More thoughts on Hunger Games (bookverse) worldbuilding

[sholio]

Okay, apparently I have more thoughts on this. (Since I'm trying to do weekly book-related posts at my realname blog now, I might have a go at cleaning this up and turning it into something more polished later, but right now I'm just kinda getting my thoughts out there.)

I should note this is based entirely on the books, since I haven't seen the movies.

Extracting the text of a comment I wrote in this thread:

I think a key distinction here is that I'm not trying to say I would totally do all these rebel things! under the circumstances in the book -- I'm saying people do (generally) and I don't feel like the book sold me on the idea that life is comfortable enough and rewarding enough that people wouldn't. Even if they don't commit outright rebellion, when things are as miserable and hopeless as they are in the books, people form support networks and they produce subversive literature and they try to escape to join relatives elsewhere. The books seem to be relying on people not doing this kind of thing, but without making the police state far-reaching enough that it makes sense for them not to.

The thing about the books is that the characters aren't uneducated and too overworked to do anything else, although I kind of think from the general tone of the first book especially that it might be they're supposed to be, but that's not really how it comes across. The town where the main character is from -- and the part of the world we see the most of -- is a coal mining town surrounded by an electric fence to keep people in. Everyone in town except a handful of (relative) middle class people in service occupations are coal miners. They don't have money; it's a barter economy, and the only thing they earn from working in the mines is a (starvation-level) supply of food. When people are too old to work, they're turned loose from the mines and usually starve to death if their family can't support them (which is generally difficult to impossible since there's never enough food and the coal mine is one of only two ways of getting it, the other one being selling your children into the gladiator games).

But here's the thing! Their compound is surrounded by hundreds of miles of wilderness which is full of wild animals and plant foods. Technically it's illegal to hunt there, but the books make a point that controls are lax and the main character makes a habit of slipping through the fence and illicitly hunting, which is an open secret in town and the authorities turn a blind eye to. And there's a thriving black market in town for the game she brings back. Which is the kind of thing that works just fine for me, except she (well, technically her father, who taught her how to hunt) is literally one of only two people in town who's ever figured out that you can do this, and no one else even tries.

No one is ever allowed to leave the district for any reason. The only thing they have to aspire to is working in the coal mine. But they don't start work in the coal mines 'til they're 18; in the meantime they go to school, which seems to function just like a normal modern-day American school, and they seem to be learning modern American stuff ... they're all literate, for example, even though the only book we ever see in the whole town is one that the main character and her family are surreptitiously making (I get the impression it's not allowed and they're having to be sneaky about it) to record her observations on the wild plants of the area. The teenagers' daily lives are not heavily policed or controlled except in the sense that they have to try to help support their families since there's next to no food and no work in town other than the coal mine. And so mostly what we see them doing is regular teenage things or trying to find odd jobs around town, in the understanding that once they turn 18 the men are going to work in the coal mines and the women are going to have babies. And ... that's it. They know that somewhere over the hills there's a city full of people who live lives of luxury and for whose entertainment the gladiatorial games are held -- in which children from the town have to fight to the death -- but they don't seem to aspire to ever getting there. They just spend their lives being miserable and wishing they had more food.

The main character is also, IIRC, the one who figures out and tells her starving family that you can eat the dandelions in the field where they graze their goats, because ... no one else ever does this? I mean, this is a town full of starving people trapped into a small area behind a (usually not electrified) electric fence; even if they're all too terrified of the lax security to sneak through the fence, the whole region inside the fence should be stripped of vegetation.

I mean, what you're saying [in the comment I replied to] about half the people you know being members of the Party and everyone needing to be members of the Party to get a good job -- yes! That is exactly the thing that makes this kind of system WORK: if you're complicit with the system and don't step out of line, then things will be okay for you, there is a place for you. But that's not an option in the books. There's no way out, no way to better yourself, and no future except a short life of starvation and hard work. The ONLY thing keeping people in line is the threat of violence, and the controlling regime seems to be stretched pretty thin and doesn't take much interest in their day-to-day lives. Even if the general population are too ground down by exhaustion, poverty, and hopelessness to aspire to anything beyond their coal mine, there shouldn't be a complete lack of exceptions, because that's just not how people work!

