10 ways The Hunger Games is our present – and our future. #6: “You sit on a throne of lies”
How The Hunger Games reflects a philosophy that’s still very much alive in our world
This is a series of blog posts based on my new book, Stay Alive: Surviving Capitalism’s Coming Hunger Games, published in April/May 2021 by Zero Books.
The film of The Hunger Games starts slightly differently from the book. After some introductory text, we open on a discussion between Caesar Flickerman, the Capitol’s television host for the Games, and Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker who designs the Game arena. They’re discussing the “bonding importance” of the Games, how it’s “our tradition... the way we’ve been able to heal.” At first the Games were a reminder of the first rebellion and the “price the districts had to pay,” as enshrined in the country’s Treaty of Treason, but now apparently it’s “something that knits us all together.”
The Capitol audience, comfortable in their plush auditorium, applauds warmly. Caesar asks Seneca what describes his “personal signature” as Gamemaker. Cut to a horrifying scream and a bleak shot of District 12. It’s Prim, Katniss’s sister, waking up on the day of the reaping after a nightmare. What defines the Games, this year and every year, is not healing, but horror.
The story in the books is told only from Katniss’ point of view. This new scene added for the film emphasizes the political nature of the story, starting in the Capitol’s construction of a self-justifying national myth, its attempt to rationalize oppression and exploitation in the name of order and unity. But what we mostly see is how the system affects the young people existing in the shadow of the Games, the horror they experience in the arena, and the psychological trauma of trying to survive under the Capitol’s rule.
In place of the actual history of America/Panem, the Hunger Games is part of a national myth, told by self-serving elites.
This myth contains a threat, to never risk returning to war, to the dark days of division. Conflict and the question of what makes a ‘just war’ and a just revolution is a key question in the story. Panem’s myth is a defense against revolution, in spite of (or because of) the terrible conditions experienced by most of its subjects. But as we come to learn, the state is war, the source of all violence.
Panem is founded on a core conservative idea, one that still holds a powerful grip on today’s politics: that the state restrains us from all-out civil war. This was first set out by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), particularly in his most famous book Leviathan (1651). Hobbes was informed by the English Civil War or civil wars of 1642-46 and 1648-51 – he often uses the word ‘rebellion’ – that led to the execution of the king and the declaration of a republic.
At the time, England was divided, politically, economically, socially, religiously, then militarily. This was also an age of radical new movements, for example the Levellers called for much greater equality in wealth and political rights, while the Diggers fought for the abolition of wage labor. But these flourishing demands for justice and democracy were exactly what Hobbes warned against.
His argument was rooted in a deeply pessimistic view of human behavior, dressed up in some crude ‘science’ (as conservatives still do today). We are driven by greed and fear. Without an authoritarian state, we compete, often violently, to secure the necessities of life and seek reputation (“glory”), both for its own sake and for greater security. Hobbes’ state of nature is perpetual strife, endless dark days comprising a “war of all against all,” leavened only by temporary alliances to stave off graver threats and imminent perils. Hobbes thought that the inevitable condition of humankind was one in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” a relentless quest for power that “ceaseth only in death.”
In such bleakness, there is no alternative to strong central government. Even limiting its powers to seize the goods of its subjects without their consent undermines it. Our only ‘hope’ is all-powerful authority. People must surrender their power to the ultimate peacekeeper, the sovereign ruler. But in reality, this idea just normalizes the actions of some selfish, amoral people as ‘natural,’ and supports exploitation and right-wing authoritarianism, even fascism.
Far from being natural or necessary, this fundamentally authoritarian vision is as constructed as Panem, with its regimented districts and brutally competitive ‘reality’ TV show. A much more benign view of how we can and do act can lead us to envisage a very different kind of society, in which centralizing power is not the solution, it’s the problem. If this is the political journey that Katniss will go on, in another way, as we’ll see, she was there from the beginning.
The Games are only once a year, but they also reinforce the Hobbesian point that, however nasty and brutal they are, it’s better to contain our supposedly ‘natural’ violent and anti-social tendencies in the arena than for these forces to be unleashed. Proponents of capitalism make the same point: the market channels our ‘inherent’ greed and competitiveness in ‘safe’ ways, deliberately ignoring how it encourages them instead. Politics – democracy, collective deliberation, changing the game so that we can live by other values – are characterized by conservatives as ‘divisive,’ the route to all-out social conflict.
Another purpose of Hobbesian propaganda is that people will accept shortages, hardship, cruelty, misery and the curtailing of their freedom if you convince them they’re in a perpetual state of war, or would be without the powerful parental state. As we’ll see, even though many people in the districts don’t fall for it, this ideology helps to justify their privation.
Of course, not all of our societies suffer under authoritarian regimes, despite Hobbesian thinking still being prevalent. But environmental, economic and political collapse, and the fear and chaos they will bring – our coming hunger games – are likely to lead us toward our own version of Panem.
So the key question for our future is this: will we resist the Hobbesian argument, and try to respond differently to crises? Not led by fear, separation, division, segregation, exploitation, but, as the story of The Hunger Games ultimately also suggests, even in horrible circumstances, we can still choose to respond differently.
Another Panem is possible.
Stay Alive: Surviving Capitalism’s Coming Hunger Games is published in April/May 2021 by Zero Books and can be pre-ordered from the following places now: