are free to gather (unmasked) and enjoy steak. The overclass of course gets to participate in unbridled hedonism (LGBTQIAA2+, rioting and destruction without consequences) and live in prosperity without working as the underclass is used for slave labor as they continue to work and be robbed of their tax dollars (infinite stimulus, unemployment insurance, UBI). It's not fiction. We're almost there.

 

[Neil]

What the fuck are you talking about?

There's been "fight the power" type media since the damn 70's. Damn near every TV show comedy made in the 90s and 2000s was meant to piss off republican boomer conservative evangelicals to some extent. Things like punk rock and metal exist for the same purpose.

Are you seriously pretending that college or teenaged protestors are only a thing NOW? You talk a lot about how great the 2000s were, did you just happen to fall asleep during the protests against the Iraq War/George Bush's entire presidency and the Occupy movements?

 

[Dom Cruise]

What the fuck are you talking about?

There's been "fight the power" type media since the damn 70's. Damn near every TV show comedy made in the 90s and 2000s was meant to piss off republican boomer conservative evangelicals to some extent.

Are you seriously pretending that college or teenaged protestors are only a thing NOW? You talk a lot about how great the 2000s were, did you just happen to fall asleep during the protests against the Iraq War/George Bush's entire presidency and the Occupy movements?

No? Where did I say any of that? Where did I say Hunger Games was the first "fight the power" type of media? Where did I say college or teenage aged protestors are only thing a now?

I was specially talking about the Woke generation of the 2010s, who would have been still in their teens when Hunger Games was starting up and entering early adulthood around the time the movie series was still going and around the time you started see Woke rhetoric cropping up in a big way.

I am not saying Hunger Games is the sole reason for Woke, just that's that it's an example of Hollywood helping to push the culture in that generation.

If you want to talk about leftist culture and protests in the 2000s that's a different subject because that would have been a different generation.

 

[StraightShooter2]

It was bullshit and just a fairy tale for stupid and illiterate people who'd get their ass kicked hard if they ever got into a real "fight" outside of Super Smash Bros.

Not much more to say on it than that.

 

[Ita Mori]

You didn't have Divergent for "years".
Those films tanked and Shailene Woodley is an unbearable person who must give great head for Aaron Rodgers to keep her ass around.
No one liked those films and the weirdo chicks who liked all that YA crap laughed at how shitty they were, second only to the film adaption of The Mortal Instruments.

What's especially eerie looking back is in Hunger Games one of the first things that plants the seed for the revolution is an image of a dead black person being seen by everyone, this coming out the same year as the Trayvon Martin shooting, but it would have been filmed before that happened, really makes you think.

Get help. You're seeing things even Marjorie Taylor Greene would call crazy.

'Young rebellious teens fighting old boomers' has been a fantasy trope since the 60s...and I mean the 1860s.
All of the consoomer shit you love to eat abuses it; anime, Star Wars, Disney films; all of it.
Why? Because it sells.
Teens are little narcissists who think their naive idealism can save the world, so media that panders to their power-fantasy is going to make a buck or two.

Seriously, get help.
It was nothing more than studios trying to obtain the next Harry Potter.

You talk a lot about how great the 2000s were, did you just happen to fall asleep during the protests against the Iraq War/George Bush's entire presidency and the Occupy movements?

Of course not; he was a teen in the 00s and thinks propaganda for any cause wasn't a thing until HE noticed it was a thing.

 

[Bad Take Crucifier]

You think Hollywood shitting out hundreds of films about being oppressed and helpless really happens by accident?

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Posts like these are the reason why they’re trying to make The Lord Of The Rings “politically correct” in present day.

 

[seri0us]

All Hollywood media is propaganda. And propaganda is just information with a bias towards something.

When I say "Don't think of an elephant" that's propaganda. It gets you to think a certain way

You are now breathing manually.