Pod Insights The Book Club 16. The Hunger Games: Rebellion and Violence In Dystopian America About this episode What does The Hunger Games say about the state of modern America? How did reality TV inspire The Hunger Games? Why did Suzanne Collin's novel become such a sensation with young adults?
Join Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett as they delve into the fascinating story behind the writing of The Hunger Games, the world it was born of, and the novel itself.
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Transcript 15,067 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:37 Speaker 03 Bright and bubbly as ever, Effie Trinket trots to the podium and gives her signature.
2:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.
2:47 Speaker 03 Her pink hair must be a wig because her curls have shifted slightly off-center since her encounter with Haymitch. It's time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says, as she always does,
2:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Ladies first!
3:02 Speaker 03 And crosses to the glass ball with the girls' names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep in the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath, and then you can hear a pin drop. And then feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not me, that it's not me, that it's not me! Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smooths the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not me. It's Primrose Everdeen!
3:37 Speaker 03 Prim! The strangled cry comes out of my throat and my muscles begin to move again. Prim! I don't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately, allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me. I volunteer! I gasp. I volunteer as tribute! So...
4:04 Speaker 03 Welcome to the book club. And that was, of course, from the young adult dystopian thriller, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. And that was published in two thousand and eight, and it's the first in the three book trilogy. And I mean, it's, it's been a massive, massive success. It's sold over a hundred million copies. Obviously, it was a huge fan hit almost instantaneously after its publication, and it remains one of the bestselling eBooks of all time. And then, of course, it was turned into kind of a cultural phenomenon, thanks to the two thousand and twelve movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutchison, which grossed over six hundred and ninety four million dollars worldwide. And we'll
4:47 Speaker 03 be discussing the movie a bit later on, because I know that you and I don't agree when it comes to it. And there's so much from the books, particularly, I think, with kind of younger audiences that have become almost, you know, they've kind of entered mainstream culture. So there's the three note whistle from the movies, the
5:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow, nice whistle.
5:10 Speaker 03 And then there's the Mockingjay salute. Do you know what the Mockingjay salute is?
5:15 Dominic Sandbrook? I'd love, I'd love to see. Is that the thing where they have their, their three fingers up?
5:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, that.
5:20 Dominic Sandbrook? So Tabby and I are both doing that for people who are not watching.
5:23 Speaker 03 And then, of course, there's the famous phrase, may the odds be ever in your favour. So, Dominic, this is obviously your first time reading The Hunger Games. It's generally has a more teenage following. So perfectly suited to you. What was your take?
5:37 Dominic Sandbrook? So, good question. So it's funny doing this show, because we've done some absolute canonical classics, haven't we? We've done some quite serious highbrow stuff. So we've done Mrs. Dalloway, we've done Wuthering Heights, or The Great Gatsby, or whatever. But it's also fun to dip our toes into more, shall we say, murkier waters. I have to say, I did enjoy this book. I really enjoyed reading it. I was reading it on holiday, and I think I texted you and Nicole when I was on holiday to say, I was riveted, I was genuinely riveted, sort of sitting outside in the sun, interested to find out what happened next. And I think that's obviously one of the You know, that's one of the great elements of reading when you first start as a child. This book is aimed at younger readers and the desire to find out what happens next in
6:21 Dominic Sandbrook? the story is a propulsive element of any reading experience. So with this, I thought that element of it, as we'll discuss, is very well done. I think there are lots of interesting things in the book that tie it to social concerns, some sort of political concerns in the 2000s and 2010s, which is when it became a massive phenomenon. And I think there's a lot more to unpick than some listeners may suspect. But I know, Tabby, that the unpicking may be difficult for you because you love this. It's a, it's a massive part of your identity, isn't it, The Hunger Games?
6:55 Dominic Sandbrook? You see yourself very much as the Effie Trinket character, don't you?
6:59 Speaker 03 On this podcast, I'm definitely the Caesar Flickerman of the book club. I actually, this was my first time reading it because it was obviously a really big deal for, you know, a lot of my age group when I was at school. But I didn't read the first book. I only read the second and the third because I watched the movie beforehand and I loved the movie. So, I mean, shamefully, I was kind of like, oh, sort of why bother? And then I read the second and the third because the second, third movies hadn't come out.
7:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
7:28 Speaker 03 And so, reading it this time, I thoroughly enjoyed it. You know, you spoke about the thrillingness of waiting to discover what happens, which, you know, one often doesn't recapture in quite the way, the same way from childhood, from the books that you read as a child. And I felt like that again. I felt like I was desperate to find out what happened. So I thoroughly enjoyed it.
7:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
7:49 Speaker 03 But should we get into the plot now a little bit?
7:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, so let's give it a bit of the setting. So for people who don't know, I'm guessing there's loads of people who are listening to this podcast, who are slightly quizzical about the choice of book.
8:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:00 Dominic Sandbrook? And don't know anything about the background. So the background, we're in a post-apocalyptic North America, aren't we, called Panem? And the backstory is revealed to us during the narrative. So, Tabby, since you're so invested in this world, explain to us the thrilling backstory.
8:17 Speaker 03 So, as you say, we're in Panem and we find out that there was a civil war 74 years earlier, 74, that's why this is the 74th Hunger Games. And that's when these 13 districts rose up against the totalitarian government of Panem. And then, once the rebellion was kind of put down by-
8:39 Speaker 03 This government, which is centred in the capital.
8:42 Dominic Sandbrook? And the capital is somewhere in Colorado, is that right? It's sort of in the Rockies.
8:45 Speaker 03 Exactly, it's something like that. And Katniss kind of says at one point, this was formerly America.
8:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
8:51 Speaker 03 They introduced this thing called the Hunger Games as a way to exert their authority over the districts, as a way to keep the residents of the capital itself, who live in luxury, they're very wealthy, they have everything they could possibly desire, while the districts are very, very poor. And the districts, every single district, there are only 12 left, they have a commodity that they provide. So Katniss's district, District 12, provides coal to the capital. And so while their resources are very limited, the capital is prosperous, wealthy, and has bizarre costumes, bizarre outfits, it's very space-agey. And then every year since the rebellion, because of the Hunger Games,
9:32 Speaker 03 every district has to provide one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 to compete. And these are the tributes, and they have to fight to the death in challenging environments that vary from year to year, in front of the whole of Panem. So Panem watches this, everything is filmed on cameras. So it's basically a bloody brutal TV show. And it is an enduring testament to the triumph of the capital over the rebellious districts.
10:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, so you've got a couple of elements there that we'll come back to. So I wanted to see the idea of sending these youths as tribute. And the other is the idea of everything being filmed and it being this ghastly reality TV show. And our narrator is, so this obviously is the character that you would have empathised with when you read it, I guess, or when you saw the film, this is Katniss Everdeen, isn't it? So played by Jennifer Lawrence in the film. She's 16 years old. She is, as is always the way in these things, she's the ultimate underdog. She lives in the poorest part of District 12, which is coal mining. So it's kind of their Appalachian coal miners or something. As is always the way, rather like the character that we talked about in The Court of Thorns and Roses.
10:48 Dominic Sandbrook? She's lost one of her parents, in this case, her father, who was blown up. He was a coal miner, he was blown up in a mine. So she lives with her mother, who is just useless and is very depressed and feels sorry for herself, and with her sister, who in this case is not a horrible sister, as they often are in sort of fairy tales and things, she's just a little bit sort of soft, whereas Katniss is very hard. And Katniss has grown up in poverty, and she's been hunting to get food for the, for her family, which is obviously going to stand here in good stead. And basically, the reason that she thinks she'll be chosen for The Hunger Games, and we're led to believe as the reader that she will probably be chosen,
11:31 Dominic Sandbrook? is that you can basically enter your name multiple times in return for food, right?
11:37 Speaker 03 Resources, basically, yeah.
11:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, resources. You get more food if you enter your name multiple times. But that reading that you did, that moment is called the reaping. And this happens every year. The authorities arrive in the persona of this sort of Margaret Thatcher-style effie trinket.
11:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, Margaret Thatcher dressed up as Lady Gaga, which is like a mind-exploiting crossover.
12:01 Dominic Sandbrook? And shock, horror. Instead of reading out Katniss's name, as we think she probably will, because obviously we know Katniss is going to be in The Hunger Games, because that's the title of the book, she pulls out the name of Katniss's soft, younger sister, Prim, Primrose. But then what happens is Katniss volunteers to swap places, which you're allowed to do, which is a bit of a twist.
12:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, but it's very unusual.
12:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, never normally happens.
12:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, most people kind of fighting to survive in these very, very poor environments, you know, they're in it to look after their own skin. So to willingly put yourself in the firing line is unthinkable.
