Everything you never wanted to know about the Hunger Games and didn't ask

Well, i finally got to see the Hunger Games. It was really good. Jennifer Lawrence was great. Donald Sutherland was perfect as a very creepy President Snow. Woody Harelson as Haymitch was also brilliant. Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks and Lenny Kravitz were good too.


 I read an article saying how careful they were doing the marketing for the movie as the concept is pretty harsh - as punishment for a long ago uprising, 24 children between the ages of 12 and 28 and chosen by lottery to fight to the death in a televised event. Only one survives. The movie caught the horror of such a tournament but the violence was stylized so as not to be too macabre. 


The movie also makes a statement about reality television and our fascination with a spectacle. Think the Superbowl times ten and children kill each other. The name of this post apocalyptic America is called Panem, which means "bread and circuses." Brilliant. Suzanne Collins is a brilliant writer. 


In 1989, i wrote a short story called Pornography. It was Pat O'Neill's favorite. It was about a futuristic TV program. A criminal was given swimming goggles with Hydrochloric acid in them and then thrown into a tank with sharks. A small man, playing a bouncer, tries to throw an enormous guy out of a bar. He throws a glass of gasoline on him and immolates him. And then, while 4 women are wrestling in jello, a woman loses her top, exposing her breasts. The viewing public is outraged and horrified. The backlash is tremendous. The head writer, Rafferty, hates the host who is a primadonna. To try and set things straight he contrives a letter by an old lady saying that she knows there is rape in all male prisons but doesn't understand "where they put it." The host is then raped behind a medical screen, much to his dismay. Rafferty gets revenge and saves the show. 


It's a sick, horrible, disturbing story. I was just trying to make a point about where we were heading, wanting entertainment at any price. However, it would seem i didn't quite go far enough. We've already seen people eat bugs and one guy on survivor fell into the camp fire and had to be air lifted out. A woman on the Amazing Race was trying to hit a target with melons launched out of a giant slingshot. It backfired and she took a melon to the face and probably got concussed (i do my research!) Check out the link below, it's terrible.


Melon coly baby