Last month, the middle installment of the Hunger Games trilogy hit theaters. In Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta are forced again to fight to the death in the Hunger Games as the affluent Capitol tries to stamp out the rebellion simmering in the impoverished
Districts. President Snow rules with oppression, violence and viciousness. The people long for deliverance.
It is a sobering story exposing
the iniquity of consumerism, economic oppression and violence—which makes a
recent merchandising trend associated with the films somewhat disturbing.
Mobile game Panem Run has players struggling to
survive and competing for high scores. Net-a-Porter features the “Capitol Couture” clothing line and Subway touts a “Where Victors Eat” marketing campaign.
Then there’s Covergirl’s “Capitol Collection,” a line of makeup, as EOnline
puts it, “more Effie Trinket than Katniss Everdeen.”
Net-a-Porter Capitol Couture |
Perhaps most disturbing is that Lionsgate was approached for theme park rights to the
franchise. Seriously? A theme park centered on a story in which children are
forced to fight to the death?
In Christianity Today, film critic Alissa Wilkinson says this
marketing trend “declaws the seriousness of the story of The Hunger Games, in much the same way that the actual affluent Capitol
in the books declaws the seriousness of the ‘real’ Hunger Games…by staging flashy
weeks-long television specials around it in order to distract from the horror
of juvenile carnage by making it entertaining.”
In the Houston Chronicle, Marty Troyer also notes how this kind of
marketing eerily mimics how the Capitol controls the narrative through advertising
and pop culture. By making the games mainstream entertainment, the Capitol
neuters a shocking injustice and twists it into a support system for its agenda
and power.
Troyer notes that this
watering down of subversive and edgy messages is intrinsic to our branding and sloganed
t-shirt culture. “Jesus too has been cop-opted,” Troyer notes. “He himself was
oppressed and ministered to the oppressed…. And yet we have refashioned him
into our image in order to make sense of our suburban despair.”
Troyer makes a good point. Popular
culture can’t take all the blame for the way we rewrite and declaw our own
Story.
Too often, we edit the narrative
to exclude troubling aspects—and we start this early with the Bible stories we
filter for our children. In Christian
Century’s “R-Rated: How to Read the Bible with Children,” Sarah Hinlicky
Wilson notes the “cuteness of paired-off animals, a rainbow and a dove” make it
into the story of Noah while the “divinely willed, near extinction of the human
race” is usually avoided. It’s not simply
because we don’t want to give our kids more than they’re ready for. “It’s … even more so what grown-ups are capable of stomaching
themselves,” says Wilson.
We also attempt to neuter
difficult aspects by making entertainment out of it. On his blog, Kurt Willems ponders
Omega, an “end-times” board game, mulling
over both its theological basis and its “escapist” nature. No matter what your
opinion of the dispensationalism, the idea of making entertainment out a
narrative that predicts the suffering of countless millions should give us
pause.
Recently, I ran across a
popular Bible app for kids with an interactive element allowing users to
manipulate characters or actions in the stories. The crucifixion scene gives
you opportunities to make Mary cry or Jesus moan on the cross. In the context
of this conversation, I find that somewhat disconcerting.
As we encounter and share our
Story we must, as Wilson puts it, “abandon our efforts
to control it.” Our Story is insurrectionary and troubling, exposing darkness
in the systems we create as well as our souls. At times, it leaves us wrestling
and even angry with God. But, at its core, it is a story of deliverance,
redemption and hope in broken world destined to be whole once more.
This is a slightly longer version of my column that appeared in the December 23 2013 issue of Mennonite World Review.