Late to the Games: Katniss, Truman, and Controlled Environments
In one of my classes we recently worked with Peter Weir’s film from a while ago now, The Truman Show. It’s an awesome Jim Carey film created in the days of early reality TV. In the film a television production company actually adopts a child, then creates a fabricated environment for him to grow up in live on TV, 24 hours a day, full of sets and actors and computer-generated weather events. And some serious brainwashing, too, as Truman’s own curiosity about the world and desire to venture beyond the confines of his town, Sea Haven, often need squashing in order for him to play a game he has no idea of partaking in.
While we were working with the film, I finally got around to reading Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. And after being probably the last person to see the film, I can’t help but start to tie these movies together in some way, since they both play with exploitation, and since that exploitation revolves around participation in a television show. In fact, they offer up some neat insights about the failings of highly-controlled environments, and the exploitation of people by those in power, and a public thirsty not just for death or drama, but for connection, too.
In the book and film, the Hunger Games serve the function of instilling fear in the public. The Games remind the masses (at least, outside the Capitol) of their place in society. The Games are a means of forcing submission by offering necessities depending on how often one enters their name, and ultimately are a means of displaying dominance and control, despite the glitz with which the Games are presented on camera. In fact, that’s my favorite aspect of the film: the visual contrast between those two realities, shown through the garish, over-the-top Capitol versus the rest of the colorless world.
The function of The Truman Show (TV version) is to bring people inspiration; it’s to bring them together. A bar even springs up, named after the show, where people gather and watch Truman live. In Panem, people outside the Capital are compelled to watch out of fear and dread. While viewers cheer on Truman as he lives, and later tries to escape, his life, the people of Panem (aside from the Capitol crew) have little to cheer about.
Eventually, they both play to the camera.
Of course there’s a great deal of manipulation going on to make both of these shows successful, and both The Hunger Games film as well as The Truman Show allows us a back stage pass. In Truman, for instance, there’s a great scene—a flashback—that demonstrates some of the manipulation so rampant on the part of the producers, who by the way have been following Truman for 30+ years. It’s a school scene, and Truman announces he wants to be “a great explorer, like Magellan,” to which the teacher replies, “Oh, you’re too late! There’s nothing left to explore.” As Truman’s desire to skip town increases, the manipulation gets more serious; at one point the show kills off the actor playing Truman’s dad in a boating accident, and as Truman watches who he believes to be his real father drown, he’s left with some serious psychological trauma, and thus can never leave the island he lives on out of fear of the sea.
There’s plenty of manipulation in The Hunger Games, too. Fires are created to move Katniss back to the other tributes. Needed supplies are left out to draw the tributes close together. And the manipulation goes both ways, doesn’t it? Cinna’s inspired outfits, Haymitch’s gifts, help bring the audience into the Games, no matter how reluctantly.
Both of the films highlight our apparent need for drama. Consider how the televised Hunger Games get interesting when it introduces some real drama, in the form of a Katniss-Peeta pairing. Big Drama happens in the televised Truman Show, too, as fans watch Truman struggle to learn just how controlled his existence is. And with that drama, the powers that be get ratings, but both Truman and Katniss can’t be contained. Their desire to break free, to not play by the rules (once they become aware of them), wins out.
I know I’m just scratching the surface here. There are many more connections between these two films/texts, and I like the idea of considering another old film, The Running Man, but it’s been decades (I think?!) since I’ve seen it. What do you see in these two films?
