has a new piece up at Souciant, in which he reflects on what The Hunger Games teaches us about the war on privacy: Katniss is perfectly familiar with letting the camera transport her to places and times radically different from her own immediate surroundings. The remote control in her bedroom does not surprise or perplex her because she is already firmly established as a subject of the culture industry. If she insists on keeping her feelings to herself, it is not because she is some media primitive who fails to understand how Panem’s reality television works, but because she understands it all too well. When President Snow confronts Katniss at the beginning of Catching Fire, the cloud that passes over her face take us back to that penthouse suite, as if she were now finally able to make sense of the unease that view of the woods inspired. It isn’t just the arena that was under the Capitol’s constant surveillance, but potentially every place she has ever been. The Hunger Games, she suddenly realizes, don’t simply serve to remind Panem’s districts of the price to be paid for rebelling against the Capitol, but also acculturate their audience to a society in which privacy is no longer possible.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 20:14:49 +0000
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