Revisiting Dystopia: the Reality Show Biopolitics of "The Hunger Games"
<p class="CCCSAbstract">This paper explores the dystopian imaginaries of the recent popular novel trilogy <em>The Hunger Games</em> by Suzanne Collins and its film adaptations. Having put the narrative into a genealogy of dystopian fiction concerned with the historical na...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MI-AN Publishing
2015-10-01
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| Series: | Kultura (Skopje) |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.cultcenter.net/index.php/culture/article/view/190 |
| Summary: | <p class="CCCSAbstract">This paper explores the dystopian imaginaries of the recent popular novel trilogy <em>The Hunger Games</em> by Suzanne Collins and its film adaptations. Having put the narrative into a genealogy of dystopian fiction concerned with the historical nation-state totalitarianisms, I ask what is specifically contemporary about <em>The Hunger Games</em>. I explore this by focusing on the functioning of the reality show format in the narrative, which I link to G. Agamben’s understanding of the spectacle, as part of his wider biopolitical theories. I apply an Agambenian biopolitical reading to the narrative, seeing it as a production of bare life through the camp of the reality show arena. I suggest that <em>The Hunger Games</em> offer a critique of contemporary liberal democracies by calling attention to their production of underclassed and expendable life, which is imagined as an eruption of the nation-state right to kill, similarly as in Agamben’s theories.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1857-7717 1857-7725 |