12:39 Dominic Sandbrook? It's a sign of her essential heroism, isn't it, and her goodness, that she's self-sacrificial in that way. The bloke is chosen, so it's going to be a girl and a boy, and the bloke is called Peter Mellark, and you flipping love him, don't you, Tams?
12:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, we'll get into all this later, but he's played by Josh Hutchison in the movie. They don't really know each other, he and Katniss. He is just randomly chosen, no one volunteers, and then the two of them are... Sent off to the capital. As we've said, the capital is like night and day to the districts. They live in great splendor, great luxury, very kind of overtly glamorous, lots of food. And they have a mentor with them, a guy called Haymitch, who our producer Nicole is a massive fan of.
13:20 Dominic Sandbrook? He's a former winner.
13:21 Speaker 03 He's a former winner because what happens is that if you have won the Hunger Games, District 12 being so poor has only ever had one victor. You, you know, help and train up the new volunteers. So Katniss, Peter, Peter, Haymitch and Effie go off to the capital. And when they arrive in the capital, this is when the kind of reality TV element of it really kicks in. They arrive to cheer in crowds. They are buffed, polished, plucked, so that they are made more attractive. There's this opening ceremony, which in the movie I loved, where they ride out and they're all set alight. And they have a team of stylists and like a PR team, basically. It's like running for a campaign in many ways. And Katniss manages to win over the hearts and minds of the denizens of the capital because she has
14:05 Speaker 03 a lot of talent with a bow. She has these incredible flaming outfits. But also Peter pretends to have been in love with her forever. And they create this kind of ruse of being star-crossed lovers who, you know, may ultimately have to kill each other to survive.
14:21 Dominic Sandbrook? From the very beginning, there's an ambiguity. Is Peter just saying that to win over the crowds? Or has he really had a crush on her since he was a little boy?
14:29 Speaker 03 Yeah. So then they enter the arena and this is when the brutality and the violence just kicks in. Because they and the other contestants have to, you know, survive, but not only survive, they have to kill each other to survive. They have to survive against the really challenging, brutal conditions of the arena itself. And, you know, whether they survive or not, we will not be revealing or the way in which.
14:54 Dominic Sandbrook? The plot unfolds.
14:55 Speaker 03 The plot unfolds.
14:56 Dominic Sandbrook? You're desperate not to give the ending away, but let's be frank, this is a book for teenagers. And if they die after five minutes in the arena, it would be a very short book.
15:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, there is a twist for sure. And it's very bloody and brutal. But who is the woman behind all this? This is Suzanne Collins.
15:13 Dominic Sandbrook? So Tabby, tell us about Suzanne Collins. So she's from Connecticut, isn't she? Born in nineteen sixty-two, but it's her father who's the big influence on the book, right?
15:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, so he was in the US Air Force and served in Vietnam and Korea. And so as a child, she was constantly moving about. And she has said in interviews that the experience of watching footage of the Vietnam War on TV and knowing that her father was there had a big impact on kind of her portrayal of war, the idea of broadcasting war and violence on TV in the book. Then she graduated from Indiana University with a degree in theatre and telecommunications. And then she started working as a TV writer, but she also started publishing children's books in two thousand and three. And then she started work on The Hunger Games in two thousand and seven.
16:03 Dominic Sandbrook? So you can see how it's a book of its time for a couple of reasons. One, you know, she's been working in TV. And this is the point at which reality TV is becoming a thing. So the early two thousands, you have shows like, I don't know, The Apprentice, obviously very famously, but had great political consequences. Or the kind of quiz shows or some of the Love Island type shows, American Idol, the kind of pop idol school, the Simon Cowell stuff. So these are shows that are, there's always an element of scripting in them and an element of sort of the, the characters, well, the characters, the contestants playing a part as they do in The Hunger Games. So you can see how all that is absolutely reflected in her idea.
16:47 Dominic Sandbrook? But also, you know, if you think when she growing up, you know, nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties, two thousands, a time when war and fighting is in your home on the screen as never before. Because Vietnam, as you said, was pretty much the first TV war. Footage of the things like the Tet Offensive in nineteen sixty-eight, that's on the evening news in American households. She would undoubtedly remember that from when she was a child. And then, of course, you have the first Gulf War in nineteen Ninety nine one and then you have footage from Afghanistan and Iraq in the early two thousands when she is coming up with the idea of the book. And that's a big part of it, isn't it? That it's the sort of juxtaposition of those two things.
17:30 Dominic Sandbrook? On the one hand, something like The Apprentice, where there can only be one winner and the contestants will sort of form alliances and friendships and things. But then eventually they'll have to turn on each other and eventually they'll be the last man or woman standing who gets the prize. And then on the same, it might be on the same channel, you know, or if you're channel surfing, a different channel, scenes from, you know, Iraq or something where the camera, there might be an embedded news reporter who's following a particular group of soldiers. And again, you get to know them as characters. And that's basically the genesis of this idea, isn't it? Isn't that what she says?
18:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, so she said that she got the idea. I mean, I wonder how, I did wonder how much of this is kind of contrived, you know, after the fact, but she said that she got the idea, she said, I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when Katniss's story came to me. One night, I'm sitting there flipping around and on one channel, there's a group of young people competing for, I don't know, money maybe. And on the next, there's a group of young people fighting an actual war. So this would have been the Iraq War. And I was tired and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way and I thought of this story. And I always thought that this concept of The Hunger Games, I genuinely thought it was brilliant. I thought there was something very original about it. Obviously, it's a dystopia, so, you know, dystopias are by their very nature kind of
18:51 Speaker 03 unoriginal in order to fit within those parameters. But I thought the idea of this glitzy reality TV show and how the violence fit into that and how it's kind of young people fighting one another to survive, but it's also kind of Big Brother and Love Island. I was like, that's really interesting, that's really novel. But it turns out that there are literary precedents. You know, similar concepts, which I didn't know about, and I was surprised to come across. So first of all, there's Stephen King. He's had a massive, massive influence. So more specifically, his books, The Long Walk, which he wrote in nineteen seventy nine. And this is a dystopian USA in which a totalitarian regime has seized power.
19:32 Speaker 03 And the contestants, there are these contestants and they must compete in a walking contest every year. And then there's The Running Man, which was written in nineteen eighty two. I think there was a movie of it that came out last year.
19:44 Dominic Sandbrook? I think there was, Tabby, it's a great film, Arnold Schwarzenegger film.
19:47 Speaker 03 No, uh, God, grandad, there was a movie that came out last year.
19:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Come on, I mean, you can't, I can't believe you're dissing the Arnold Schwarzenegger film.
19:57 Speaker 03 I don't even know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is. I mean, who cares?
19:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Get her off the podcast, get her off the show.
20:01 Speaker 03 I'm unsettled. Okay, so there's The Running Man, which he wrote in nineteen eighty two. And this introduces the idea of it being like a TV show, the reality TV element. So again, a dystopian USA and the protagonist must compete in a reality TV show in which the contestants must constantly evade hitmen sent to murder them. And again, you know, you mentioned kind of the sixties, seventies, Vietnam, et cetera. This is the backdrop against which Stephen King is writing it. So there's the Kent State shootings, loads of protesters, and all of this is being televised for the first time.
20:37 Dominic Sandbrook? It's the first time people have seen police violence on the screen.
20:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, but also around the same time, you're starting to get these reality TV police dramas. Where, I don't know, you follow like the LAPD for a day or whatever. So it's a weird mishmash.
20:51 Dominic Sandbrook? So in nineteen sixty eight, I think, it might have been nineteen sixty nine, there was a drama on the BBC called The Year of the Sex Olympics. It was anticipating reality TV. It was basically a Brave New World style drama.
21:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:06 Dominic Sandbrook? It was written by a guy called Nigel Neal. He was a big science fiction writer of the 50s and 60s for TV. And it's about a world in which the population are kept down by being fed endless pornography on their screens. So this is quite a groundbreaking and daring show for the BBC to be putting out in the late 60s. And basically, they discovered that people are bored, that they're completely desensitized, they've seen so much of it. And to cut a very long story short, they end up by basically having a camera following a particular family who'd been isolated in a house. And then the producers decide that it's a little bit boring and they introduce a kind of a maniac or something.
21:48 Dominic Sandbrook? And then there's loads of violence and the climax of the play is people start killing each other and the audience love it. And the producers realize they have hit the absolute bottom, as it were, because they can show death, they can show killing, and the audience will really, really enjoy it. And that obviously is part of this sort of continuum of, I don't think these things are necessarily all inspired by each other, but obviously people are responding to the circumstances of the 60s and 70s and they're thinking, you know, you can put anything on screen and people will love it.
22:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, for the first time, you can overtly tap into this kind of pervasive human enjoyment of other people's pain or humiliation, certainly. And also, I mean, that's not like an entirely novel concept. I mean, we'll be talking about the Roman Empire in a bit. The idea of like putting violence in front of people to keep them happy and like sated and calm, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not entirely original, it's not without precedent anyway. But then there's another book in particular, which The Hunger Games has actually been accused of being a ripoff of. And actually, like, there's been accusations of plagiarism and stuff, and this is Battle Royale, which was written in 1999 by Kusun Takami. And it's a dystopian horror novel in which high school students are forced to fight to the death by a totalitarian Japanese government.
23:09 Speaker 03 He was inspired by kind of the political context of the sixties in Japan. So these student revolutionaries and stuff like that.
23:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
23:15 Speaker 03 You can see, and The Hunger Games becomes increasingly kind of political as it goes on. So she's acknowledged the parallels, but she's also said that I've never even read this book. And that her publishers actually warned her off it because, which I actually, I totally understand because she doesn't want her world and her imagination to be colored by, you know, a similar world.
23:35 Dominic Sandbrook? I know there's some people who say they're too similar. It's they're disturbingly similar or whatever. I don't necessarily agree with that.
23:41 Speaker 03 Quentin Tarantino among them.
23:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Quentin Tarantino exactly said, oh, it's basically a straight rip off. I'm not sure that's right, actually. I think the idea is quite a widespread one. Clearly, the idea that we will one day reach a dystopian point where sort of people will be watching extreme violence or indeed sex or whatever on TV and it'll be state sponsored and it'll be real people killing each other or whatever for our entertainment. That idea, I mean, it's an idea that you see in, I don't know, Doctor Who or something in the eighties and, you know, in the two thousands and stuff.
24:16 Speaker 03 It's at the top of people's minds. I mean, as the world changes, you know, the art often reflects those ideas. I mean, the rise of TV and reality TV and stuff. I mean, I think it's crazy to be, you know, as Tarantino says, you know, it's a total rip off. I can't believe that, you know, he didn't sue Suzanne Collins and et cetera, et cetera. It's full of, it's, it's, it's full of so many other influences as well. I mean, obviously dystopias. It's teen, you know, it's full of teen romance and that kind of thing. All books are a little bit derivative.
24:46 Dominic Sandbrook? It's a bit of a high school drama, isn't it?
24:48 Speaker 03 Definitely.
24:49 Dominic Sandbrook? This, as we'll, we'll talk about in a bit.
24:51 Speaker 03 It's no more like a, you know, plagiarized from Battle Royale than say A Court of Thorns and Roses is Lord of the Rings or whatever. Like it's just.
24:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. Okay.
24:59 Speaker 03 It's a premise, right?
25:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, actually, should we, should we get into some of the deeper influences?
25:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Behind this. So obviously it reflects reality TV. It reflects the kind of gamification of culture. You know, the idea of different levels, the idea of new, new villains being introduced or that sort of thing that comes from video games. But there's classical stuff behind this as well. So
25:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:18 Dominic Sandbrook? That's the first thing that struck me as a reader is that this is obviously inspired by one of the most famous, one of the most celebrated Greek myths, actually the Greek myth that I loved most when I was about five or six, which is Theseus and the Minotaur. So what's the story here? Because you did classics, didn't you? You're the great classical expert, Tabby.
25:39 Speaker 03 So according to the myth, there's Theseus and the Minotaur. The Minotaur is this horrifying monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. And we will actually be coming back to this myth in a big way in June when we do Cersei by Madeline Miller as part of our Odyssey special. And he was the spawn, the Minotaur was the spawn of purportedly kind of a demigod, Pasiphae. And she had sex with a beautiful bull gifted to the king of Crete by Poseidon. So this creates this terrifying monster and they put the Minotaur in the bowels of Crete. And they build a massive labyrinth around him to keep him contained. But after this, Athens, following a war in which it lost to Crete as kind of recompense.
26:24 Speaker 03 It has to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete every nine years to feed the Minotaur. And this is like symbolic of Athens disobedience, you know, as it is with the capital and the districts.
26:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, there's subjection to Crete. So it's exactly the same thing as in The Hunger Games.
26:40 Speaker 03 Exactly the same premise. And then Theseus, who turns out to be kind of a prince of Athens. He decides to put an end to this. And so he goes as one of the seven youths to Crete. You know, with the intention of killing the Minotaur and he's sent into the maze and he does, he kills the Minotaur. He comes out, he survives with the help of Ariadne, the princess of Crete, in a sense.
27:06 Dominic Sandbrook? And a load of, a load of string, surely.
27:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, and a ball of string, exactly. So he is the catness figure in this.
27:12 Dominic Sandbrook? But Suzanne Collins didn't want to do the labyrinth, right? She didn't want to do the labyrinth and she didn't want to do the Minotaur. So she took another element of classical civilization for when they get to the arena. And this is, well, it's the idea of the arena, I guess. It's the idea of gladiatorial games.
27:29 Speaker 03 The amphitheater, yeah.
27:30 Dominic Sandbrook? So, I mean, this is one of the most emblematic elements of Roman civilization. It's the plot of Gladiator. It's the thing that fascinates children when they first fall in love with Rome, isn't it? The idea of gladiatorial games. You know, fought out for the pleasure of the crowds.
27:47 Speaker 03 And also bread and circuses, you know, it's a way to keep the population happy as it is in Panem.
27:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Panem, the the word for this world, Suzanne Collins took it from the saying by Juvenal, the Roman satirist, that gives us the expression, you know, Panem is bread, it's it's the expression that gives us bread and circuses. And it's this idea, which I think is is actually historically completely accurate. This idea that the games, that the gladiatorial combat was woven into the kind of political structure of Rome, that staging games, if the games started, historians still argue about why the games started. But they started, let's say, the third century B C, and they're a way for powerful, ambitious Romans
28:33 Dominic Sandbrook? to proclaim their status, to win over the crowds. They would stage these extremely elaborate games, which kind of probably began as funeral games. And then they become institutionalized. So when the empire comes along under Octavian and then Tiberius and so on and so on. The emperors seize control of the games, they make them state sponsored. You know, they are, they're an important part of the imperial cult. And they're important part of, you know, they're a statement of authority and of power. And the people who are fighting in the games are trained gladiators, they are slaves, they are the lowest of the low. But also they fascinate the crowds, they're celebrities and
29:10 Speaker 03 Totally.
29:11 Dominic Sandbrook? dregs at the same time.
29:13 Speaker 03 Which is exactly the same as the tributes. They are, you know, essentially slaves to the capital who get raised up and put on pedestals and made celebrities themselves, even though, you know, you forget that the thing that they're made celebrities for is basically death. As with the gladiators and also, I mean, the names of many of the characters in The Hunger Games bear Roman influences. So you have Octavia, Cato, Sinner, Caesar, all of this.
29:38 Dominic Sandbrook? One thing that slightly surprised me, knowing that they had Roman names, I assumed that that meant the characters were based on Roman models, and that's not right.
29:45 Speaker 03 No, it's random. It's totally random. So the the character Cato, who we'll touch on later, bears absolutely no resemblance to the Roman statesman Cato. It's it's totally random. But then also, you know, stuff like the way they live, they have these, you know, they live in finery. It's kind of the idea of like the Babylonian. Roman Empire, if you see what I mean, as in it's all like finery, grand parties, feasts. They have this drink that makes them vomit after they eat, you know, so that they can eat more. So it's like a vomitorium. And also the idea of of kind of patricians handing out patronage to the tributes, you know, because they can sponsor them in the arena if they like them, if they kind of catch their eye.
30:24 Dominic Sandbrook? So it's sort of like, I suppose what you would say is, if you, and I don't mean this harshly. I know it will come over that I'm being sneery and harsh, but I don't mean it this way. It's basically a very, very simplified comic book version of Rome. So it's basically people in togas reclining on couches, drinking till they're sick. With mad elaborate hair and sort of purple clothes while below them, eyeing up.
30:48 Speaker 03 Oiled up gladiators.
30:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Oiled up slaves who are killing each other for their edification down below. And of course, we find that idea simultaneously repellent, but also very alluring, which is why there are so many dramas about Spartacus and gladiators and all of this kind of thing. Because there's a little bit of us in those people who are with the mad hair and Margaret Thatcher's voice, who are watching the the slaves killing each other.
31:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, definitely.
