Or, Why Reality TV is a Bad Idea: Catching Fire Reaction Paper

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BACONGUIS, LIANA ISABELLE T.

STS - THY

Reaction Paper: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Catching Fire, the sequel to last year’s The Hunger Games, doesn’t exactly fit in with the common perception of science fiction – it certainly doesn't have the grandiose space battles of the recently-released hard science fiction work Ender’s Game.

But “sci-fi” is a very broad genre, and can be defined as any work which makes use of the consequences of scientific innovation – something Catching Fire does very well, with all the shots of the Gamemakers flicking away at their high-technology screens, having dangerous threats materialize at the push of a button, or the squeaky-clean Capitol architecture typical of dystopian societies. However, at its core, it is a story of hope and loss, of free will in totalitarianism, of war and gritty bloodshed and the crumbling of seats of power, all experienced through the very human, very broken lens of one Katniss Everdeen – therefore, I don’t think it’s a science fiction work, but a humanist work with science fiction elements.

The impressive S&T in the film is used to underscore several important points - one, the disparity between the glitzy, high-tech Capitol and the beatdown podunks that are the outlying districts; the Capitol is streamlined and glamorous, while District 12 looks like something out of an 1800s Midwestern. Two, innovation in the film is presented as positive - Beetee’s strategies, given the structure of the arena and what he has on hand, and the way they’re played out are great. Three, enforcement of technology is what keeps the Capitol’s oppressive upper crust in power – Snow has cameras everywhere, and the Peacekeepers employ tanks and high-end guns – and yet, the rebels’ embracing it is also what leads to the Capitol’s failure and the rebels’ (partial) success. Not only does it succeed – and fantastically so – in-universe, Catching Fire’s science and technology also succeeds on a meta level, celebrating what science has and can do for society.

While the society presented is certainly futuristic, given the amount of technology far beyond our current reach, I don’t think it’s as easily categorized as it seems. Most dystopian fiction is written to prove a point - Orwell was anti-Communist, Huxley was anti-Communist and anti-capitalist. Catching Fire and the rest of the series exploit some of our current society’s most negative traits - our obsession with physical beauty, our willingness to eat up television (reality TV especially, something the eponymous Hunger Games can be seen as an analogue to), our elite-centric systems of power (and subsequently the unwillingness of those in charge to help those in need), corrupt politicians, rampant classism even in suffering – and adds a dash of past to it (the Hunger Games are reminiscent of the Tenochtitlan Wars of Flowers) in order to create a futuristic society we, readers in the present, are supposed to find horrific. Panem society is not necessarily representative of any time period – rather, it shows us a picture of what we could become.