And I definitely don't want it to come across like I'm judging people IRL for not throwing off the yoke of their oppressive governments or anything like that. I just feel like the books severely underestimate the general resilience of humanity -- even if they're not rebelling in overt ways, they find tiny ways to assert their independence and individuality, because that's how people are. And the book frequently gives them enough freedom to do that, without having them actually go ahead and do it.

The thing about the worldbuilding that makes it so frustrating to me, I guess, is that in a lot of cases it's almost there, but then it doesn't quite make it and falls into a sort of uncanny-valley gap. The way that District Twelve seems to function in the books, with a thriving black market and the local Peacekeepers being generally pretty laid-back and functioning as members of the community, is very believable to me -- it seems just what you would get in the remote regions of a very spread-out centralized regime like this one. But then I can't figure out why the book still has most of the people in town behaving as if their every move is being watched and their neighbors might turn them in at any moment. I would expect poaching would be endemic, even if it's mainly in the form of kids sneaking under the fence and coming back with bags of greens. It'd be different if the standard of living in the town was fairly comfortable, but PEOPLE ARE STARVING. And they're more afraid of the non-electrified fence and the threat of retribution from Peacekeepers who actively ignore the black market than they are of the real and present threat of themselves and their children starving to death? I just can't quite buy it.

Similarly, the book (IIRC) says that it's illegal to train for the games, but if you KNOW that your children might be randomly selected for an arena battle and anything they learn now could give them an edge later, it seems like a whole culture would've grown up around subversively "training" in non-obvious ways. The books indicate that some districts actually do have that (the "Careers" from the richer districts) but I'm baffled why all of them don't. In a district like Katniss's, there are other (survival) concerns that would make it trickier, because the chances of being drawn are still relatively low and I can see people prioritizing basic survival and learning adult job skills over practicing for gladiator games that only a tiny fraction of the population are ever going to have to worry about. But still ... it seems like, after 75 years, some basic self-defense and weapons training would be part of the culture.

It's not just the Districts that I'm having trouble with; it's also the Capitol. Here again, up to a point, I can buy the Capitol residents prioritizing their own safety and comfort over concern for the plight of the districts, just like I can buy the residents of the districts living in too much fear and poverty to rebel ... but not quite up to the point where the book takes it. Even if the people in the Capitol are fed a heavily edited version of actual events in the districts, and even if the general culture plays to a strong us-and-them vibe (that is: we have ours because we earned it; they're stupid/uneducated/a breed apart from us, so they don't deserve what we have) -- neither of which is overtly supported by the books, but the system would fall apart completely without it, so it has to be there to some extent -- I would still expect the Capitol to have its elements of, for example, charitable societies collecting clothes and providing food aid to the "less fortunate" in the districts during the winter months, or the underground newspapers spreading the "TRUTH of what THEY DON'T TELL YOU!!" and so forth. The books do occasionally give a nod to the fact that the Capitol contains people of all ages and walks of life, especially towards the end, but there's still a very strong implication, based on the people Katniss meets, that everyone in the Capitol is going along with the system because they're either a) evil, or b) shallow and stupid, and ... no? I mean, ESPECIALLY if the Capitol is literally the only place in all of Panem where you can indulge artistic impulses or have any kind of career other than resource producer for whatever your district produces.

Also, surveillance and government control has to be WAY tighter in the Capitol than anywhere else, because that's where the government resources are concentrated, plus it's the most high-tech place in the country. I was talking in comments to the last entry about the fact that Panem doesn't seem to have a rat-out-your-neighbors or secret police element, the way a lot of RL dictatorships do ... but if it's anywhere, the Capitol is where you would expect to find it. The Capitol, in fact, is where I would expect the police state dynamics to be playing out as close as possible to what sheenianni was talking about in my last post, where most people live in fear of informants and go along with the system because as long as you don't step out of line, you and your loved ones can have a regular, comfortable life (or at least the nearest thing possible). In the books, it's implied that people in the city go along with the system because they're selfish hedonists, but there's something that really hits home to me about [spoiler character] in the third book bursting into tears when she runs into the first item of beauty that she's encountered among the rebels, because she's used to a life where there is beauty everywhere and among the rebels everything is dull and gray. In Panem, the city is where beauty is, where art is, where most possibilities for learning and advancement are, where advanced medical care is (where, for example, it's possible for people with a great many disabilities to do anything other than just die). And while it's true that it's propped up at the expense of the suffering masses, I can see those qualities being appealing to people for reasons other than just wanting to wallow hedonistically in luxury while everyone else starves.