31:14 Dominic Sandbrook? So that's one influence. And what about the dystopian element? So the dystopian element, obviously dystopia, you know, you can see why that would appeal to teenage readers. They're always fascinated by sort of dark versions of our own world, which is what dystopias always are. They're always reflecting the anxieties of the day. I would say personally, and maybe this is me being critical again, Tabby, because I didn't read it as a teenager and fall in love with it. I would say the dystopia is a little bit underpowered, but compared with some of the things we've talked about on the show. So when we did our very early episodes with The Rest Is History, we did Gilead, The Dystopia and The Handmaid's Tale. And we've talked about, for example, the dystopia in nineteen eighty four, George Orwell's book. Pan M by comparison is pretty sort of thin and generic, would you say? Is that, am I being harsh?
31:59 Speaker 03 The thing is, that element of it, the world, the dystopia, the repression of the regime, that comes out much, much more in the later books. Like, it's not a massive part of The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is all about kind of the games itself, not about the kind of wider connotations in the world in which it exists. And I think that's in part because it's a teen book, you know, it's not really about the ideology of a dystopia or anything like that. It's kind of about the characters and the dynamics between them. So I think that is bad, but it is distinctly, to me, a dystopia. You know, it's post-apocalyptic, it's people living, you know, in kind of like a numb state of kind of obsequiousness to the regime.
32:40 Dominic Sandbrook? It's a dystopia in this regard, that I would say that all the things that you would see as devices of Pan M and that world are our own vices. So the idea of an increase in the authoritarian government, the idea of surveillance, the idea that people are seduced into acquiescence by the bread and circuses of TV in particular. When did this come out? Two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight?
33:07 Speaker 03 Two thousand and eight, I think.
33:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Just before the smartphone conquered everything and destroyed all culture. You know, they're fascinated by TV and they're all watching on TV, they're not watching on their phones, they're not watching shorts, they're not watching social media clips. So in that sense, you could argue it's quite a dated dystopia. It's a dystopia that belongs to a very particular moment of the two thousands. If you were writing it now, you'd write it differently, wouldn't you? There would be a much bigger social media element and they'd be messaging each other and there'd be... Would you not think that would be part of it?
33:37 Speaker 03 I do. I mean, but then I suppose like a dystopia, it can be whatever, as in it could be now, but the state could say that there are no phones allowed, so they control what screens you watch and stuff. There's the propaganda element is very nineteen eighty-four.
33:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
33:51 Speaker 03 Funnily enough, the way that it's kind of projected into people's homes and their private lives and things like that.
33:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Because you're not really given the opportunity not to watch the games, is that right?
34:01 Speaker 03 No, you're forced to, exactly. But I would say that the contestants in this, the way that the tributes have to live both simultaneously a private life and a public profile and play up to that public profile. And it's all about kind of glamour and presenting an idealized version of themselves in order to win over the crowds who will, you know, support them and back them and give them things. That's very kind of influences, isn't it? Like, you don't know what's going on behind the clip that you get to watch.
34:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and I suppose you could argue that that's always been an element of celebrity generally, like you don't know what the, you never knew what the private life of a Hollywood film star from the golden age of between the wars was. But it became much more obvious and much more widely discussed once you had reality TV stars, people who were famous just for being famous because they'd been on TV, who were presenting a very manicured image. It's funny because that thing about are you in love or aren't you in love, or is it all just done for the cameras, which is a big part of this story because it's a huge element of the relationship between Katniss and Peter. That's something we're so familiar with now in the last few years, really, because of shows like Love Island where people have to basically, I've actually never seen Love
35:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Island, but people are basically copping off with each other but also kind of pretending to be in love to win over the audience, is that right?
35:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I think that trend started in the 2000s, you know, with like the Justin Timberlake's and Britney Spears, you know, the idea of a showmance.
35:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I was obviously following that really closely at the time.
35:33 Speaker 03 More closely than me, I suspect.
35:36 Speaker 03 The other thing that it bears the influence of is sci-fi, you know, advanced technology, hovercrafts, futuristic setting, et cetera, et cetera.
35:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Genetic mutations.
35:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:45 Dominic Sandbrook? But those again, I would say again, if I was being critical, those are just generic elements kind of thrown in, like we're throwing some genetic mutations, they've got hovercrafts.
35:54 Speaker 03 See, I think the genetic mutations are quite effective. I was, I thought that was kind of the most disturbing part of it, yeah. But I do see. What you mean as in the sci fi, the dystopia is a little bit like what the myth of the vampire is to Twilight, you know.
36:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
36:08 Speaker 03 It's it's a setting in which to set what is kind of a teen drama, but that sounds very kind of patronizing. It's also a thrilling read and I really bought into the world and I found that I really bought into the games as well.
36:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, Suzanne Collins is not overthinking it, that's fair.
36:24 Speaker 03 No, I would say I'd say that it's like, you know, she's picking little bits out of quite obvious, you know, cultural touchstones and and putting them in.
36:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly, actually not unlike J K Rowling in Harry Potter a few years earlier.
36:37 Speaker 03 See, I think J K Rowling goes deeper.
36:40 Dominic Sandbrook? The world is much richer in, I know, listen, it would be the end of the podcast, undoubtedly, if I was ever to say anything bad about the world of Harry Potter at all. Cause I know, I know.
36:51 Dominic Sandbrook? How much you value it, Tabby, and I wouldn't dare to ever criticize the world building of Hogsmeade or whatever.
36:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is how I feel about you and the archers. Don't touch that. Leave that pristine up here. You scream archers. You have such archers energy. Anyway.
37:08 Dominic Sandbrook? That is bonkers from you. That is absolutely, that is bonkers. Jesus Christ, how old do you think I am? A hundred?
37:17 Speaker 03 I don't know.
37:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, there's one more element. Now, you actually have, to be fair to you, you have made one good point in your notes, which is. A Lord of the Flies. So there's a definite Lord of the Flies element to this, right?
37:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, very much so. So this is William Golding's nineteen fifty four novel and this is, you know, it's very, very well known about a group of schoolchildren. Their plane crashes, they're left on the island to survive. They initially kind of tried to build a republic and work together and. They very quickly turn on each other. They start killing each other. They start hunting each other. And so it's kind of an exploration of A, the loss of innocence.
37:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
37:55 Speaker 03 And also kind of the beast within, it's like digression, it's like Darwinian digression, how beneath the surface of, you know, our society and our traditions and our rituals, we're all just animals that when it comes down to it, will kill each other to survive.
38:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Lord of the Flies, I do think is an influence on this, and it was in my mind the whole time, because the idea that you put all these children, because they are children, I mean, you know, they're what, fifteen, sixteen, a lot of them?
38:20 Speaker 03 One of the contestants is twelve.
38:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly, that you dump them in this place and they will all just kill each other. I mean, this is an interesting thing about the book. The difference between Lord of the Flies is basically in Lord of the Flies, the children, when they start, I think they're on like a school trip, aren't they? They're on, they're a sort of school choir or something, I think. So they're all very properly brought up little English school boys, who then discover, deep down, that they have this savagery within them. And this is the, one of the shocking elements. In The Hunger Games, some of them are savage from the very beginning, because they've been trained to be killers. The thing that's surprising to me, is none of them ever rebel against the idea of the, the games, or of killing. When they're dropped into the arena, most of them rush to kill the others, or
39:06 Dominic Sandbrook? to run away and to plot how they will kill the others. No, but none of them ever throws up their hands and says, I hate violence, I hate killing, I can't do this, or that kind of thing.
39:15 Speaker 03 I guess this is the seventy-fourth Games, right? Like, the horror of that very first Games might have been slightly different. There is a moment when Katniss kind of reflects on the fact that, you know, she shoots this guy instinctively with her bow and arrow, and she's like, God, I, this isn't like killing, you know, a deer in the woods or something, that was a human. But I also think, the way that the richer districts, turn it into, you know, something that's really eminent, and you train to fight, and you train to kill, it's a sign of kind of the success of the regime.
39:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
39:46 Speaker 03 Because it saps you of your humanity and your, and your sense of what is acceptable and what's not, what's heinous and what's not. So after a while, a bit like, say, The Gladiatorial Games, obviously that was a different time, violence was more prominent anyway, but, you know, it genuinely does become great viewing, it genuinely becomes kind of a celebration. And I guess if you've grown up in that world, a world in which every single year, you're used to seeing your neighbours, whatever it may be, die. You would become, you know, slightly numb to it.
40:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, shall we take a break and then after the break, we'll get into the games themselves. We talk about the characters and how they fare. Exciting.
