By Paul Esau (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 9, 2012
There’s a skeleton in the closet of modern civilization, a primal fear that has us checking over our collective shoulders like Will Smith in an I Am Legend remake. The skeleton was once western civilization’s greatest triumphs, and is now one of our embarrassing family secrets. I’m talking, of course, about the Roman Empire.
In its prime, the Romans achieved a level of political and military efficiency that wouldn’t be equaled in Europe for a thousand years. In its decline the Roman Empire achieved a legendary level of hedonistic decadence which ended in mad slaughtering by scary Germanic tribesmen. The major reason for this decline in the popular imagination (besides their strange and unusual sexual practices) is that of their preoccupation with pleasure. The symbols of this preoccupation (Panem et Circensus or “bread and circuses”) are vividly present in the modern remembrance of the Colosseum, and vividly linked to fiery judgment and a bitter demise.
Bread and circuses. Pleasure and entertainment. Panem et Circensus. The phrase has become a warning to civilizations which become a little too obsessed with Pinterest, iPads, and The Bachelor, forgeting to check over their collective shoulder for long-haired, axe-waving Vandals (the Germanic group which sacked Rome). The phrase has also become famous recently, with the wide-spread success of Lily Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, to which it is the moral equivalent of the moral of one of Aesop’s Fables.
Unless you also have read the books you probably didn’t see this twist coming, but in fact Collins’ whole story takes place in a nation called “Panem” and revolves around a gladiatorial “circus” pitting children against each other for the entertainment of that nation. Even the title itself, The Hunger Games, references both halves of the phrase in the same breath, and therefore gives an entertaining, post-apocalyptic romp a double meaning. The fact that the games themselves are filmed and produced for the masses in a manner reminiscent of a reality TV show provides a not-so-subtle jab at the modern experience, and Panem’s economy resembles nothing if not a colonial West leeching less-developed economies for resources.
This is of course very clever and shows that Collins did some homework before writing her best-sellers, but there is also an unfortunate irony here just waiting to be explored. The movie adaptation of the book opened March 23 this year and (according to Box Office Mojo) has grossed upwards of $617 million worldwide. It has done this, primarily, by being an entertaining, exceptionally violent movie about good children forced to kill each other for the entertainment of an evil audience. I am, of course, referring to the audience within Panem’s capital city, not the audience viewing the movie, but is that really a distinction?
Yes, The Hunger Games is aware of this irony, and yes, the movie is meant to critique society’s pervasive need for entertainment in progressively more offensive and violent forms, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that this criticism raked in $600 million by capitalizing on the draw of this same violence. More troubling still is that the film was marketed specifically to an adolescent audience, who (although they obviously condemn the killing itself) are being exposed to the filmed murder of children by children in the name of entertainment.
Does condemning such atrocities as abominable justify our desire to sit down and watch them? Or have we simply found a way to pacify our guilt while still enjoying our circus, perhaps having our cake and eating it too?
My mother came home from her work at a local elementary school last month with a story about a group of children playing “Hunger Games” during recess, prompting the intervention of the school staff. Admittedly, it was more along the line of “cops and robbers” than Lord of the Flies, but it illustrates the point that some of the movie’s audience is missing even the more obvious point of the film. One can almost imagine similar scenes in the streets of Rome, with miniature gladiators “slaying” each other with stick swords. The line between message and entertainment, at least with this demographic, has already been lost.
Are you not entertained, ye masses? Are we indeed, as Collins seems to imply, ambling our way towards another Rome? And is it ironic that even understanding the irony we still perpetuate the problem?
You could bet against it, but I see $617 million saying otherwise ($11.50 of which is mine).
