Why the Hunger Games series deserves its place as a cultural phenomenon

Revisiting the stories on the cinematic release of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

A few days ago I took my fourteen-year-old to the premiere night of the new movie The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. While we both enjoyed it very much, I spent a lot of the evening wide-eyed, with many recent media headlines marauding through my mind. This was because Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series centres on the concept of children and young people being killed as a spectacle, asking questions about the inhumanity of those who cannot see this as irrefutably, morally wrong, no matter who the perpetrator is. The stories drive home the brutality and darkness of humanity when rotten power is left unchecked, as well as highlighting the innocent victims of such power games. And they show how violence induces both individual and collective trauma that festers, ultimately breeding the resentful, warmongering minds of the future. Who could have imagined, back when we first met Katniss Everdeen in 2008, that the concept of the Hunger Games would feel even more prescient fifteen years later?

In the novels, the spectacle called The Hunger Games has been established so that the citizens of Panem (which includes the controlling Capitol and the surrounding colonised Districts, numbered from 1 to 12) will always be reminded of the terrible cost of war and that their lives are to be considered as a gift from the power-players in the Capitol. Each year, every resident of Panem is required to watch as twenty-four young people (two from each District) are selected as tributes via a lottery system and forced to battle to the death inside an arena. There can only be one winner. The recently released film The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is based on a 2020 prequel novel to the original Hunger Games trilogy that features Katniss Everdeen, and it tells the disturbing tale of how Coriolanus Snow (Katniss’s adversary and leader of the Capitol) turned to the dark side.

Ballad is set 64 years before Katniss Everdeen’s first foray into the arena in the original book, and it focuses on the tenth annual games, at a time when people were losing interest in the spectacle. Enter the ambitious Snow and the villainous Dr Volumnia Gaul (played brilliantly in the movie by Viola Davis), who each have their own ambitions for themselves and the Games. Snow is pursuing a prestigious scholarship in the Capitol, which will be given to the student who successfully mentors the winning Tribute of the Hunger Games. He is assigned a competitor called Lucy Gray Baird, who lives on the outskirts of District Twelve as part of a group called The Covey (gypsy-like folk singers who entertain the workers). Snow is immediately intrigued by Lucy Gray and enthralled by the thought of what she might do for his struggling reputation. And so begins a game of cat and mouse, where we hope against hope that Lucy Gray might convert Snow to a life of simple pleasures before he can inflict his dastardly plans on Katniss many years later - even though we all know the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

All dystopian tales are visionary, allegorical stories of imagined dark futures, where the world is usually ruled by a minority elite (unless it’s anarchy) and there are mortal threats (as well as disturbances to the individual concept of self) that arise from strict laws, whether political or religious, along with intrusive surveillance and technology. These are compounded by cultural expectations that punish anyone who exists outside the norm. However, only a few of these novels have entered the cultural zeitgeist so much as to influence the lexicon and behaviour of the general population (I’m thinking here of Orwell’s 1984 with its doublethink and ‘Big Brother’, and The Handmaid’s Tale outfits that were copied in the women’s marches after Trump’s election). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were plenty of young adult dystopias for readers to choose from (Divergent, Uglies and Matched being other standouts), but The Hunger Games was the one that persisted in popular culture. After the 2012-2015 film adaptations there was a noticeable uptake in young women taking archery lessons, and the phrase ‘may the odds be ever in your favour’ became popularised, as did the three-fingers salute. Jennifer Lawrence, who played Katniss, was propelled to superstardom, and so were Katniss’s clothes and hairstyles.

It’s fascinating trying to work out why a particular story might have so thoroughly permeated the zeitgeist, so here’s ten reasons why I think this series in particular earned its place as a cultural phenomenon:

1. Depth of world-building. There’s so much detail in the politics and particulars of each place from the elitist Capitol to the starving mine-worker families in District Twelve.

2. A proactive female protagonist for young adult girls to admire in Katniss (although I should mention here that my entire PhD exegesis was about the complex representations of mothers and older women in YA dystopian stories and I had a lot to say about the depiction of Mrs Everdeen, Katniss’s mother!)

3. The story exposes and parodies contemporary cultural concerns, particularly the voyeurism of reality television as entertainment, which was a big topic of the early noughties. It also pulls no punches around the egocentricities of the wealthy.

4. There’s deft social commentary about inequality, and the immorality and insanity of war.

5. The story is a beautiful exposition of the archetypal hero’s journey.

6. The books contain relatable, interesting characters. Katniss isn’t your typical heroine, she’s grumpy and irritated half the time. Haymitch and Effie are also wonderfully complex.

7. There’s a compelling love triangle – right to the end I didn’t know if Peeta or Gale would win Katniss’s heart.

8. There’s lots of strong, fun symbolism. White roses. Songbirds. Archery. Bread. Fire. The mockingjay. All add different layers to each reading.

9. The story is compelling across the entire trilogy – no mean feat, and something many other contemporary YA dystopian trilogies struggled with.

10. There’s a thoughtful rather than easy wrap-up at the end (although Katniss’s fate can be read multiple ways, depending on your perspective, but I can’t discuss this without spoilers!)

A psychologist once told me that she would have an influx of teen patients during the year they studied dystopias like The Hunger Games at school. I’m a huge fan of the genre but I can see they are stories that need conversation; the themes are very dark to dwell upon alone. Now, as this latest movie appears to wrap up the saga, the young people who first devoured the books as teens will be approaching or in their early thirties. I wonder what they’ll make of this revival through the prequel, whether they’ll remain as invested as they once were, or if they’ve moved on. I hope not, as despite a wonky ending (IMO the filmmakers couldn’t invest the time they needed into Snow’s moral decline), Suzanne Collins’s incredible work still has the power to make us think deeply about what we want society to look like (and what we want to avoid). Fiction is essential in giving us permission to do this, even when the real world seems bleak. And it’s vital we take such opportunities, because, as President Snow somewhat ironically elucidates, there is one thing that can carry us through the darkest of times: ‘Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.’

PS My daughter and I had great fun trying to figure out the Easter eggs that hint of a familial relationship between Lucy Gray Baird and Katniss Everdeen. We’re thinking it’s either grandmother/granddaughter, or that Katniss is descended from Maude Ivory. Watch out for the clues in the book and film.