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42:02 Speaker 03 I lift my chin and stand as straight as I can. The cylinder begins to rise. For maybe 15 seconds, I'm in darkness. And then I can feel the metal plate pushing me out of the cylinder into the open air. For a moment, my eyes are dazzled by the bright sunlight and I'm conscious only of a strong wind with the hopeful smell of pine trees. Then I hear the legendary announcer Claudius Temple Smith as his voice booms all around me.
42:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Ladies and gentlemen, let the seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin.
42:37 Speaker 03 Welcome back to the book club, everyone. You know, Dominic, I think that we had some disagreements in the first half, but I have to say that was excellent. Good one.
42:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, that's nice. It's lovely when we can disagree agreeably in that way.
42:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's nice to follow a precedent. So we promised you before the break that we'd be getting into the Hunger Games itself and some of the major players. So before we get to the two characters that are really at the heart of everything, let's just quickly go through some of the kind of secondary characters. So I think for people that have watched the movie, kind of the shadow that hangs over Panem is this guy, President Snow. He's played by Donald Sutherland very well, I think, in the film. And he is kind of like the autocrat at the heart of this totalitarian regime. He's very neat, very elegant, a small white man who wears roses in his buttonhole. You know, actually, he barely features in this book.
43:31 Dominic Sandbrook? In the book, he's completely, he's almost totally absent.
43:33 Speaker 03 I think he has one line.
43:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. He's referred to maybe twice. He's, that's the difference between the book and the film. The film, they obviously decided they needed to create an antagonist. They were conscious of it as a franchise. But in the book, I mean, he might as well not be there, frankly. And that's, I think, a strength of the book because it's so narrowly focused
43:51 Speaker 03 Totally.
43:52 Dominic Sandbrook? on the drama of the games rather than the wider political consequences.
43:55 Speaker 03 But you know, I think a lot of these kind of books, these series that start with a narrow focus, I often think, it was true of the Maze Runner books as well, which are also teen dystopia. You start with a lovely, kind of neat, well-thought-out, well-fleshed-out kind of world or moment or storyline. And then they get a bit kind of messy and out of control as the books proceed. And I think that's slightly true of the Hunger Games. And then we've got Rue and Cato. They're kind of the opposite sides of what contestants might be, what the tributes could be. Cato, as we've said, is kind of like a weapon-bred District Two to win the Games. Rue is a twelve-year-old girl and she exemplifies kind of the tragedy of when the odds do not go in your favor.
44:33 Speaker 03 Katniss takes her under her wing and it's the tragedy of Rue's fate that kind of sparks the flame of rebellion in Katniss.
44:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
44:42 Speaker 03 And then we have Haymitch and Effie. Effie, the Margaret Thatcher, Lady Gaga crossover. And then there's Haymitch, who's, you know, we mentioned Woody Harrelson, the drunk.
44:50 Dominic Sandbrook? And so they are basically the sort of mentors for Katniss and for Peter, who's her fellow contestant from her district. We're suspicious of them at first. We think he's a drunk and she's just a sort of vapid waste of space. But actually, they both turn out to be, you know, they're all right, aren't they?
45:05 Speaker 03 They are.
45:06 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, I wouldn't go overboard, but they're, they're fine. The whole thing is narrated by Katniss in the present tense. Yeah, it's through her narrative voice.
45:14 Speaker 03 Writing it in the first person like that builds suspense very well. I run, I sit, I watch, you know?
45:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. And can I say that, well, I know we're not talking about the film just yet, so I'm speaking out of order. But I think the film suffers by comparison because the film does cut to scenes in which Katniss is not involved. Whereas the book, we see everything through Katniss's eyes and it creates some, there's a sense, as always with first person narration, there's a sense of you're walking in her shoes. There's an interiority to it. Admittedly, it's quite a thin one because she's not a brilliant narrator. But there is a kind of claustrophobia to her experience, which is quite addictive as a reader. And you don't quite get that with the film when it's cut into scenes that are outside the games.
46:02 Speaker 03 I think that's a fair point, but let's talk about her major love interest in the book. You know, we spoke about how so much of the book is kind of a teen drama. And this is a guy called Peter Millark.
46:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, now, Tabby, you love him. You, because you've written in the notes that he's the king of your heart.
46:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, Peter Millark, the king of my heart. But I know, okay, so this kind of goes against, you know, Nicole and I were speaking about this. She's like, he's so boring. And so it's true in so many ways. He's the opposite of kind of my type in, in fiction, that is, if you see what I mean. Because he is kind of the nice guy. He's a bit dull, but basically I had a massive crush on Josh Hutchison when I was younger. Because I watched Little Manhattan and Bridgerton Terabithia. Having not read the book and then having watched the first film, I basically was going to be team Peter from the start. And also, you know, he's kind, he's actually more kind of weasely or like calculating than, than you might think. Because he's very good at playing up to the cameras.
46:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
46:55 Speaker 03 He's brave. We find out that he saved Katniss's life when they were younger because as she and her family were dying, he burnt the bread in his family's bakery intentionally and threw her two loaves and it kept their family alive. And He's the one who builds this elaborate ruse of pretending that he has been in love with Katniss from afar all their lives. And it's a way to basically get the crowds behind them, support them as sort of star-crossed lovers. But the thing that we work out as the book goes on is that he actually has had a massive crush on Katniss from the start. I think that is quite romantic. I know it's a cliche, but cliches can be romantic.
47:35 Dominic Sandbrook? So I was watching this film on a plane yesterday next to my son.
47:41 Speaker 03 Oh, Arthur would not have thought well of this.
47:43 Dominic Sandbrook? He didn't. He was scoffing. He was scoffing a lot and he kept saying very loudly, "How's the Hunger Games going?" in an attempt to basically make me look bad in front of the other passengers. But you have a criticism of this bloke. You think he talks too much about bakery and bread products generally.
47:59 Speaker 03 I don't even mean that in kind of like a flippant jokey way. There are literally three points in the book where Katniss talks about having a conversation with Peter about the different kinds of bread in the capital.
48:09 Dominic Sandbrook? That's true, actually. They do talk about.
48:11 Speaker 03 And I know that if that was, if I was on a first, second and third date with a guy and he kept talking about bread, there would come a point where I'd be like, look, change the subject. But also the other thing is, so just to build a sense of people, this massively plays into the kind of the trope of the teen romance. We spoke about this in A Court of Thorns and Roses, a classic love triangle. And Peter is the foil to this guy Gale, who Katniss has grown up with. They've hunted together, they're opposites. Gale is kind of dark, swarthy, lean and fiery. Peter is kind and steady and kind of blonde. And you know, the tension is, you know, who's Katniss gonna pick?
48:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's kind of obvious though, isn't it? So let's talk about Katniss, because Katniss is our narrator. She's our protagonist. We see everything through her eyes in the form of Jennifer Lawrence. She became the face of the franchise, the braided hair, the bow, the sort of Mockingjay pin, which again is a symbol of the story. I know you love her, so I'm gonna play devil's advocate with you.
49:12 Speaker 03 I don't love her. I can see that like in many ways, she's entirely two-dimensional. But I think she is refreshing when you look at her in comparison to, say, Bella Cullen from Twilight.
49:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay.
49:23 Speaker 03 You wouldn't know.
49:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, so, so I would say she's very generic. She's, and, and this is weird for me because as we've discussed in other episodes, I'm sure of this show, you have a massive animus against the character Rey in Star Wars and you always say, you always say, oh, she's a girl boss. You don't like her. You don't like a girl boss.
49:43 Speaker 03 No, I, I, I love a girl boss. I don't like an overtly carbureled, cutout girl boss who basically is just ticking boxes for audiences and studios so they can be like, we love women, we love like, girls who can fight for themselves and don't have to be saved by men.
49:59 Dominic Sandbrook? We're like a spunky girl.
50:00 Speaker 03 That's so generic.
50:02 Dominic Sandbrook? How does she not do that? She ticks all those boxes.
50:05 Speaker 03 I suppose because she's like, she's cruel, as, as she can be very cruel and she's resourceful and, and I like the fact that she's kind of willing to kill and I like the fact that she's not particularly interested in kind of her own love story. Um, and I like the fact that she's kind of quick to ignite and, and things like that. I can see that for a young girl, you know, maybe she is a good sort of role model. She's not massively interesting. I would say she's also more interesting than Farah from A Quarter of Thorns and Roses because it's not constantly about her martyrdom. That's the other thing. Girl bosses are so often like martyred figures. Katniss isn't really.
