Hunger Games… Too Much Like Reality?

Hunger Games has become a worldwide hit. The books, the movie, the soundtrack, it has all become an international sensation. Being the major movie fan that I am, it always excites me to try to figure out what it is that makes a movie such a success. Is it the actors? The directing? The wardrobe? The storyline? The character development? The special effects? For the Hunger Games, it is a combination of them all. But what really makes it a hit, I believe, is how much it actually resembles reality. The movie is completely fictional and is a horrifying tale of what happens to a society when their government needs to prove their power over the people. The Capital in the story, takes one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 from each of the 12 districts. The 24 tributes, as they're called, are forced to fight to the death on reality television for all of the districts and the Capital to watch. Obviously, we do not force minors into fighting to the death on reality television here in America, but we do have our own guilty pleasures that seem to relate far too close for comfort to the storyline of the movie. The parallels between Hunger Games and our reality, here in America, are countless. We, as a nation, are obsessed with reality television. We turn to desperate people fighting to win some sort of contest for a significant monetary prize. We turn to the citizens who are craving their 15 minutes of fame and are tricked into making complete mockeries of themselves in order to do so. They are willing to sacrifice their reputations and make complete fools of themselves for the opportunities of winning these competitions. In shows such as Survivor or Fear Factor, we watch people push themselves far beyond what the average citizen would be willing to do. They put themselves in physical, emotional, and psychological danger for our own entertainment. The game makers in the story throw in extra obstacles for the kids competing to keep the people entertained, just as they do on reality tv. The game makers create dramatic story lines or romances for their teenagers, just as the paparazzi do for celebrities and those who have achieved their 15 minutes of fame.  The people watching the competition in Hunger Games see it as entertainment, and are rooting for a certain girl and boy, usually which ever are from the district they live in, just as people in our society do when they watch sports teams compete or watch the Olympics. When our team wins, we cheer. When our team loses, we fret for a while, but move on and wait until the next season to see if they do any better, exactly as they do in Hunger Games. The point of the story, is that we watch people suffer or make fools of themselves for our own entertainment, and watch as they fight until only one is left standing. They may not be fighting to the death, but they are fighting until everyone's chances of winning and everyone's reputations are destroyed, with the exception of one. The Hunger Games are an extreme case of this, but are undeniably similar to our own nation and how we entertain our own people.