Should We Be Hungry For More?

All this hype about the new movie The Hunger Games (based on the book trilogy) made me curious. So, last Friday I went to see the movie that promised to be the next big book-to-movie event (much like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings).

SPOILER ALERT!

The movie was excellent. Incredibly entertaining with an original idea (for once!) and characters that you identified with and were attached to throughout the film. The premise of the movie is the hunger games, a yearly televised execution of "tributes" a boy and girl under the age of 18 from each of the districts in the post-modern era nation Panem. The event is run and enforced by the Capitol, the wealthy district, and it draws district "volunteers" from each of the starving, threadbare districts that surround it. The tributes, some real volunteers, others victims of the lottery (your name is added once on each birthday plus more times in exchange for modest amounts of food, precious to the people constantly on the verge of starvation) are brought to a high-tech arena of sorts, and forced to kill each other using whatever methods available until only one remains. In the meantime, it is required that every person in each district be present for mass viewings of the games. They watch until the end, when the winner is announced and the rest of the tributes have been murdered. They suffer as they watch, while the Capitol uses the games as entertainment and festivity. They constantly bid each other "happy hunger games" and "may the odds be ever in your favor" giggling and smiling at the spectacle.
The movie was brutal. The tribute children bludgeoned, poisoned, stabbed, and shot each other dead. As a member of the audience I was disgusted by the excess of the Capitol and the poverty that wracked the poor districts.  I was horrified at the idea of a government, of a people, being entertained by such slaughter.

And then I realized it. I was just as entertained. I was rooting for my favorite tributes, excited when they killed an adversary. At one point nearly the entire audience stood up in the theater and clapped after a particularly ruthless and cruel character had her neck snapped. What does that say about society today? How can we enjoy such gruesomeness? Why do humans love war, violence, and cruelty on the big screen? These questions bring the movie scenario a little too close to reality for comfort. It's true, movies like this are incredibly entertaining. Fast paced, action packed, thrilling, The Hunger Games was a great film, but the implications are unsettling.