50:41 Dominic Sandbrook? That's a very fair point because thinking about it, comparing it with A Quarter of Thorns and Roses, and A Quarter of Thorns and Roses, I mean, I never thought, by the way, that I would be discussing, you know, analyzing the characters in these teen books. Anyway, in A Quarter of Thorns and Roses, Farah basically spends most of the time, she's very introverted, she spends a lot of time thinking about herself, analyzing her feelings, but also feeling very sorry for herself and meditating on her own kind of victimhood. In this book, Katniss is very unreflective. She very rarely, she, she lives in the moment. She very rarely thinks, feels sorry for herself.
51:20 Speaker 03 No.
51:20 Dominic Sandbrook? She does, she does help her family, but she doesn't really reflect on.
51:24 Speaker 03 She doesn't bang on about it.
51:25 Dominic Sandbrook? No, she doesn't bang on about it. She's more impulsive. She's not interested in the love triangle, actually.
51:31 Speaker 03 No.
51:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Is she?
51:32 Speaker 03 No, she also, she uses it. She uses it to her advantage. The love story is not actually the point.
51:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
51:39 Speaker 03 Which I think is refreshing because it means that Katniss, the point of Katniss isn't these two blokes.
51:44 Dominic Sandbrook? The the point of Katniss, I suppose, is that she is an individual cast against a system, isn't she?
51:48 Speaker 03 She's a reluctant rebel as well. You know who she reminds me of, actually, Dominic?
51:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Who?
51:53 Speaker 03 A movie that we both love, Rogue One, Felicity Jones's character in that.
51:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Rogue One is such a good film.
51:59 Speaker 03 Such a good film, but she's like that. She's like that, a reluctant rebel, quite cold, quite chilly, quite violent, quite brutal, but underneath it all, there's just a little girl who misses her daddy. In this book, Katniss's, you know, role as a symbol, as someone who opposes the capital and its totalitarianism, it doesn't come through very strongly. But we do get hints throughout that Panem and the capital is an oppressive totalitarian regime and that it keeps the districts under control.
52:29 Dominic Sandbrook? It's got the surveillance, it's got fences around the districts, it has these people called the peacekeepers, who are these sort of brutal enforcers working for the government, doesn't it? We see all this through her eyes, but it's a world that she takes for granted, right? That she, the existing, the unequal system, she doesn't really question it.
52:48 Speaker 03 Most people growing up under oppressive regimes, I think your average person, we spoke about this, we spoke about The Handmaid's Tale back when we did the mini-series on the rest of history. You just want to get by. It's just day to day, like, small acts of survival. It's it's not everyone is like automatically a rebel.
53:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, completely agreed. You know, she's not especially educated. She's not, you know, there's no sort of rebel group hiding in the woods that she has become, you know, affiliated with or anything like that. There are things that she objects to, and she's conscious of the use of propaganda, and she's conscious of the surveillance culture, and she's conscious of the way in which she's being used, but she doesn't reflect upon it. Which I think is perfectly reasonable. It's exactly how a character like that would actually, um, would behave.
53:33 Speaker 03 I think one of the things in this book that she reinforces all the time is the disparity in wealth, you know, the inequality. Because that directly affects her. Her family is constantly fighting not to starve. Whereas, you know, she comes to the capital and it's incredibly prosperous and luxurious, as as we've said. And then obviously as the books progress. The poor masses will rise up against the, you know, wealthy elite. And I mean, they're sort of, I suppose, if you were sort of trying to force the point, something maybe with the French Revolution in that. And she becomes a symbol of that.
54:08 Dominic Sandbrook? But we're not conscious of that really in this book, are we?
54:10 Speaker 03 The propaganda, you are conscious of the propaganda, the fact that they are very keen to project a certain image, the fact that they stream the Hunger Games into everyone's homes, the fact that they make the Hunger Games something the districts want to celebrate, you know, they wear their nice clothes for the reaping, you know, Katniss and Peter go back as, you know, in real style as champions, as kind of having done a good thing.
54:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
54:32 Speaker 03 They definitely bend the narrative to their own agenda.
54:35 Dominic Sandbrook? So just on the arena, so basically you're dropped into the arena and then there's a, there's a big horn called the cornucopia with full of stuff. And if you want, you can, you can battle for the stuff or you can run away and hide in the woods. You know, we're following Katniss, she's watching as some of the contestants are picked off, they kill each other, they form alliances, all of this kind of thing. And the games the whole time, like a reality TV show, being manipulated by the producers, aren't they? So they are introducing these mutations, because we're in a world of genetic mutations and whatnot. So they're introducing those, those wasps.
55:11 Speaker 03 They're horrible, the tracker jackers.
55:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the wasps sting you and then you have hallucinations and you may end up dying. So one of the characters, I know you said you thought this was quite a horrific moment in the book, when one of the characters is stung by all these wasps.
55:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
55:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Dies and her kind of flesh disintegrates.
55:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's kind of gross. And then Katniss has to rip the bow from her kind of clenched hand. But the worst bit is the, is the wolf mutts that appear kind of in the final round of the games. There's only three contestants left. And they look like wolves from a distance, but they can stand on their hind legs and they kind of, they can do things with their paws that are sort of human-esque.
55:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
55:51 Speaker 03 But then it turns out, and this is so disturbing, it turns out, the tributes that have been killed, it's like them resurrected. So they have the eyes and the hair of all the dead tributes.
56:01 Dominic Sandbrook? They didn't do this in the film. I was so disappointed because I was looking forward to this. So this is the one reality TV show that I'm absolutely addicted to. This is a mad confession. I love The Apprentice. I know all the criticisms, I've heard them a thousand times. It's absolutely brilliant.
56:16 Speaker 03 You're in the pay of Alan Sugar, aren't you?
56:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Lord Sugar now, Tabby.
56:20 Speaker 03 Oh, I'm so sorry, my lord.
56:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Anyway, they, at the end of The Apprentice, in the final, the two contestants can bring back the other people who've been knocked out. And this is what this reminded me of. Now, actually, the serious point here is about the violence, isn't it?
56:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Because this idea of these kind of wolves, the faces of dead contestants, reminds you that a lot of people have died. And actually, in America in particular, where people are frankly more squeamish about these things, weirdly, given the levels of violence in American society, but there you are. People are definitely more squeamish. And it's often challenged, you know, school districts and whatnot, or your parents' groups will challenge the inclusion of this book in libraries and in school reading lists and things, because they say it's too violent for teenagers. Do you think it's too violent for teenagers? Clearly you don't, because you loved the film and you read the books when you were a teenager.
57:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, I definitely don't think it's too violent for teenagers. I also think, and this is a point that you've often made, I think, that for teenagers and children, the more violent, the better. They seem to enjoy it more. And also, I suppose, because as a teenager and a child, you're less likely to kind of really stop and think about the premise. Because it's kind of just people your age and they're just kind of fighting. And, you know, you're not really thinking about it. But then I thought about it a lot when I was reading it, that, you know, stuff like a 12-year-old girl, a sweet little 12-year-old girl is speared in the stomach. And Cato, that kind of the warrior tribute, he's slowly eaten alive over the course of hours. And it is children taking on children. I don't think it should ever be banned.
57:58 Speaker 03 I don't think books should ever be banned or cut out of syllabuses or anything. Because, you know, it's not ideologically challenging or anything like that. But it is incredibly violent. But I think she does the violence quite well, because it's often kind of in the peripheries. There are these few moments where it hits you full on, and that's, say, the wolf mutts, the tracker jackers, this moment when Cato just breaks someone's neck. But on the whole, like... I was struck by the fact the word murder is only used kind of five times in the book. Because it allows you to to watch the games and participate in the games as a reader. In the way that the spectators of the capital do, i.e. you gamify it. You're like, which of these teenagers will triumph over this teenager? You're not like, which of these teenagers will murder?
58:40 Dominic Sandbrook? You raised the comparison the first off with Lord of the Flies. And I think it's a lot less shocking than Lord of the Flies is.
58:46 Speaker 03 Well, they're younger as well in Lord of the Flies.
58:48 Dominic Sandbrook? They're younger, but also Lord of the Flies is grounded in a realism, I suppose.
58:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:54 Dominic Sandbrook? About the children, their world, the way they think, the way they act. And it's definitely not cartoonish. There is an, there is a, and also frankly, Lord of the Flies is a book for adults. So it's written in a much richer, grittier, uh, more nuanced way than The Hunger Games is. When the children turn on Piggy in Lord of the Flies, it is a a really shocking and affecting moment. And I remember reading that as a twelve year old and being appalled by it. I actually had to stop reading the book because I'd never. You know, it was a book that plunged more deeply than any book I'd ever read into the darkness of the human soul. That is not true of The Hunger Games. I mean, you just, you're told, oh, so there are some children here who've been bred as killers.
59:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Here they are, killing each other. But you're not invited to reflect on it, though, are you?
