Cultural Industry and Hunger Games

There are many thoughts when it comes to this a priori unintelligible text and the film Hunger Games. The summary of what I got from the text was what my grandma use to say about the TV, “ That thing is making you stupid!. You re not thinking, you just plug into different world.”  She used to say that until she discovered Brazilian soup operas and now she is just one more in the system.  One more in this Uniformity of Culture that alienates people to be part of this sameness that the text describes. In the Hunger Games film trough media and intimidation of these 12 districts, one of the reasons  they put on this show of Hunger games is to demonstrate how brutal are humans, and putting them in a situation in which they have to kill to survive, all the worse values in society were put into place to show them that they are lesser and that they deserve to be under the district 13, or the one social system they have to rule. 

In the text they pointed that explained this pointless competition in the Hunger Games.

“The advantages and disadvantages debated by enthusiasts serve only to perpetuate the appearance of competition and choice. It is no different with the offering of Warner Brothers and Metro Goldwyn Mayer… The unified standard of value consists in the level of the conspicuous production, the amount of investment put on show.”

In today’s media there are many examples of how we can be manipulated to chose certain things such as advertising. Universal things like women like chocolate and man eat meat, all that are things that media recreates, and works with different brands  so it doesn’t matter if we eat M&Ms’ or Hershey’s, both are chocolate at the end, and people buys that.

Although, that doesn’t mean and I may feel a bit more optimistic than Horkheimer and Adorno about oneness can also be achieved by media.  In the Hunger Games Peeta and Katnees had an important dialogue that shows Peeta as someone who is rebelling against the system.

Peeta: I wish I could show them that they don’t own me. If I’m gonna die, I still wanna be me.

Katnees: I just can’t afford to think like that. I have my sister.

Although the one who achieved that goal unintentionally was Katness as a symbol of the oncoming revolution of the districts, Peeta said what she thought could never conceived because she had other more important priorities. 

Another example that I can think of, about someone who also wanted to call the attention of mass media was Andy Warhol an avant-garde artist with famous painting such as Campbell’s soup cans oil in canvas, he criticize this sameness that people is buying. He never had to explain his point when he put on display his piece of art, because the people would make the point for him. When people would see the painting, they would only see the same can over and over again, and would miss the point of the picture. Audiences in New York and around the world were very categorically critical with a painting that would show how we oversight individuality for sameness.

In the text they the writers also express how media creates a certain reality that people seems to be translating to the world and both feeding themselves to a created world that the people support because of what’s in the media they consume. It’s a whole circle that feed from each other and creates a sense of reality and how things are supposed to be.

“The familiar experience of the moviegoer, who perceives the street outside as a continuation of the film he has just left, because the film seeks strictly to reproduce the world of everyday perception, has become the guideline of production.”

This means that stereotypes, social classes, and others are mostly typify by the media around and the political system that govern it. This show that the district 13 put for their own district of lavish especial effects and glamorous people is to create a world of entertainment and high emotions, but with little of humanity. On the contrary, the same dehumanization is happening in the other districts but not to entertain but to intimidate. Its one world or the other but media serve and feed both.

In conclusion, there are many examples of how Horkheimer and Adorno may be right in certain things, but they are forgetting the important role that media takes to educate and make conscience, to reveal and to teach people around the world. There are many points that I might agree on this, but I still firmly understand and believe that artists, educators and many others can benefit from media and the role than may have. We live in an almost capitalist world that is feeding from us constantly. It is on us to see what we get, especially as filmmakers, to make a difference in our own field. Positively influencing with work that inspires and provoke some critical thinking.

I watched this film when I was on high school, this filmed was banned in the states because it was too violent, years later Hunger Games comes in :/  just a thought.