Read the Introduction from Stay Alive: “Real or not real?”
Here’s an edited version of the introduction to my new book, Stay Alive: Surviving Capitalism’s Coming Hunger Games - out now from Zero Books.
“There must be some special girl. Come on, what’s her name?”
The first book in the series, The Hunger Games, introduces us to Panem through Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old woman. In just a few pages, we learn about the world she wakes up in everyday. We enter the deprived, slave labor prison of District 12, where most people don’t have enough food to eat, and the Seam, the dirt poor coal-mining area where Katniss lives with her mother and her younger sister Prim.
Katniss has lost her father in a mine explosion a few years before. We’re given a sense of her psychological damage from poverty and loss. Katniss’s mother is “blank and unreachable” after her husband’s death. Katniss is in many ways also numb to the world. She’s annoyed at her mother for shutting down, but she doesn’t really see how she’s done the same.
Katniss is a survivor, practically in using her hunting skills to secure a little more food for her family, and emotionally in finding her own ways to cope. Given the knowledge she’s inherited from her father, Katniss could provide for her family, but hunting is illegal.
The Hunger Games isn’t just the brutally honest name of the annual fight-to-the-death competition organized by the Capitol, the city that dominates Panem. It’s the way that its elite controls the districts. Starvation, scarcity and minimal rewards doled out to subservient districts; the Capitol uses hunger as a weapon against the masses. It’s also a powerful metaphor for the economic system we live under today, so much so that “the Hunger Games” has now become shorthand for any especially brutally competitive environment or economy.
Despite this, Katniss is a natural rebel, though she doesn’t think of herself that way (in time she will, though). She finds the weak spots in the fence surrounding the district and escapes into the woods to hunt, but really just to find a few hours of freedom in her highly-surveilled society. And yet, Katniss’ acts of everyday rebellion will have major consequences. They will come to represent the seeds of a different world.
“It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves”
Like all of Panem’s subjects, Katniss has learned it’s not safe to criticize the system. She’s somewhat aware of the impact this has had on her, to “hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.” Looming over her, over all of the young people who live in the districts, is the Hunger Games, a brutal televised fight to the death. Today is reaping day, the day of the public lottery for participation in the Games.
The odds that any given child will be selected for the Games are relatively low - lower in districts with large populations (unlike the small District 12). But the fear is real. Even here, the Capitol reinforces its control through division. Other districts, those more favored by the Capitol, are better trained to compete. Their tributes, called “careers,” even look forward to being chosen for the Games.
The Seam, where Katniss lives in District 12, is the poorest of the poor. But some families in District 12 are comparatively better off, for example those who run small businesses. They can reduce the likelihood that their children will be selected for the Games, whereas the likes of Katniss and her closest friend Gale are forced through threat of starvation to increase their odds of selection in exchange for desperately needed food rations. As Gale says, it’s the Capitol’s strategy to divide the districts between each other, and within them.
“You sit on a throne of lies”
The film of The Hunger Games starts 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, 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.
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.
“Well, that’s a sunny view of our situation”
Later, during the reaping ceremony (in the film version), a propaganda video is shown to the districts. President Snow, the ruler of Panem, provides the voice over, reiterating the “hard fought, sorely won” peace that his new order has ensured. Of course, this is only how the Capitol wants the districts to remember “our history.”
The Hunger Games takes place at an unspecified future date, in the dystopian, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, located in what is now the United States. The country is smaller than today, geographically and demographically. Large areas of land were made uninhabitable by rising sea levels and many people died (for example, the population of District 12 is said to be just 8000 people).
Panem consists of the wealthy ruling Capitol city, located in the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by 12 (originally 13) poorer districts. Katniss’ District 12 is located in today’s Appalachia. The furthest from the Capitol, it specializes in coal mining. District 13 was a center of military-industrial production. When the Capitol crushed the rebellion, it reduced District 13 to ashes.
The government is a dictatorship, a surveillance state in which the districts are forced into subservience to the Capitol, expected to provide goods in exchange for “protection,” for peace and prosperity. But only the Capitol is lavishly rich and technologically advanced, while the districts survive in poverty and distress. In place of the actual history of America/Panem, the Hunger Games is part of a national myth, told by self-serving elites.
“These things happen in war”
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. Hobbes’ 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, 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.
“I’m sick of people lying to me for my own good”
There’s a deeper, psychological explanation for this attachment to authoritarianism.
One of the thinkers we’ll refer to in this book is Alice Miller, a Polish-Swiss psychologist/psychoanalyst noted for her work on parental child abuse, sometimes called “controversial” because she was so direct in her challenge to abuse and its links to authoritarianism.
In For Your Own Good (1980), Miller introduced the concept of “poisonous pedagogy” to describe the child-rearing practices prevalent in Europe, especially before the Second World War. She believed that the pain inflicted on children “for their own good” was parents unconsciously re-enacting the trauma inflicted on them when they were children, continuing the cycle of trauma down generations.
