The Hunger Games: How Did Snow Pull It Off?

The Hunger Games. How did such a barbaric game become so popular? How did President Snow acquire so much power? These are the questions I hope to answer within this blog by addressing the establishment of popular culture, manipulation of space, and the different ideologies that affect groups of people.

Public Space

To create popular culture, it takes decades of layering events, changes, beliefs, and much more. O’Brien and Szeman outline the beginnings of current culture in terms of entertainment; from the rag beginnings of sports popularity in the form of street games and blood sports of the 19^th century to the lavish music halls and sports arenas that attract tens to hundreds of thousands of eager customers today. Urbanization and privatization of once public land greatly reduced the available space for recreational activities, which allowed for landowners to take some control of what activities were permissible or banned (O’Brien & Szeman). As time goes on, the middle-class begins to form and twice removes the working class from the wealthy. Space becomes property of all but the working class: the government, the upper-class, and the middle-class.

Soon enough, the government began to take control of public spaces. They created parks and community spaces that permitted certain activities and banned recreation in the streets as to not “disrupt more ‘legitimate’ commercial activities”(O’Brien & Szeman). To prohibit these activities, they create measures of surveillance to monitor public spaces and address those that disobey.

Surveillance

Map of Panem: Capitol in Center

Panopticon

Surveillance serves an important role in regulation, discipline, and control. In the Hunger Games, the Capitol functions as a centralized force in absolute control over Panem. The 12 districts are enclosed (no one can leave or contact the others), controlled through a work schedule, and exhaustively put through routines such are important measures of disciplining as introduced by Foucault. Foucault also introduces the ideas of the panopticon, a perfect prison established to control the masses through a central tower (the Capitol) and constant surveillance. The fear of surveillance works to diminish social interactions of workers and to maintain them like mechanisms (Foucault).

The Capitol constantly monitors everything and punishes violators with lashings, death, and avox-ification. In the Hunger Games themselves, Katniss can always feel a camera on her at all times and knows to control her actions and words. This is no different to the rest of Panem who understands that surveillance is a part of their social contract to live within the Capitols control. District 12 is forgotten about, which ultimately helps them to break the enclosure and to remain unseen. This breaks the culture, breaks the disciplining, and forms a distaste of the games among all citizens.

President Snow

So how did the Hunger Games become so popular? Well over the 74 years preceding the Hunger Games that we witness in Suzanne Collins first book, control over the districts led to forced consumption. Perhaps sometimes by force or physical conditioning, but most likely by the lack of other forms of recreation and this elusive sense of sophistication in enjoying them. Years passed as

the Hunger Games continued to gain support in light of the crude and vicious acts that happened on television. People bonded to it, bonded together behind it, and celebrated the victors that brought back food to their districts. After the apocalypse, perhaps it served to unify the people and make them all feel as equals. Enter Snow.

As president, Snow begins to allow more people to face hunger. The games become a necessity as the rich keep winning the Capitol continues to binger themselves and live freely. The districts grow anxious at the lack of resources and attempt to rebel, to which the Capitol bombs the district most responsible to control the others. Snow begins to further this panopticon-esque formation of the Capitol in the center to control the divided districts.

He implements the fore-mentioned surveillance to scare workers into a complacent and docile labor force. People grow scared to rebel, constantly reminded by the agents of fear placed around them: images of District 13, white roses of Snow’s garden, Peacekeepers, and more. Snow also keeps beacons of hope, such as the victors’ houses found in each district. Through his manipulation of thing-power, discipline, surveillance, and space he succeeds in controlling the citizens of Panem.

Works Cited

Bennett, Jane, 1957-. Vibrant Matter : a Political Ecology of Things. Durham :Duke University Press, 2010.

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. Discipline And Punish : the Birth of the Prison. New York :Pantheon Books, 1977.

O'Brien, Susie and Szeman, Imre : “The History of Popular Culture .” Popular Culture: A User's Guide, International Edition, by Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman, Langara College, 2019, pp. 29–56.