From the atom bomb to the Hoverboard®, Science Fiction’s supernatural prescience in the realm of technological innovation is exceedingly well-documented—real world science increasingly intertwining with its imaginary counterpart in bizarre and uncanny ways. By contrast, the ways in which Sci-Fi portrays its speculative economic systems—though no less significant—have received considerably less scrutiny. In the new feature Futures Exchange, Zuckerberg’s Lament publisher K. Mike Merrill invites a re-examination of these imagined economies: a critical look at Science Fiction Cinema’s portrayal of finance.
For the first installment of Futures Exchange, the author presents what might be described as a double-blind economic study of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire—doubly blind in that its author has not engaged any of the novels in Suzanne Collins’ beloved trilogy, nor does he purport to have really any idea what’s going on in either of its subsequent film adaptations. He is, however, hopelessly enamored with the impish irreverence of Jennifer Lawrence—a weakness he shares with all of righteous America—and as such is obligingly devoted to the series.
(It should be noted that the author regrets what follows—a tiresome recap of the series’ complicated back-story—of which, of course, the author is not the author, but merely the unfortunate messenger. It should, however, hopefully help to shed light upon some of the thorny reasons why the author/non-author is disorientated by the plot of a movie made for children.)
For the somehow uninitiated, here’s what the author can parse: an unspeakable (and thus mostly unspoken) nuclear catastrophe has undone most of life as we know it, leaving the remnants of what was once North America under the control of a sartorially effete totalitarian government. The ruling class, governing from a bristlingly tacky Gomorrah known as “The Capital,” has segregated its impoverished people into a series of twelve numbered sub-districts, each appointed to some form of industrial serfdom (e.g. District 11 is in charge of agriculture, District 12 mines for coal, etc). In addition to inhabiting a slave state, the people of the twelve districts must pay penance for a now-ancient uprising in the form of The Hunger Games: an annual lottery that selects a boychild and a girlchild from each district and pits them all against one another in an epic, televised fight to the death.
(Author’s note: phew)
The very nature of The Hungry Games’ populist lens allows for satisfying political interpretations from all swathes: to Tea Party adherents, it’s an indictment of over-reaching legislative authority; to Occupiers, it’s condemnation of America’s income inequity. Regardless of your sympathies, The Hunger Games fits easily within Science Fiction’s traditional attitudes toward enterprise; a genre whose allegorical strawman is so often the threat of apocalyptically unfettered capitalism—and where the cultural values and humanity of a moral proletariat are collapsed beneath the looming threat of free market totalitarianism. The author believes, however, that both poles of the American political debate might be mistaking their likeness in the films’ protagonist.
Much like globalization’s present, the future in Science Fiction is only a dystopian hellscape for a huddled majority of the populace. While capitalists are almost universally portrayed in Sci-Fi as vile and merciless villains, the noble aristocrats of The Hunger Games enjoy nothing more than the spoils of their obliviousness—reaping the rewards of an extraction economy while the Third World Districts work themselves to death. While the citizens of the Districts starve, the people of the Capital—contentedly unaware—swallow ipecac merely to consume more. The economic allegory of The Hunger Games seems to the author much more analogous to the inequities of the global economy than that of America’s alone.
In Catching Fire’s sanctimonious prophecy, America isn’t the ninety-nine percent; we’re the ones throwing up.