The document is a film analysis essay about The Hunger Games movie. It summarizes that the movie is a commentary on how reality television and social media manipulate and exploit people for viewership. It describes how the main character Katniss is transformed from a self-sufficient person into a superficial character by the manipulation of the Hunger Games. The essay also discusses how the forest setting of the games is highly controlled by technology, allowing the directors to influence or kill the players. It concludes that while the movie depicts violence, it also serves as a warning about how social media and television can influence people's lives through manipulation and prioritizing viewership over truth.
Film analysis | The Hunger Games | Wilbur Wright College
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Luciana Pereira
English 101 G
Professor Bridget Roche
WILBUR WRIGHT COLLEGE
Final Draft of Film Essay
Film analysis: The Hunger Games
Technology is one of the most marvelous things of nowadays, bringing to people simple things that make life more comfortable, as electric that makes the water for shower warm. But with technology also came the television and the computer, two ways to bring information and also to keep people in front of the screens. The Film, The Hunger Games, is a commentary about how manipulative, perverse and exhibitionists are the reality television and social media.
The movie starts introducing the main character Katniss as a strong and self-sufficient woman, capable to feed her family by hunting animals in the forest and also volunteering at her sister`s place for The Hunger Games. But once the game starts, the manipulation starts too and the girl is soon transformed in a superficial person with the right of a title, “The girl on fire”. However, Katniss can also be manipulative and decides to listen her mentor`s advice: “To win this game you get people like you”. It is clear that the real is not real, but a process of make up the actions that are going on to make the game more interesting. In the review written by Peter Bradshaw he says, “And Just as in Big Brother, warring contestants make short-term alliances to manage the outcome, to prolong their presence in the contest…” The formation of couples in love and groups is always used in these shows because TV viewers love watching them. But what really concerns is that more serious shows that people watch nowadays as the news, or
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respectable magazines and important newspapers can be manipulating information and hiding what is true from the population. So this is a modern issue and probably it is as important as the other issues that involve weapons laws or violence between teenagers or terrorism because medias in general are so powerful and they can influence so many people around the world. We can become these medias puppets easily once that the way that we have to know about what is going on around the world comes to us by these channels.
The forest where The Hunger Games occurs is also well used by the game as a way to control the players. It is a wild environment in the middle of nowhere and completely controlled by high technology. So even the point of The Hunger Games is each teenager kills each other until only one remains, its directors also can find a way to kill a player if they are not satisfied with his performance. Nevertheless Katniss is in her environment too. The forest is her house, where she is used to hunt animals and consequently improved her skills with the bow and arrow. And this makes the game real because even though the manipulation is often going on there, Katniss always find a way to scape and make her own game. Fortunately this also can be seeing in our society and between the many journalists, photographers and activists that are fighting and working hard to put in the media the reality. Web sites and serious medias as Avaaz.org and Wikileaks publish everyday a lot of cases of huge companies and governments that are involved in many scandals, frauds and theft. Unfortunately in a world where people are completely blind and just interested by Facebook and Twitter is really hard to get attention and keep these sites online for a long time.
The Hunger Games is full of futuristic scenarios, technology and also symbols that appears all over the film bringing with them different meanings. Katniss`s bow and arrow
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represents ability, capacity of hunting or as the proposal of the game, capacity of killing. Even though violence is considered completely unacceptable, parents easily buy violent video games and government does not create effectively laws against the selling of games involving death and weapons for teenagers. Opening the doors easily for this kind of business does not help at all the development of conscious teenagers, worried with a society based on Civility and not violence.
The film, The Hunger Games, is violent, full of manipulation and death but in a close view is also a way to show how people is letting social media and reality television influence their lives. It is difficult to know what is true, but is a fact that these channels will show what is more rentable for them and this includes lies, manipulations and support to violence.
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Works Cited Bradshaw, Peter. Review of the film The Hunger Games by G. Ross. The Guardian. Movie Reviews. 22 March 2012. Web 15 April 2013 Travers, Peter. Review of the film The Hunger Games by G. Ross. Rolling Stones. Movie Reviews. 21 March 2012. Web 15 April 2013
The Hunger Games. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth. Roadshow, 2012. DVD.