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (1990) is perhaps Miller’s most explicitly political book. Written in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Miller takes to task the entirety of human culture. The “wall” is the metaphorical barrier behind which society (academia, psychiatrists, clergy, politicians and the media) seeks to protect itself by denying the mind-destroying effects of child abuse. Historically, children were seen as less than human, as evil wretches in need of constant coercion and control. The goal of child-rearing was to stamp out willfulness in children, to crush their spontaneity and spirit, thought necessary in order to make them upstanding and virtuous citizens.
To Miller, the command to “honor your parents” leads us to accept and repeat abusive parenting and direct our unresolved trauma either against others (through war, terrorism, delinquency) or ourselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression). This is also the root of political authoritarianism: dictators seek to pass on their trauma to society, and we accept their abuses of power because of our indoctrination into the legitimacy of the harsh parent. Only by becoming aware of this can we break the chain of violence.
In The Hunger Games, the Capitol claims the right, the necessity, to rule over the otherwise disobedient citizens of Panem. Panem needs to punish its children to avoid further conflict. Trauma is passed down and legitimized. And Katniss, like her peers, is emotionally numb and politically passive, despite her repressed rage at the cruelty of the Capitol. As Miller wrote in Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, “The reality of adult cruelty is so beyond their comprehension that the child is in a state of constant denial in order to survive.”
Miller didn’t accept that we’re naturally evil. If we recognize the causes of trauma and the roots of authoritarianism, we can heal and recover. This is the emotional journey that Katniss will go on, and perhaps the one we all need to undertake.
“And they say no one ever wins the Games”
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.
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 own coming hunger games – are likely to lead us toward our own version of Panem.
“No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion”
The Hunger Games starts with a Hobbesian state, but never accepts it. This is based on a fundamentally different view of human nature to the Hobbesians. Not a naive view – Collins depicts the cruelty that people can inflict on others under an authoritarian ideology. But a view that suggests how the state is the real source of violence in society and how it engineers conflict as a means of control.
The alternative view is that our environment shapes how we behave, that left to our own devices we are more likely to find ways to cooperate peacefully, even to sacrifice ourselves for others, than we are to engage in an endless war against all. What raises The Hunger Games above most dystopian stories is that it also depicts how goodness can flourish even in the most dehumanizing circumstances.
It’s possible to imagine a peaceful Panem without the state, a society of mutual trade and cooperation, of solidarity and fraternity. But Katniss can’t allow herself to imagine this world for more than a moment, not because it would be against nature, but because the state would punish them harshly for even trying to live differently. She might be a survivor, but she’s mired in resignation. Before the reaping, Katniss listens to Gale’s dreams of escape, but can only respond that it’s impossible, to leave their families, to put them at risk, let alone to hope that another Panem is possible.
“What am I supposed to do? Sit here and watch you die?”
Some dystopias drop us into howling post-collapse wastelands in which the problem is the lack of government, a lack of any institutions really, or travel through lawless cyberpunk cityscapes in which there’s a lack of a state standing up to towering corporations. Hobbes would surely recognize his state of nature in these stories.
As we’ll see, these views of human nature are also fundamentally about capitalism. The rationale for the Hobbesian state is also used by conservatives to justify an exploitative economic system in which elites dominate and the poor suffer. It’s just as much a lie as Panem’s propaganda is for punishing its districts.
But for now, the Capitol is in control. And it’s Katniss’ sister Prim, in her first reaping, who’s selected for the Games.
“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!”
When Katniss volunteers for the Games in place of her sister, the crowd understands it’s suicide, given her district’s poor record in the Games and its disadvantages against the other districts. Despite the Games supposedly being a national pageant, they respond with “the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone.” Later on, Katniss will learn that many other districts are also ready to defy the Capitol.
Although she doesn’t intend it, Katniss’ instinctive reaction to volunteer represents the start of a revolution, a spark that will ignite a fire that will eventually engulf Panem. What that revolution means, and what she’s really fighting for, are critical questions at the heart of The Hunger Games.
“She has no idea, the effect that she can have”
And then, something unexpected happens. Almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds them out to Katniss. It’s an old, rarely used gesture in District 12. It means a combination of thanks, admiration and goodbye to a loved one.
The Hunger Games struck a chord from the start. The first book in the series, published in 2008, was an instant bestseller, appealing both to teenage readers and adults. In 2012, the first of four films based on the novels was released (the final book was split into two films), starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. The series has earned $3 billion at the worldwide box office. Clearly, the story has resonated with audiences, particularly young people. The question is why, and whether it means anything politically.
“I really can’t think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite”
Some commentators assumed its appeal centered on the love triangle between Katniss, Gale and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta. But this isn’t the focus of the story, it’s a subplot to bigger political questions, notably how to survive under an authoritarian regime, the price people are prepared to pay to bring it down and whether this corrupts the post-regime society they long for.
Really, it’s more of an anti-romance. Katniss is a rounded, believable, brave, compassionate, flawed, self- doubting character, who continues to inspire young women in particular, personally and politically, not because she’s flawless, but because she isn’t.