59:42 Speaker 03 No, you're definitely not. It's action based. It's not about the idea behind it. It's about the action. But it's also because, you know, you're you're in an imaginary world, whereas you say, Lord of the Flies. We spoke about Just William on our um Q and A that we did on YouTube. And it would be a bit like Just William, living in that world, that version of England. He and his mates suddenly, you know, hitting each other over the head with rocks. How how shocking would that be? But also in Lord of the Flies, William Golding is very good at putting you in the mind of a child. A bit like the narrator in the go between. It's disturbing because it's children thinking these things or doing these things. In The Hunger Games, Katniss is what, sixteen? And she actually thinks like an older person.
1:00:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, she does.
1:00:25 Speaker 03 It automatically kind of raises the maturity, not of the story or the premise, but the maturity of the people that she's up against.
1:00:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, this will seem again like I'm being unduly harsh on the book, and I don't mean to, because I did enjoy reading it. We don't really believe that Katniss exists and that this world exists when we're reading the book. We're conscious of it as a fictional construct. It's a fun entertainment and you don't genuinely believe this person. Of course you don't. Lord of the Flies is much more immersive and precisely because it's a book for an older reader, written by a great, one of the great 20th century's great writers, you inhabit this world in a much more meaningful and affecting way than a reader of The Hunger Games would. I don't believe that any, even the most sheltered child reading The Hunger Games will really, I don't think they'll be haunted for days by the violence. Do you, Tabby?
1:01:14 Speaker 03 No, I don't. But I think the thing that actually, which probably wouldn't haunt young readers as much as older viewers, the thing I was sort of slightly disturbed by was the reality TV element of it. How much pleasure the spectators in the capital get from watching these children kill each other and how much they sensationalize it and how they turn the characters into, you know, types. You know, you have the violent one, you have the romantic one, you have the pretty one, you know, and how little they really care about the deeper meanings, i.e. the violence within the arena. And as I was reading it, I kept thinking about that moment in Gladiator when Commodus kind of, there's a horribly violent death in the amphitheater and he sticks his tongue out like he's kind
1:01:56 Speaker 03 of just drunk on the gore and the violence. And I kept thinking about that element of it and how these very polished and very ostentatiously prosperous people are watching children kill each other and they're just, you know, thoroughly enjoying it.
1:02:11 Dominic Sandbrook? The voyeurism, the voyeurism of it.
1:02:13 Speaker 03 The voyeurism. I find that disturbing because I'm often quite disturbed by and think quite a lot about the role of reality TV in modern culture. I've always found that a little bit disturbing. You know, Suzanne Collins said, "There is so much programming today that I worry that we're all getting a little bit desensitized to the images on our televisions. You know, if you're watching a sitcom, that's fine, but there's a real life tragedy unfolding, etc., etc." And, you know, I dread the time when
1:02:40 Speaker 03 You know, we're so used to screens and scrolling and watching things and we can have whatever TV we want at the click of a button. I dread the time when people will, I don't know, watch news footage of like, I don't know, Ukraine or Iran or whatever it may be. And they'd be like, oh, this is actually just a bit boring.
1:02:57 Dominic Sandbrook? But people do think like that. They already think like that.
1:03:00 Speaker 03 They do, they do. And I find that nerve wracking. And then they flicker and then they'll be like, this is so tedious. Like, porn love is blind. And I get it. I I totally get it. It's like, why would you, you know, chew your way through a chewy but nutritious steak when you could, you know, swallow down heaps of candy floss? Like, one is easy, one is hard. But it is desensitizing. And I also think the fact that we now look to escapism to people living in the real world and we like play with them like puppets.
1:03:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
1:03:28 Speaker 03 I don't like that either. And that's the element of The Hunger Games that I find like slightly prophetic and certainly very disturbing.
1:03:36 Dominic Sandbrook? I think you're dead right about the both those things. So on the one hand, the desensitizing to violence, that's undoubtedly true. You see that a lot.
1:03:44 Speaker 03 I mean, Squid Games, insane.
1:03:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, or people exchanging clips or and memes of the fighting in Gaza or Ukraine or whatever. There's that element to it. And the other is the manipulation, the idea about producers manipulating people. And so Peter in particular is very conscious that he is playing a part in a drama and he's playing up to that. And how often have you heard people in reality TV programs whose lives may go on to be destroyed, by the way, by their participation in the program because it it kind of taints them forever. They think that they're in control and they're going to become influencers and media stars because they'll become a tremendous hit on Love Island or whatever program they're on, The Apprentice or whatever.
1:04:27 Dominic Sandbrook? But in fact, afterwards, they say, well, I was stitched up by the producers. The producers didn't choose my best bits. The producers, of course, craft a character. They create a persona. Then the contestants either fight against it or they have to live up to it and they end up playing up and pandering to the audience's expectations. All of this kind of thing. I mean, you see all of these things in The Hunger Games. I wouldn't say that they're. Blurred with tremendous complexity, but they're definitely, they're definitely there, aren't they?
1:04:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, the idea of her flicking through TV channels and being like, oh my god, reality TV and war and like, oh, put those two things together. You know, I think she was writing a really fun story with a really engaging world and a really engaging premise. I don't think she was trying to like, write a political doctrine or whatever, a warning for our times. The other thing is that the capital is so capitalistic. Everyone has so much of everything and they're constantly needing to be fed more, more, more, more violence because, you know, what else is going to get you going when you can't have everything? And I did slightly wonder if that's slightly a critique of the time.
1:05:24 Dominic Sandbrook? It's two thousands, it's pre-crash, right? It's two thousand and seven, I think she publishes a book in two thousand and eight. It would be a different book if it was written now.
1:05:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:31 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it would be a world where people are desensitized precisely because they have too much, actually, and so they're craving more extreme voyeuristic spectacles.
1:05:40 Speaker 03 And you can warp reality, you know, they say at one point, they do surgery in the capital to make people appear younger and thinner. That's never been more true than now. You can literally alter the way you look.
1:05:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly.
1:05:50 Speaker 03 Totally get away with it and probably do well for it. So in that way, there's also a massive moral ambiguity.
1:05:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:05:55 Speaker 03 At the heart of The Hunger Games, because the faker you are, the more likely you are to succeed. I mean, it's basically what helps Peter and Katniss to escape the arena in the end, isn't it? The fact that they play into this idea of them being lovers.
1:06:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So the love story, the, the love triangle, this is the second time we've done a book aimed at this, roughly this age group. A Court of Thorns and Roses is quite different though, because the love story is uppermost, it's the point of reading the book. In this book, the love triangle is slightly underplayed, you can actually not care about it and still enjoy the book. You've read all the books in the series now. Am I being too dismissive if I say that I find this a little bit flimsy, the love triangle element? Or does it acquire greater strength as the series goes on?
1:06:43 Speaker 03 I think it does acquire greater strength as the series goes on. And the fact that, you know, it comes to represent the, you know, different choices that Katniss has to make, what kind of a life she wants. And, you know, in choosing someone to be with, you are in part choosing like a kind of a life maybe. But I also don't think it's like. The most moving thing ever. I mean, it's no kind of Elizabeth and Darcy or whatever. Because, you know, Katniss isn't particularly invested. Both boys are kind of archetypes. And there's, you know, a huge dollop of the the teen drama about it, the kind of high school drama even. I think that Peter is an oddly touching character, but I also think that maybe this is something that appeals more to possibly young women than young men.
1:07:27 Speaker 03 I'm always surprised by how much of a sucker I am for like a romance and particularly a romance that's a will they, won't they element and something that grows along the way. So I definitely don't think it's groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it.
1:07:41 Dominic Sandbrook? There's a high school drama element to this whole thing, isn't there?
1:07:44 Speaker 03 Definitely. And we said the same of Court of Thorns and Roses.
1:07:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, Katniss, rather like Feyre in the Court of Thorns and Roses, has this. You know, she's constantly being watched. She's not conscious of her own beauty. I mean, that's such a massive cliche, the kind of heroine who doesn't realise just how good looking she is. And is astounded when she's told that the boys are interested in her.
1:08:05 Speaker 03 She has a makeover.
1:08:06 Dominic Sandbrook? She does have a makeover. Actually, they're both are makeovers, don't they?
1:08:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, but Katniss's is great. I love the outfits in this book.
1:08:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
1:08:13 Speaker 03 And genuinely, though, it's great. I wish I could wear some of these, like the dress that goes on fire and is covered in jewels and. Yeah, she's the girl on fire, Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire.
1:08:22 Dominic Sandbrook? So, the film, do you think the film is better than the book?
1:08:27 Speaker 03 No.
1:08:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, but you love the film.
