Image: Amazon
The buzz about The Hunger Games among my colleagues was all centered on the fact that it’s a series in which young people murder young people. (Anyone with dry eyes after Rue is killed has no soul.) While Suzanne Collins, the daughter of a Vietnam vet, has said that she believes preventing war requires exposing kids to the harsh realities of violence, many disagree.
Image: Amazon
Hordes of excited readers flocked to the theaters for the opening of the first movie, while violence experts cringed. Should we normalize violence this much? Are we really sending our kids to watch movies where kids kill kids? What lessons are we teaching young people?
Where many of us saw trouble, the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence saw something positive: gender equality. The protagonist of The Hunger Games is Katniss, a strong young woman who is intelligent, athletic, and empowered. The male characters in love interest roles, Peeta and Gale, are sensitive, respectful, and positive. And isn’t that a great way to promote healthy teen relationships?
The coalition started by taking a survey at the film’s opening night.
Among their findings was that, “Even though almost 40% of the teens surveyed never experience gender equality in their own life, 69% of the young people surveyed thought that gender equality was the most important message in The Hunger Games – how Katniss, Peeta, and Gale showed different but equally good ways to be strong, how Katniss makes her own choices, and how gender equality changes everything.”
Time-out. The most important messages should be about violence, totalitarianism, oppression, and social justice.
But I’ll take something positive wherever I can find it, especially to promote healthy relationships among teens. Healthy teens can grow into healthy adults, and healthy adults can make a more peaceful world.
Toward that end, the Idaho Coalition created a free lesson plan that can be used to promote healthy relationships in teens. And that, my friends, is how a disturbingly violent movie and book series can, instead, be used to prevent violence instead.
What do you think? It is possible to teach non-violence using a series that is fundamentally violent?
Related articles
- What Can We Learn About Violence and Culpability From The Hunger Games? (news.moviefone.com)
- Why Every Girl Should Have a Little Katniss in Her… (hitchhikingmuse.wordpress.com)
- How to Survive The Hunger Games Movie Premiere (bradsdeals.com)
happinessisnotadisease
May 7, 2012
I do believe in that outlook. You have to know what you must avoid if you want to avoid it at all.
cabraseniorlibrary
May 7, 2012
Hello there,
so glad you like our post on The Modern Word. If you liked that check out our quite comprehensive page on Reading here:
http://cabraseniorlibrary.wordpress.com/reading-writing/
Cheers
STB
CrimeDime
May 9, 2012
Thanks for stopping by, cabraseniorlibrary. We also like this post of yours:
http://cabraseniorlibrary.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/debate-rages-over-authenticity-of-the-hunger-games-novels/
amb
May 9, 2012
Hi there CrimeDime! Thanks so much for liking my post on my reading list and The Hunger Games. Have you finished the HG trilogy? I found that the later books, and Mockingjay in particular, gave a thought provoking (and terrifying) depiction of the longer-term effects of violence, oppression, and living under a totalitarian government. Some of those scenes stayed with me for days after reading!
CrimeCents
May 11, 2012
No, I haven’t finished the series. The second two books are never at the library when I check, but now you’ve motivated me to actually add them to my hold request list.
amb
May 11, 2012
Glad to hear it! Would love to know you’re thoughts once you finish.
Chris
May 9, 2012
I haven’t read the books in this series, and I couldn’t speak to how much violence is in them, or how graphic that violence is. In a more general way, it’s a tough call to decide if this sort of violent content is helpful or if it’s detrimental. In the context of this story, it seems to be intended as a way of making kids think, so it might be a positive thing. But in much of the entertainment that is aimed at kids, especially video games, there is definitely a desensitizing that happens after a certain amount of exposure to violent content. I suppose it all depends on the way it’s handled and presented, but I tend to be quite wary of allowing too much violence in the things my kid sees.
CrimeCents
May 11, 2012
I find books and video games to be very different in terms of how kids encounter and think about fictionalized violence. Like you said, the video games can be very desensitizing. But I do like to think that maybe books offer kids a way to really think about the issues, and movies are probably somewhere between the two.
vftmom247
May 10, 2012
I think that this series can definitely be used to promote non-violence. My middle school daughter read this, after I did and with the provision that we discuss it after we read it. Can you tell I had some concerns about her reading it? We had a really good discussion on social justice and violence however. One disturbing thing that came out of the discussion though – in the American middle school atmosphere of today, kids may not physically harm each other as in the Hunger Games universe, but the emotional scarring that takes place is unreal. If the Hunger games series can help in opening up discussions on the emotional warfare – and some of that does take place in the series also – then so much the better.
Good post, by the way!
CrimeCents
May 11, 2012
Thanks for stopping by, bftmom247! I think it’s fantastic when kids and parents read books together and discuss them. I wish more people did that! What bothers me most about kids’ exposure to violence is that there’s often little guidance. Violence is just kind of out there, present in their world, without the tools to analyze, think critically, and develop value systems about violence.
bhavyasaluja
May 12, 2012
good post,quite meaningful.
Said Simon
May 13, 2012
Given that it has few meaningful lessons to teach us on how totalitarianism actually works (http://saidsimon.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-hunger-games-countersinsurgency-done-wrong/), I’d be entirely fine with emphasising how it presents a gender-egalitarian vision in which girls/women can be and are tough and tougher than boys/men. I think that this is likely to reduce honour-based violence simply by decoupling the ability to do violence from any particular vision of masculinity or lack thereof.
.
CrimeCents
June 1, 2012
I love what you said: “decoupling the ability to do violence from any particular vision of masculinity or lack thereof.”
We should do that anyway.
saneasiam
May 14, 2012
I think I’m a bit divided on this. On the one hand, as happinessisnotadisease said, it is good to know what you are meant to be avoiding – and to learn the consequences of violent actions. Why else, for one thing, do we learn so much about the atrocity of war at school?
But on the other hand, I agree with you in that we should not allow violence to become such a commonplace thing in today’s society – it has been proven that being exposed to violence continuously can desensitise people, which could lead to even more violence.
CrimeCents
June 1, 2012
Tricky stuff, eh? I’m conflicted about it too.
truedesignliving
June 1, 2012
The medium is the message.When teenagers and children witness violence – even in fantasy – it becomes part of their experience. Violent games and movies create pathways in the brain just as practicing a musical instrument does. Some children have a predisposition to anti-social behavior and witnessing violence on an ongoing basis can trigger that. Violence has become commonplace in most American movies – why would that not have an effect society? The problem is parenting – if children see violent movies and can discuss them with caring, informed parents, that’s one thing but the children who are susceptible to violence and becoming violent themselves, most likely don’t have that parental guidance in the first place.They’re just left to work it out for themselves. When I think about the movie ‘Natural Born Killers’ I don’t remember how cleverly it satirized violence, I remember the violence and how it made me feel. I think children need to be taught how to treat each other, not how not to treat each other – try not thinking of a pink elephant.
CrimeCents
June 1, 2012
Yes, I agree that the social normalization of violence is deeply problematic, and I worry about books/movies like The Hunger Games contributing to that problem. At some point, all people in all cultures must come to terms with violence, though, and with proper guidance the series might help with that. I’m still conflicted though – the scenes of children murdering children are too intense for me.