Katniss is surrounded by expectations about what she should be and how she should act. As we’ll explore, the reality TV show of the Games and state spying means that Katniss and her peers are often acting for the audience, a pressure felt by young people in our own age of social media surveillance. But this means that Katniss continually distrusts the motives of Peeta in particular. She even often doubts her own motivations.
“This isn’t just adolescent, it’s insubordination”
In how young people are contained and punished, The Hunger Games also reflects adult fears of adolescence as a powerful destabilizing force. Even in her hopelessness, Katniss challenges the fixed boundaries of her world, literally in the sense of temporarily escaping the Seam to hunt and feel free. But to stop here ignores the obvious themes of the story. As Rolling Stone put it, “It’s about something pertinent, the mission to define yourself in a world that’s spinning off its moral axis.” It isn’t a high school drama, it’s a political coming-of-age story about class and conflict, for its characters, and for its audience. As Suzanne Collins has said, “I don’t write about adolescence. I write about war. For adolescents.”
“That’s why we have to join the fight!”
Talk about great timing. The first book was published in the midst of a global financial crisis, from which the resulting austerity was inflicted mainly on the young, poor and minorities. Much of The Hunger Games’ generation has lived with a lack of opportunity and growing inequalities in generational wealth and power, alongside war and terror and reality-twisting politicians.
As many reviewers have noted, Collins is a very deliberate world builder, with lots of historical references and allusions. But the story really resonates because it looks forward. The future in the story isn’t really so futuristic, it’s fast oncoming social fact. Young people are offered up as sacrifices for the elite-controlled state. They face a punitive and divisive economic system, environmental collapse, authoritarian populist politics, sophisticated media manipulation and total surveillance. For Americans and others who don’t recognize the dystopia that’s already here, let alone the one to come, it’s either because they feel safely ensconced in the Capitol or because they’ve already accepted its Hobbesian propaganda.
“I’m going to be the Mockingjay”
The Capitol’s ritual televised sacrifice of tributes, the watching of which is mandatory, demonstrates its domination of the districts. The Games promote a brutal competitive individualism that seeks to obliterate all other values, and humanity itself. They exert the Capitol’s control beyond its economic exploitation of the districts, into peoples’ ability to envision an alternative future free of domination. However, the spectacle of the Games also creates an opportunity for the subversion of the Capitol’s story of subjection for the “good of the nation,” ultimately into one of personal sacrifice, of love, demonstrating a different kind of unity. This is the spark that Katniss sets off when she volunteers.
“They just want a good show, that’s all they want”
We might be suspicious of Hollywood selling us ‘rebeltainment’. The criticism is that The Hunger Games and its imitators might represent some of the fears, frustrations and anxieties of today’s precarious young proletarians, but it doesn’t really name the system of oppression or its possible replacement.
Even if this were true, if Hollywood is the creative Capitol, we can claim and subvert its stories. Katniss introduces a new story to the Games, of defiance in place of deference, cooperation instead of competitive individualism, self-sacrifice rather than subservience. Once these seeds have been sown, it’s the Capitol that becomes terrified of their reaping.
It’s better surely to act like the rebels in the story and recognize when some useful revolutionary symbolism has been thrown our way. Or as Mark Fisher (“Precarious Dystopias”) puts it, “[I]f blockbusters about class revolution perform their ultimate ideological function – maintaining business as usual – by encouraging our cynical distance from those underlying fantasies, the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the dream but to stick to the desire that sustains it.”
Just as Katniss despairs at the start of the story, the Capitol depends on us believing that change is impossible, that the system is too strong. But unbeknown to her and Gale and Peeta, the revolution is about to begin, the districts are more ready to revolt than they know, and the Capitol is more vulnerable than they assume. Sometimes it just needs someone to supply the spark.
“If desperate times call for desperate measures, then I am free to act as desperately as I wish”
Which is why The Hunger Games is about containment, and the fundamental fear that Capitol elites have about the people of the districts. Katniss, the other tributes, the districts, even the victors – all are constantly contained and herded, by fences, borders, Peacekeepers, artificial arenas and deadly hazards, pervasive propaganda and reality TV productions.
Today’s young people will live in a future of walls, of containment driven by collapse, environmental destruction, scarcity and a sociopathic elder elite’s fear of losing power. More than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, young people are unconstrained by fears of authoritarian “socialism.” New walls need to be constructed, of individualism, intolerance, hopelessness and passivity. Working out what’s real and what’s Capitol propaganda will be crucial, the first step to surviving the coming hunger games. And let’s remember that the Capitol wouldn’t bother with its propaganda if it didn’t fundamentally fear us.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss is the last person to recognize her significance, and our potential to bring down the walls. The Capitol and the rebels identify her power long before she does. What she wakes up to is not the full horror of the system, she’s more than aware of that. No, what she comes to understand is that, in the world of Panem, survival is unavoidably a revolutionary act.
Stay Alive: Surviving Capitalism’s Coming Hunger Games is published in paperback and e-book by Zero Books and can be ordered from the following places now: