{"id":9477,"date":"2012-03-21T09:09:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T16:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=9477"},"modified":"2012-03-21T09:09:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T16:09:13","slug":"the-hunger-games-and-freedom-in-the-real-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/the-hunger-games-and-freedom-in-the-real-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hunger Games and freedom in the real world"},"content":{"rendered":"

The movie The Hunger Games<\/i> comes out this Friday. If you’ve read the books(s)<\/a> you know this isn’t going to be the Twilight<\/i>-style teen flick that’s being marketed.<\/p>\n

Can’t blame Lionsgate for the marketing; they want to make money and the Katniss-Peeta-Gale triangle offers a hook to the silly-but-moneymaking Bella-Edward-Jacob triangle that no marketer could resist. At least they’ve been doing their marketing very, very well; it’s been an elegantly teasing campaign. Have you noticed that, never once during all the buildup, have they actually showed the Hunger Games part of The Hunger Games<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Marketing aside, it looks like Lionsgate has made a damnfine movie<\/a>. I’ll be headed to the Big City to see it soon as I can. <\/p>\n

But the point is that this isn’t just a good-looking or entertaining movie. This is a meme, building on other memes, and this is about freedom.<\/p>\n

Or at least, as John Tamny notes, it’s about the horrors of big government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you’re old enough, you remember when movies and TV shows never, ever, but never said a bad thing about government or its agents. The Soviet government or the Nazis, yes. But the U.S. government was always the Noble Protector. Its agents never lied, never cheated, never raped, never murdered, were never more violent than absolutely required. Government was approachable, responsive, humane, and preternaturally wise.<\/p>\n

Then there came a few movies (e.g. Serpico<\/i>) that showed something like a good cop crusading against bad cops. But that, of course, supported the “only a few bad apples” meme.<\/p>\n

The first movie I ever recall showing a U.S. government agent being just plain bad, stupid, and destructive with no caveats was — oddly enough — Ghostbusters<\/i>. Remember, it’s the Environmental Protection Agency man who pulls the switch that releases mayhem on the city while the unabashedly free-market Ghostbusters try to stop him. <\/p>\n

I remember seeing that and being happily shocked. One of the most popular movies of all time said government could be arrogant, stupid, and destructive.<\/p>\n

Well … gone are the days when government on the screen was all-holy. Now we see plenty of bad government actors. But only recently is cinema (does that sound like a hoity-toity term? I just don’t want to keep repeating the words movie, film, and flick) beginning to go into deeper territory: government — and specifically a U.S. government — as pure, unadulterated evil in its very essence.<\/p>\n

V for Vendetta<\/i> did it. But the government was English and the movie a cult hit more than a mainstream blockbuster.<\/p>\n

Now The Hunger Games<\/i> has dared to say it straight out. The country may be called Panem (“bread”), but the place is a recognizable future America. And its government is pure, stripped-down evil. It exists for its own sake and holds power by starving, terrorizing, and murdering its own citizens — even by forcing its young to murder each other.<\/p>\n

Here’s the best review I’ve seen so far<\/a>. It’s not a political review. It’s just one that says this is a big, good, important movie and not only for teens.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to print any spoilers here. But if you haven’t yet read the books<\/a> and are curious about this very anti-government movie, just know that in book three (and presumably movie three<\/del> four), the message that free people don’t submit to government gets driven home even more … shall we say, pointedly.<\/p>\n

The real<\/i> point is that this is a meme building on other memes. We hear about the latest evil executive order or spy “enhancement”<\/a> and we despair. But look around. A major studio makes a major film in which a government ruling over Americans is depicted as utterly, irredeemably evil.<\/p>\n

That counts for a lot more than whatever bad news just flickered or twittered past our eyes today. Mindset is 90 percent of the battle — and mindset is changing right before our well-entertained eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The movie The Hunger Games comes out this Friday. If you’ve read the books(s) you know this isn’t going to be the Twilight-style teen flick that’s being marketed. Can’t blame Lionsgate for the marketing; they want to make money and the Katniss-Peeta-Gale triangle offers a hook to the silly-but-moneymaking Bella-Edward-Jacob triangle that no marketer could resist. At least they’ve been doing their marketing very, very well; it’s been an elegantly teasing campaign. Have you noticed that, never once during all the buildup, have they actually showed the Hunger Games part of The Hunger Games? Marketing aside, it looks like Lionsgate…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Hunger Games and freedom in the real world<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","category-mind-and-spirit","category-resistance","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}