Violence and the Media As Commented on by Suzanne Collins

During my Easter visit to my in-laws I just finished the two sequels to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. These are very well-written books with gripping plots. While I was left a bit disappointed with the ending of Mockingjay, both books certainly construct a frighteningly intelligent dystopia. The reader can't help but cheer the main characters to fight against it.

The two main ideas that gripped me with these three novels, and this becomes increasingly clear in Catching Fire and Mockingjay, is the relationship between the media, spectacle and violence. There is almost no violence un these books that does not take place in front of the camera, at least until the third book, and even in Mockingjay, our Heroine Katniss is part of a military squad whose main purpose is to engage in light combat and be filmed.

Now I'm the first person to admit that I enjoy some violent fare every now and then (especially first-person shooters), but I think it's also true that violent media can get a bit overwhelming. The Hunger Games novels makes it clear how violent entertainment can also be a way to control a population. This isn't just with the annual choosing of young people to fight in the Hunger Games, a process designed to demoralize the subjugated districts in the novel. The fact of the game itself becomes an all-consuming phenomenon; even if a resident doesn't want to watch the games, he/she can't help but because it's televised so widely. It becomes the overriding culture of the moment.

I'm reminded a little of the Superbowl. This annual game is always one of the biggest media events of the year, and, let's face it, it's kind of violent. The Super Bowl certainly isn't Roman Colosseum-level violence — we thankfully haven't gone to that level of depravity — but the game isn't gentle. Now I'm not trying to condemn the Superbowl here; all I'm saying is that there does seem to be something in the human psyche that desires this kind of experience, a mass-level hyper-competitive spectacle. Thank God we have something like the Superbowl, actually. While players do get hurt, at least their well-paid participation is by choice. The losers do walk off the field sadly, but at least, unlike in ancient Rome, they get to walk off the field.

I'm reminded also about stories I heard about the early years of the Civil War, where families would picnic and watch the battles unfold. Whatever the cause of this, we do seem to be a society that enjoys watching violence. Where does it come from? Frustration with modern life? The necessary suppression of the id by the superego? Whatever the cause, it's a part of human civilization. The good part about books like The Hunger Games and its sequels is that it points out the unsavory aspect of this, while also reminding us that we're participating in the spectacle by reading and enjoying the book.

Why The Popularity of Utopias and Dystopias?

The latest YA novel craze is dystopian fiction. This sub-genre of science fiction has knocked vampire-relationship fiction off it's pedestal, which had pushed to the ground boy-wizard-goes-to-school-and-fights-enemies fiction. I find this trend interesting because it's really a turn from fluffy style fiction (sorry Twilight fans) to a fiction with ideas.

I may get in trouble for saying this, but vampire fiction to me was always about sex and abstinence. The cravings of the vampire were a metaphor for, well, you know. I understood the popularity of these books for that reason but never related to them. Dystopias come from a more universal place. I can't imagine anybody with some sort of political bent hasn't heard a news item and felt a cold chill about the direction the country is heading. Who hasn't worried about what would happen to our countries of one's political foes seized power? Hence the popularity of dystopias.

The best dystopic fiction takes a trend happening currently and projects it as guiding principle for an invented society. Some examples of this are Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale which is about elements of the religious right taking over an America, depleted after nuclear war. Margaret Atwood speculated what would happen if the religious right took control of what remained of America, giving it a plausible premise of post-nuclear chaos, and the repression that would occur.

From another point of view is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World which is about a world taken over by industrialization yet people are controlled not by the repression and secret police of The Handmaid's Tale but by their own pleasure principle. People are genetically engineered for certain jobs, with their abilities and especially intelligence modified for menial work or more advanced tasks. Yet everyone is somewhat satisfied by the ready and legal availability of drugs as well as a tradition of easy recreational sex.

Interestingly, I think Brave New World has been quite prophetic in the sense that it portrayed a society willing to give up much in exchange for pleasure. I consider how our society has given up communal life to a large degree in exchange for the pleasure of the virtual world. This began with television (or maybe radio), but western society has done a remarkable shift in its willingness to participate in public life. The “front porch” where we used to participate in neighborhood life is no longer our actual front porch, it's the internet and especially websites like Facebook.

In this vein, M.T. Anderson's YA book Feed is about a world where corporate advertising, especially internet advertising, has become a dominating factor of life. Approximately three quarters of young people have a “feed chip” surgically implanted in their skulls which enable them to receive advertising at all times based on their location and what they're actually thinking. As well, the young people in the book have developed a jaded attitude towards life in general; the book begins with a complaint about how a visit to the moon “sucked”.

Feed is a creepy vision, made much more frightening when one considers that this is actually happening with the location-based applications on most smartphones. Even in the last couple of days it has been revealed that Apple Computer stores the location of every iPhone user on a file which in turn is backed up to your local computer with iTunes. Does Apple actually read this file and learn exactly where every user of an iPhone has been? The company is mum about this so far, but suffice to say, this is a troubling corporate trend. (Disclaimer: I was an IT technician specializing in Apple computers in the 1990s.)

