"The Hunger Games", which has won both box office and word of mouth in North America, is actually a mixture of "four dissimilarities". If I had to sum up the plot in one sentence, it would be "The men and women in Twilight play a Battle Royale game in Alice in Wonderland, which is just Truman's World." The kind of television entertainment in which the whole population participates”. Years ago, I wrote a review of the totalitarian regime in The Chronicles of Narnia. Now I won't comment on the various elements of "The Hunger Games", and let's talk about the totalitarian system shown in this movie.
1. One of the main points of totalitarian rule: collective rule (party rule). Since Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm", there has been an endless stream of literature and film and television works about dystopias in the Western world. But it seems that indulging the imagination of Western filmmakers, they still can't surpass their cognition of the inherent political system of the West. Almost all dystopian films or future sci-fi films have a "Parliament" or "World Parliament". "The Hunger Games" has a "Congressional District" that symbolizes the concentration of power and wealth, although the existence of the "Congress" institution is extremely weak in the film. In the view of the country constructed by "The Hunger Games", the supreme ruler is the "President", and in the film is the image of a wily old man. From this point of view, this country, which is dominated by the congressional district over the other twelve districts, is a fragile totalitarian system that is likely to be overthrown in the near future. "1984" revealed the most profound point of the totalitarian system, that is, "the foundation of oligarchy is collectivism", and it is impossible for an individual with an iron fist to maintain long-term totalitarianism. The most terrifying and mysterious thing in "1984" is not the "Ministry of Truth" that can modify everything, but the elusive "Big Brother" hidden behind the portrait. It doesn't matter whether Big Brother is one person or multiple people, whether he has a definite body image, the key is that the "Party" can exercise totalitarian rule in a collective manner. In the sense of individual individuals, party members own nothing but very little personal property, but in the collective sense, the party owns everything in the country, and the so-called public property causes economic inequality to become permanent. In "The Hunger Games", although the political system has the basic outline of totalitarian rule: a small group of people possess a high concentration of wealth and power, and the vast majority of the ruled cannot even meet the basic needs of food and clothing, but this is a fragile system. As shown in the film, riots and revolts are easy to happen, and a small incident can lead to spreading revolts.
2. The second point of totalitarian rule: consumption of wealth and mass movement. More's utopia, Kang Youwei's Datong world and even Marx's communism all imagined an ideal society with abundant materials and a stable life. Material wealth seems to be the guarantee of stability and peace. But as a representative of dystopian thinking, Orwell did the opposite, pointing to the devastating dangers posed by the overall increase in wealth. If wealth is evenly distributed and power remains in the hands of a privileged few, such a society is unstable, and ordinary people will demand an equal distribution of power to threaten the incumbents in power. So those who hold power will try to go back to the foundations of poverty and ignorance to maintain the existence of a hierarchical society. But the progress of technology and the growth of production are immutable, returning to an agricultural society or controlling the output of goods will not work, and the solution chosen by the totalitarians will be a war not aimed at conquest but at consumption. What if there are no conditions for war? You can intensify external threats and set up imaginary enemies; you can also launch large-scale mass movements internally to create collective fanaticism to consume wealth. In "The Hunger Games", the ruled ordinary people have to pay a price to receive food from the state. Each time they receive food, they have one more chance to win the lottery when the "Hunger Games" draws participants. But they will still watch and comment on "The Hunger Games" on TV, witness even a moment of beauty and luxury that game participants can enjoy, and may even envy that the winner of the game can enter the upper class. The "Hunger Games" form of entertainment to death for the whole people is actually what is necessary for totalitarian rule in the absence of war.
3. The third point of totalitarian rule: fear + hope. This is a concept revealed by the president himself in the film. If you want the oppressed to surrender, you can create fear by killing, but fear is not a panacea. Once used too much, it may provoke a stronger resistance. Totalitarianism is always the minority ruling the majority. In order for the minority to rule the majority, the possession of concentrated wealth and advanced weapons are secondary. The most important thing is to numb, silence and differentiate the majority. Once they are awakened and united, the power of the majority will always prevail over the minority, and totalitarianism cannot last forever. How can the ruled majority be divided? That is "hope". Let a certain part of the ruled, through institutionalized channels, rise to the top, share power, wealth and glory, and get rid of the original suffering. On the one hand, there is the destructive danger that the anti-body system may bring, and on the other hand, there are the huge benefits of conforming to the system. Even if the hope of obtaining such benefits is extremely slim, there will still be people willing to try it. In this way, the ruled majority is very easy to be divided into four parts, and will not accumulate dissatisfaction and despair because there is only fear, and eventually go to resistance. The imperial examination system in the Sui and Tang dynasties broke the portal barriers of the nine-rank middle-ranking system, established a channel for the flow of upper and lower classes, and enabled the autocratic rule to be maintained for more than a thousand years, while the sudden abolition of the imperial examination in the late Qing Dynasty accelerated the demise of the monarchy. In the film, the last two people choose to live together or die together, forcing the ruler to change the rules of the game. So what if the 24 people involved in the game united, coexisted peacefully and boycotted the game together? It is a pity that the power, wealth and glory that the victor can enjoy in the end tempts those who think they have the hope of winning according to the rules of the game, and divides the participants of the game, so that some people take the initiative to participate in the game process according to the rules, and lead others. also forced to participate in the game. If even 24 people can't unite to fight against a game, it is even more impossible to get the people of 12 districts to unite against totalitarianism. This is the genius of totalitarian rule. (Insert a digression: I have told many friends that the current education system is not a failure, but the result of the joint efforts of three generations of leaders. The Mao era suppressed the political status of intellectuals, and the Deng era suppressed the political status of intellectuals. The intellectuals’ economic status was improved, and the indexing system established in the Jiang period allowed intellectuals whose political and economic status had plummeted compared with the Republic of China period to still have a channel to participate in the resource allocation method within the system, so that they would not be starved to death or marginalized. Let the majority of scholars be willing to bow down for five buckets of rice. This is the application of the ruling principle of "fear + hope". It can be said that the current academic system is designed for reading A "Hunger Games" designed by the book man. )
4. A new channel for maintaining totalitarianism: from "noble" to "entertainment"? If the totalitarian system represented by "The Hunger Games" does not exceed the ideological framework of "1984" in the first few points, then the form of "game" reflects its breakthrough and innovation. In previous dystopian scenarios, the idea of totalitarian mobilization of the masses was noble: revolution, liberation, freedom, equality, a highly developed ideal society, and the ultimate world harmony. And "The Hunger Games" is in line with the current era of entertainment to death, and proposes a new concept. A bloody killing was jointly made by politics and the media into an annual national carnival. Obviously, they are a group of poor people who are about to die, but they enjoy luxury in front of the spotlight and on the big screen, laughing and talking, and become stars and heroes. In the post-modern context, transcendence no longer exists, mainstream, authority and nobility disintegrate one after another, and multiple values go their separate ways. So, what kind of core values and ideas can be used to unite the divided majority? If the public can only seek a kind of catharsis in the carnival, but it is difficult to find "noble" and "ideal", then, only the rulers above will benefit and snicker. The game form of "The Hunger Games" is not only a satire of the entertainment era, but should also cause further questioning and reflection.
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