Blog Post 4: Summary/Strong response

Fisher, Mark: PRECARIOUS DYSTOPIAS: THE HUNGER GAMES, IN TIME, AND NEVER LET ME GO. Film Quarterly (65:4) [Summer 2012] , p.27-33,3

The article I read focused on the dystopian society presented in three different films. The one that I focused particularly on was the Hunger Games. It briefly describes the basic plot of the Hunger Games and its post-apocalyptic nature. It talks of the roles of control, motivation, and force within the society of Panem.  It talks of the politics within the film and how the fiction movie has a more political representation than some of it’s other films, such as the Harry Potter or Twilight series. The representation of government control is mentioned as it’s constant power structure is used to control the districts within Panem, “Ultimately, the Capitol's oppression of the districts is perhaps most obviously read in terms of colonial domination” (Fisher, 2012, 30). The audience this article would be intended for would be any film studies, media studies, or communication studies field.

I chose this article because it had briefly touched on the ideas I am trying to focus on for my paper. The power structure used within Panem and it’s surveillance of not only the tributes within the games but in the districts themselves forces the people of Panem into an “order of things”, where they are constantly controlled by the threat of the Capitol. This idea is incredibly interesting as it not only gives a fictional idea of what could be, but shows an interesting view on how surveillance impacts a population. The resistance within the film is something else that should be noted, the rejection of control and the uprising that undermines the Capitol’s authority. By challenging the Capitol’s regulations of the games Katniss, the main character, starts a “fire” that the Capitol in later films tries to put out. But everyone’s oppression within the films was clear, it was the courage to stand up against the power structure that controlled them that made the difference in everyone’s mind. It only took one rebel to take down a power structure that had been in place for years.