Posted on 04/05/2012 8:03:40 AM PDT by SmithL
It's not until the final book of "The Hunger Games" trilogy that Katniss Everdeen learns that Panem, the capital of her dystopian world, comes from the Latin, "Panem et circenses." The phrase "bread and circuses," her mentor tells her, comes from a Roman writer who lamented that "in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Exactly.
Who needs Big Brother when you can have the NBA and American Idol.
....and Facebook and the new iPad and....
Panem is the name of the entire country in this series. The Capitol, is simply refered to as "The Capitol" with 13 numbered districts serving it.
I couldn’t believe this was in the SFGate.
Read the comments. The flaming liberal turd-burglars still get in a wad once Sarah Palin is mentioned.
Kudos to the article’s author.
The libtards are going to start panning this movie more and more because whether or not the author stated she had a political agenda, the big government is the BAD GUY in this movie
The Hunger Games reads like “Agenda 21” realized.
I hope that enough young readers will be able to make the connection.
Hunger Games could be our generation’s “1984” in terms of Literature.
[Katniss Everdeen learns that Panem, the capital of her dystopian world
Panem is the name of the entire country in this series. The Capitol, is simply refered to as “The Capitol” with 13 numbered districts serving it.]
http://gohsep.la.gov/femarelated/FEMARegMap.htm
Sounds like the 10 FEMA regions with Canada, Mexico and another country thrown into the mix...
I went to look at our library system online, and saw that EVERY copy of the first book of the series is checked out, and is already on hold for someone else. I’ll get around to reading them someday.
[ The libtards are going to start panning this movie more and more because whether or not the author stated she had a political agenda, the big government is the BAD GUY in this movie. ]
[channeling Andrev Klaavan on the Culture]
NO, NO, NO, don’t you know that LIMITED government leads to this sort of thing, look at Ancient Rome, it had a really small central government when they were killing christians in areas... oh it didn’t. But look at Hitler, he was a small limited government type when he ruled germany.... oh I guess not.... Or Chairman Mao he killed million and did it with only three other people and spoon... oh I guess not....
Why do we have to keep fighting the ridiculous idea that limited government leads to “Democide” (death by government).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
When historically Democide is ALWAYS associated with large centralized power structures.
I bought the whole trilogy as an ebook via kobo books, for $4.05...
Not sure if the discount code works anymore, but it’s HungerGamesDeal
http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Hunger-Games-Trilogy/book-bzAVDy2qHkWftvRlM1SOEw/page1.html
and American Idol, Jersey Shore, CNN, etc.
I’ve become overly cynical where every new show is just another distraction from people realizing how much we’ve lost.
You can get a trade paperback at Walmart for $6.88. I know this because there’s one on my kitchen counter where some child dropped it.
Donald Sutherland stated that the children fighting to the death in The Hunger Games are OWS Occupiers and that the politicians in The Capitol are Republicans. He stated this in interviews the week before the movie opened.
As I’ve written before... I read “Hunger Games” recently after seeing many of my students avidly reading it, and I figured that anything which is causing my students to read with enthusiasm is worth a look.
The book is basic dystopic science fiction written as a romance. In that regard, it’s a lot like “Twilight,” which is a horror story written as a romance. I can see the appeal. The writing is easy to read, with clearly defined characters and an easy-to-understand plot. Teenagers love to read about themselves, and the theme of a heroic kid against the unfeeling adult world is as old as time.
I read this book followed by “A Clockwork Orange,” which was a little like watching “Two and a Half Men” followed by Shakespeare.
What I find interesting is the political theme. Many of my students (most of whom as freshmen and sophomores) already recognize that they no longer live in a country that respects liberty and natural rights. They aren’t taught about it in most of their classes, sadly, but they are nevertheless exposed to what the country used to be like through classic film, television, music, and books. Those of us who are old tend to forget about this. When those kids watch something like “The Wizard of Oz” or “It’s A
Wonderful Life” they are being exposed to the cultural norms when those movies were filmed, and they compare it to the world in which they live. Their understanding of these things is limited, of course, since they’re young and without much experience, but they can see with their eyes the differences and feel how the changes since those days have not been very positive. (My son even commented on this watching “Super 8,” which is one of the finest depictions of 1979 I’ve ever seen, having lived there myself for a year.)
It doesn’t take much imagination to see that we’re headed towards the world of the gulags where the state elite rules with an iron fist - in the same way that my generation could see that we were headed towards nuclear war and total devestation.
The good news is that my students feel in an unspoken way the virtues of liberty and natural rights. Hopefully they’ll keep the image of Panem with them and use it prevent the establishment of the totalitarian state. There have been great awakenings before, and it would be good to see it happen again.
God help us.
notice also, they refer to the capitAl, not the capitOl.
He’s entitled to his opinion. He didn’t write the story or the screenplay.
I’m reminded of Woody Harrellson talking about his role in _A_Scanner_Darkly_: he had no idea what it was about, and didn’t care, he just did as he was told and was a natural at doing. Methinks Sutherland’s opinion bears about as much weight.
I used codes thehungergames, thehungergames2 and thehungergames3 there and got ‘em for about $3. Per-book discounting seemed...fluid.
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