The Hunger Games; reality, and My Reality

Long ago I gave up on any ambition of being "cool."  I WAS cool, once - long ago when the Earth was still young and MTV still played music videos - I was a pretty cool guy.  Readers of this blog who knew me in high school will not remember me as cool; because I wasn't back then.  But in college - well that was another story.  I hit my stride in college and there lived a pretty cool existence.

That being said, as I sneak up on my 30th high school graduation anniversary, I admit that I do not know any current songs, recognize any current tv stars, and cannot even begin to fathom the circumstances under which I would pick up one of those dreadful "Twilight" books and lend to it any of my precious time.  I realize that I loved Seinfeld and that show went off the air 14 years ago.

So, when my nearly 12 year-old son asked, it was with a high degree of anxiety that I bought the wonder-boy the Hunger Games books.  He loves them.  I thought perhaps they were too dark for my liking.  When I was a boy his age, honest to God, I was reading the Hardy Boys (read every one of them two or three times), The Chronicles of Narnia (thank you Mr. Seiter for sharing those books with me in 5th grade - I have worn out three sets in my lifetime) and was fixated on the tales of King Arthur, the Three Musketeers, and Robin Hood.  My books had old fashioned heroes and old fashioned themes of good and evil and the hero always fought hard and won the day.

So when junior said he wanted the Hunger Games I wanted to demonstrate enough trust in him to buy them and give them over without first censoring them.  I hadn't heard of these books except that I knew they were wildly popular with young kids - which to me meant they must be filled with inhumanity, cruelty and sex gushing off every lurid page.  But, rather than censor the books, I engaged him in a thoughtful discussion why we read, what we hope to get out of reading, and what to watch for about the ideas we let others put in our heads.  He humored me with the same degree of patience a 5 year-old uses when needing a restroom.

After the lecture, delivered with skill in a locked and moving car in order to frustrate any plans he had on escaping, I gave him the books. He read the first book in about 2 days, a fact which convinced me that my innocent, terrific, wholesome little boy who still gives hugs and kisses before he goes to bed had just read "Tropic of Cancer" meets "Lady Chatterly's Lover." 

When he asked me to take him to see the movie this weekend I was impressed that he would invite such parental scrutiny into his lurid world of post 20th century pop culture.  Then it dawned on me that I was his ride.  I said "yes, of course" and then promptly went to the interwebs to see what I might learn about this story.

I subsequently learned that the novel, written by Suzanne James in 2008, was inspired by the author's dim view of "reality" television.  Already I was pleased.  I too share a dim view of reality television.  It celebrates the most base instincts, emotions and pleasures in all of us.  Whether it is man's inhumanity to man and the effront to civility represented by any number of survival games, or our pop culture's celebration of the shallow, vapid, and empty-headed morons being paid millions to impress us with their stupidity and complete lack of depth - I find reality television to be anything BUT reflective of reality. 

I find it analgous to hunting bear with a bait pile of doughnuts and pie filling.  The bear knows that what it consumes is probably going to end up killing it, but it is there, and easy to consume, requires little effort to digest, and virtually no effort to acquire.  The bear can't resist it and those who desire to control the bear's behavior know exactly what to feed the bear to get it to do what they want it to do.

So we saw the movie and I was impressed by what I saw; both on screen and in my son and his good buddy.  The movie celebrates courage and humanity while shining a bright light on the toxic portent of reality tv.  At the movie, the kids cheered for the right reasons, held contempt for the vile characters, and were moved by the most humane parts of the story.  I walked out of the theater happy and proud that, 30 years removed from the stories of my youth, the modern knights of literature were knights no less than those I cheered on in Arthur Rex.  The good guys were as dauntless and bold and human as any that I encountered in any of my favorite stories.

My reality for the weekend was that I probably worried for nothing - that the child sharing my house was not going to be any more of a miscreant after reading the Hunger Games than I became after reading The Catcher in the Rye. For that, I am relieved and a little proud of my son and the good company he keeps.  My belief that a company of good boys will, by and large, grow into a company of good men with just a little trust and support was affirmed by what I saw tonight.

So, thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I hope wherever you are; whomever you are with today, you are crafting a great story of good guys, heroes, courage and faith.  The kind of story where the hero is tested, shows strength, loves, hurts a little, and in the end wins the day.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com