Comments

[recessional]

While totally sidelined by the boys owning my soul for the last not-quite-year-yet, all of this is basically why my Firebombs AU exists. XP

[sholio]

Ha! Come to think of it, I knew you had a Hunger Games AU, but had been avoiding those posts since I hadn't read the books/watched the movies & didn't want spoilers. :D But yeah, the worldbuilding in those books is SO wtf.

[ratcreature]

I haven't read Hunger Games, but yeah, that doesn't sound like the worldbuilding works. I think generally if you want a oppressive system to last for longer, most people need to be able to arrange themselves with the system, and believe that they won't suffer too badly as long as they collaborate. And unless you have either a war going on, or some other way of making the scarcity not the regime's fault -- like natural disasters or pestilences happening, or some ecological catastrophe limiting food and goods production in a way that's obvious to the population, and the regime can sell it as doing the best it can, or whatever -- something will give soon.

I mean, even when you have an extremely restrictive and cultish system like North Korea you have smuggling going on (sort of tolerated from what I heard, because it helps with the shortages), and some people who flee. And in less extreme systems the threshold of discontent is way lower, no matter how much they push the invasive police state, like the GDR had real trouble because it needed to import an adequate amount of decent coffee beans for hard currency, or they faced mutinous citizens who wrote a ton of complaints to party officials about the shortage of coffee beans and the quality of the available coffee (when they tried to stretch it with ersatz coffee or such), because nobody was willing to accept crappy coffee in peace time anymore. They would have liked to use the hard currency they had for other stuff, forbid serving coffee at party functions for a positive example to reduce coffee dependency etc, and nothing worked. There had to be at least some coffee available for buying.

[sholio]

*nods*

Any government system, really ... the only way it works for longer than it takes somebody to organize the pitchforks-and-torches mob is by making people feel like they have a place in it and a reason to be invested in it. Even the really terrible ones, like North Korea -- the way I understand how it works, there is a tremendous amount of effort aimed at convincing people that this is the best place in the world, that they are valued and important and part of something glorious, plus all the propaganda about how much worse the outside world is, so there's no point in escaping because there's nowhere better to escape to. You may as well stay here where it's the devil you know, at least! Whereas the dystopia in the Hunger Games seems to be all about reminding people at every turn how oppressed and miserable they are, and how they'll never be welcome in the much nicer capital city where everyone has plenty of food and nice clothes, which seems like a really good way to produce rebel armies no matter how much you threaten them ...

That's also really interesting about the coffee! And yeah, it makes sense ... governments don't want to deal with mutinous citizens if they can be pacified with fairly simple measures.

[ratcreature]

I saw a really interesting documentary about coffee in the GDR recently. They actually did a trade treaty in the early 80s with communist Vietnam where they got Vietnam to start growing more coffee (sending equipment and investments and such), to find a producer that wouldn't demand hard currency but accept stuff they could export. Unfortunately coffee takes eight years or so for plants to produce, and the first actually grown batch of coffee beans only arrived in 1990 when the regime already had collapsed. But well, Vietnam is now among the world's largest coffee exporters.