1:08:30 Speaker 03 I do love the film, but it's different things, isn't it? Like what you said about the fact that we're in Katniss's head throughout the book and that raises suspense and stuff. I think that's really effective. I just, I loved the drama of the film. I found it. You know, particularly the second film, I found it quite moving. And the idea of these people rising up in rebellion and being very, very brave and the way that everything's filmed in the arena was done well. And I watched it, what, when I was fourteen? And I was so into the love triangle. I was so into Katniss. I loved the aesthetics of it. I loved the music.
1:09:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Mm hmm.
1:09:08 Speaker 03 So I suppose it has a more obvious effect, the film, which is often true of, you know, all films. It is constantly, it has tools to up the tension and the romance and whatever it is. But I really, I really enjoyed reading the book. It was much more subtle than I expected.
1:09:28 Speaker 03 What about you?
1:09:28 Dominic Sandbrook? I didn't really enjoy the film.
1:09:30 Speaker 03 I know, shocking.
1:09:32 Dominic Sandbrook? I shocked you before we started broadcasting by saying that I found Jennifer Lawrence a little bit uncharismatic. She wasn't the Katniss of my imagination from reading the book.
1:09:41 Speaker 03 Josh Hutchison's a hottie though, isn't he?
1:09:44 Speaker 03 Are you team Gale or team Peter in the book?
1:09:48 Dominic Sandbrook? I can't believe I'm having this conversation, Tabby. I like Peter. I think Peter's a great, I think he's a good character. I think he's the best observed character in the book because there's an ambiguity to him. We're never quite sure where he stands. We haven't really gone into the narrative of what happens in the arena because we don't want to spoil it, but there was a point in that where it appears that he is siding with people who we regard as
1:10:10 Speaker 03 As villains.
1:10:11 Dominic Sandbrook? As villains. And we're not quite clear what his motivation is. Even at the end of the book, there's a little bit of doubt about exactly where Peter stands. Is he really in love with Katniss? Is he not? Is it all a ruse? Is he playing a part? And I like that about him.
1:10:26 Speaker 03 And even though we're in Katniss's head as well, there's an ambiguity about how she feels about Peter, which I thought was done well.
1:10:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
1:10:33 Speaker 03 And keeps you, you know, it pulls you along as the series goes on. You know, you're hoping to see who she'll end up with. More to the point, how do you think you'd fare in The Hunger Games?
1:10:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, this is the key question. This is what we've been building up to.
1:10:44 Speaker 03 Wait, first of all, what would be your worst like mutation to go up against? Like giraffes with fangs? That would frighten me.
1:10:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, I thought you meant who would I least like to, whose face would I least like to see on a wolf?
1:10:57 Speaker 03 Mine.
1:10:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Let's equals. If I was attacked by a wolf with your face, I'd find that very depressing. I, how would I get on the games?
1:11:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:11:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Hold on.
1:11:06 Speaker 03 So actually, I'm going to reveal something here.
1:11:08 Dominic Sandbrook? What?
1:11:09 Speaker 03 Dominic and I, before we did this recording, you said, I know, I don't have a shadow of a doubt that if we were in The Hunger Games, you would kill me instantly. I was like, yeah, fair.
1:11:19 Dominic Sandbrook? I did say that.
1:11:20 Speaker 03 You know, it's each man for himself.
1:11:20 Dominic Sandbrook? But actually, that's not what you wrote. That's not what you wrote.
1:11:23 Speaker 03 No, and then I said, I know that you would use poison. You'd just, you'd scream like Byzantine poisoner or something.
1:11:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow.
1:11:31 Speaker 03 Then you were like, no, no, no, I'd take people by surprise because I would get a rock and I would beat people's heads in and no one would see it coming. And I was like. We were just having fun here. Now you're talking about hissing people over the head with a rock. So I initially thought that you would not fare well in The Hunger Games. But you are very, very, very intelligent. So I think that would work in your favour.
1:11:53 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, it's hard to know what has responsible that because there's so much going on and what you've just said this. There was some nice praise, but there was also the stuff, some mad stuff.
1:12:01 Speaker 03 I mean, I think very few people wouldn't betray people in order to survive. And that suggests I have a very bleak view of human nature.
1:12:09 Dominic Sandbrook? In this scenario, are we from the same district? Is that the thinking?
1:12:12 Speaker 03 No, I think we're from different districts. You scream district one, you know.
1:12:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. Pampered.
1:12:19 Speaker 03 Glamour, luxury, pampered. I scream district 12.
1:12:23 Dominic Sandbrook? District 12 outsider, outsider, underdog. You're joking. From the wrong side of the tracks.
1:12:28 Speaker 03 I actually think I'd back myself quite hard in The Hunger Games. I'm very quick. I'd be quite good at climbing trees. How did I say I'd kill you?
1:12:36 Dominic Sandbrook? You said, this is really, really poor from Tabby and that's actually ruined my holiday. She said.
1:12:43 Dominic Sandbrook? She said she would play on my greed by burying, what was it, burying a load of like gourmet food in a pit? And there was something to do with honey and then a trap.
1:12:55 Speaker 03 No, you buried gourmet food in the pit.
1:12:57 Dominic Sandbrook? You've given it so much.
1:12:59 Speaker 03 Dominic, who's been starving because he hasn't been in bed for 24 hours. He goes up, all his intelligence deserts him because there's foie gras in the pit.
1:13:11 Speaker 03 You'd clamber in, then you'd get enclosed in a massive net that I have built from reeds. And then for some reason you'd be covered in honey. I can't remember why.
1:13:21 Dominic Sandbrook? What was going on there?
1:13:22 Speaker 03 And then the other goal hanger presenters with whom I have formed an alliance would all come up and feather you. So let's put that to bed. So what should we, what should our rating system be this week?
1:13:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Was it genetically engineered wasps? Uh, who's going first? Should I go first?
1:13:39 Speaker 03 You go, you go first.
1:13:40 Dominic Sandbrook? I think I'm going to give this.
1:13:45 Dominic Sandbrook? I'm gonna do something I never thought I'd do. I'm really shaming myself because I gave you grief for doing this the other week. I'm gonna use a half.
1:13:52 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:13:52 Dominic Sandbrook? For the first time in the show, I'm getting into the world of fractions. I'm gonna give it six and a half because I enjoyed it more than A Quarter of Thorns and Roses, which I enjoyed at the end, but I felt that massive bits of A Quarter of Thorns and Roses, they sort of lagged, they were slow. This, I found the narrative very propulsive. The writing's a bit thin though, I think, even for a teenage book.
1:14:15 Speaker 03 It's pretty watery.
1:14:16 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it is watery.
1:14:17 Speaker 03 Stephen King said of it that he thought, although he found it kind of addictive, he said that he thought the writing was lazy and would only appeal to young audiences.
1:14:25 Dominic Sandbrook? I think he's probably right. This is a book that you could give to somebody, a teenager in particular, and say, I bet you you'll whiz through this. It's a page turner. However, it is absolutely not a book of which you could make any literary claims. It's an interesting book and it's interesting in why it appeals to people and how it reflects the anxieties and the interests of our time, as it were, or the 2000s and 2010s. But as a work of literature, it's very thin. So there you go. I'll give it six and a half. And I think that's quite generous, actually.
1:14:59 Speaker 03 I'm gonna give it a seven because I really, really enjoyed it. And I don't think you should ever just put aside how enjoying books matters, how much that matters, and what a credit that is to the person who wrote it, because I don't think I could begin to write a book that kept people hooked. So I think that's impressive. I enjoyed it. I liked Katniss. I liked Peeta. But as you say, the writing, there's nothing special about it. So I'm gonna give it a seven.
1:15:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Fair enough. So six and a half and a seven.
1:15:26 Speaker 03 Yeah. And what do we have coming up? I will tell you. So next week, we have The Picture of Dora and Grey, then we have The Code of the Wusters, which should be really fun.
1:15:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Can't wait for that.
1:15:37 Speaker 03 Then we have Little Women, then we have Game of Thrones, then we have The Wind in the Willows, then we have The Leopard, then we have The Thirty Nine Steps, then we have My Brilliant Friend, and then we have Cersei. So that should give you ample warning of what's coming up.
1:15:53 Dominic Sandbrook? So thank you, everybody, as always, for all your comments. And keep your questions coming for our Q and A's that we do on YouTube, because we always have fun answering those. And yeah, so I feel like we've learned a lot about ourselves in this podcast.
1:16:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
1:16:08 Dominic Sandbrook? And not necessarily in a good way. And on that terrifying note. Thank you all for listening and goodbye.
1:16:15 Speaker 03 Thank you. Bye.
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