The Hunger Games novels are another YA dystopia based on control because of the scarcity of natural resources. The remnants of the United States are broken into twelve districts (there was a thirteenth, but it's fate after a rebellion is a mystery). The population is controlled with laws, police, and especially a years event called the Hunger Games. This is a government sponsored battle to the death between randomly chosen young people (although the poor tend to have a greater chance of being chosen, of course). The fight is the media event of the year with the explicit point that if the government can take any young person in the flower of their youth, they can doing anything to the captive districts. The story in itself is quite reminiscent of the myth of Theseus, who went to Crete with the tribute of fourteen Athenians in order to kill the cruel Minotaur that was to devour the young people. In this story, young Katniss can't defeat the evil government itself, but she can come to a surprising and self-sacrificing personal triumph.

Fantasy Quests As Spiritual Development

It's probably not a big leap to consider the whole concept of the quest in fantasy literature as a metaphor. The question is, what is it a metaphor for?

The hero's quest as a story is something that has existed in literature for literally thousands of years. You see it frequently in Greek mythology with the stories of Theseus or Perseus. The hero has to go on a journey against great odds to either find a treasure or defeat a creature or some other powerful foe. During the quest the hero will be tested on many occasions, and by the time the hero reaches the goal of his quest, he has grown to a point where he is “ready” to face it. When the hero accomplishes the object of his quest, he returns from whence he came a different person, risen in status as well as wisdom. (Please note: I'm using the masculine gender as a shortcut, not as an assumption that women can't go on quests. I personally think it's neat when women go on quests.)

We all know the general structure, something Joseph Campbell outlined very neatly in his writings about heroes. The question though is thus, what is the deeper significance of the quest? Why do we as human beings find the quest story so compelling, and what does that say about us?

The quest as a structure is a metaphor itself for the life struggle. It is a metaphor for the journey through life and the development we must all go through in order to function as a fully developed adult. It is, if you will, a spiritual journey, a path of growth from someone young and brash (and often impetuous and stupid) to an older person imbued with wisdom as a result of the quest. The journey then becomes the teacher, the guru, and the obstacles that a hero must face are the mental obstacles within us that keep us from achieving wisdom.

Let's take a couple of popular examples. We'll start with Katniss Everdeen's story in The Hunger Games. Here we have the quintessential proto-hero; she's daring, independent, skilled, reliable, and charismatic. She begins her her's journey with a stunning act of selflessness, taking the place of her younger sister in the “Hunger Games”, a yearly battle to the death of twenty-four young people, two from each district in the dystopic remains of the United States, broadcasted to everyone. Katniss has almost certainly given herself a death sentence, for only one person from the games will emerge alive. Yet as this brave young lady goes on her journey, which begins as she is shipped out of her impoverished home district and brought to the wealthy Capitol Region where she learns about how the larger country which she lives in works, changing from a provincial attitude from one of greater understanding. During the games themselves, Katniss becomes acutely aware through her own actions and how they are viewed by the outer world. She gains a wisdom not just about combat but about how society sees people like her and where she fits in it.

Let us take a different sort of quest now, a quest not for selfless reasons but to satisfy that deep desire that lives in every person's soul, the desire for treasure. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is a satisfied little creature, content to live in his hobbit hole and whittle away the time eating cakes and tending his garden. Then appears in the first few pages the wizard Gandalf who invites the diminutive hero to join on a quest with twelve dwarves to seek treasure. This treasure of course isn't just sitting around unguarded; it's the hoard of the great and powerful dragon Smaug who stole it from the dwarves many years before. Bilbo somewhat unwillingly agrees to join the dwarves. He's not particularly interested in the treasure but is moved by Gandalf's and the dwarves entreaties to join as the group burglar. After many adventures in their journey, some proving Bilbo's worth as a companion, the thirteen (Gandalf is on an “errand”) reach the dragon's treasure. Yet even after the treasure is obtained, the danger sadly isn't, for every group of beings who live nearby now want it, which begins, to Bilbo's horror, the war of the Five Armies. At the end of the battle, Bilbo is disgusted by the whole affair and saddened by the deaths of friends. He returns home richer but content that the small pleasures of home, good cooking, his pipe, quiet nights, good friends and neighbors, are that which makes a man truly rich.

Interestingly, when we meet Bilbo again in the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, we find that he hasn't changed much in terms of his physical surroundings. Bilbo has grown more cantankerous, clearly through the influence of Gollum's ring, but he hasn't splurged on anything despite his wealth. His home, Bag End, is still the same hole. His friends are the same as they've been. The only real difference is that he's taken in his young cousin Frodo, an act of generosity the former Bilbo may not have been able to do.