Really in the 1970s they had a real crisis over coffee, because some years the price was really high due to bad harvests in Brazil or something, and that came on top of the oil crisis. The GDR had tried to divert hard currency from luxury food imports to covering the high oil costs. I think the GDR had it somewhat harder, because people still had relatives in the Western part who could send packages with stuff to a certain extent (so direct comparison was always there), and coffee was very popular. So that was good because about 20% of their coffee consumption was covered by these private gifts. But in return for getting coffee many wanted to sent Dresdner Stollen back to the West (of course Stollen was produced in the West too, but the kind from Dresden is famous, coveted and expensive, but of course during the GDR people living there could get it much cheaper if they bought it and sent it as gift than if you had to buy the few the GDR officially exported at top prices to the West), Only then, because ingredients for Stollen are a bunch of stuff that need to be imported as well (like almonds, raisins, candied citrus fruits...) producing that needed hard currency as well. So the popular baked good became scarce further aggravating people. High party officials even launched the idea to forbid people to sent Stollen as gifts, but that didn't find support even in the party.

Additionally in most of the GDR you could receive West tv -- though they tried to stop that, actually I heard that in kindergartens some teachers asked the children how the tv clock before the main news broadcast looked, because the West and East had distinctive designs, so children might unwittingly snitch on their parents...

[sholio]

Oh wow, that's all fascinating to me. I think real life is more interesting than fiction in a lot of cases ...

[ratcreature]

Yeah, fiction often goes for too pat construction in world building, like in a simplified model, when in reality everything is messier, even the rational stuff that is not just outright RL absurdity.

[juniperphoenix]

This and your previous post on the subject were super interesting. I didn't pick up on these problems when I read the books (which I liked a lot), but in retrospect I think you are totally right.

[sholio]

Thank you! I hope I didn't reduce your enjoyment in the books, because I really did like them (and read them in something like a day and a half, so clearly I was having fun) but yeah, this stuff bugged me.

[juniperphoenix]

No worries! I enjoyed them a lot, but this was good to think about.

[(Anonymous)]

Am I the only one who read those books & assumed the mining disaster that killed Katniss' dad was the central government clearing out the previous generation's rebellious element?

[sholio]

Hmmm, that thought hadn't occurred to me. I think I like it better as simply indifference to dangerous conditions in the mine, rather than active conspiracy/malice, but since canon is unclear, of course you can headcanon it either way. :D

[mific]

I agree with all the criticisms about the worldbuilding. My take on it is that it's overly black and white - too split into goodies and baddies in a relatively simplistic (and thus non-human) way. I wonder if that mirrors the author's psychology (don't know what else she's written so can't tell).

I also wonder if some authors (certainly not all, but some) writing in the YA market tend towards this too-simplistic splitty worldview/worldbuilding, because in some way either they think that's how young people think and what they want, or that the target readers will be uncritical and will accept the lazily simplistic worldbuilding. (Twilight, anyone?)

I saw a movie called "Divergent" on a flight a few months back which was very similar, and also clearly targeted to the YA Hunger Games-type market (individualistic brave young woman opposes restrictive system). It had the same "here's a great sci-fi idea - now let's develop it into this totally unrealistic and simplistic world and plot" thing going on. The books the movie was based on were also by a female USA-based writer.

Is it a mass-marketing/Hollywood top-down effect in terms of what gets published or filmed? I think these stories are very Western-ethos as well - they're about the triumph of the individual who refuses to toe the oppressive collectivist line. With all that and the black-and-white splitty worldbuilding, they're almost like propaganda for the West, with the main ideological points hammered home, and the reality and complexity of human nature largely ignored. Interesting that they're emerging from post 9-11 America.

[sholio]

I think these stories are very Western-ethos as well - they're about the triumph of the individual who refuses to toe the oppressive collectivist line. With all that and the black-and-white splitty worldbuilding, they're almost like propaganda for the West, with the main ideological points hammered home, and the reality and complexity of human nature largely ignored. Interesting that they're emerging from post 9-11 America.

Yes, I agree with this 100% - it's very Western-ideology, and very modern-zeitgeist as well. I think the books managed to play with it a little - more than I was expecting, honestly, with the heroine being a victim of circumstance and symbolic figurehead, rather than having her be a rebel leader and the series all "go go revolution!", which is what I was expecting (and one of the reasons why it took me awhile to read it). Still, yes, to me it feels like a very modern, post-9/11, Western view of collectivism, totalitarianism, and rebellion.

[metanewsmods]

Hi, may we link this at metanews?

[sholio]

Sure!