I’ve read all sorts of think pieces on The Hunger Games movie in the past week.  Most seem to agree that it’s a pretty good, exciting movie; many have noted that the filmmakers made significant cuts in the second half of the novel, and thus, as Andrew O’Hehir notes in Salon, we get no sense of the hunger, thirst, cold, disease and harrowing physical torment— we wouldn’t want too much down time between killings.  Everyone seems to agree that the film is a dystopian satire of media, many noting that Suzanne Collins says the first book was partially inspired by footage of the war in Iraq that she saw on TV.

I’ll be honest:  as blurry as the distinction can seem between journalism and reality tv  these days, I can’t in good faith draw a line of “if this keeps going on” from here to compulsory viewings of some homicidal teenage version of  Battle of the Network Stars.   It’s a straw man argument- a vague indictment of Big Media or Big Government or something– and I don’t find it plausible enough to land as social satire.

But I have been thinking a lot about the ways that the adult world is already forcing kids into hunger games of their own.  In my suburban school district, I’ve seen class ranking and early admission letters destroy friendships forever.  And on a broader scale, what are the New York State (and California, and Massachusetts) tax caps but open warfare on those school districts too poor to have adequate textbooks and teachers delivered via cute little parachute drops.   Since implementing a 2% cap on property taxes, California has seen the quality of its schools drop to 46th [out of 50] for achievement in grades K-12, below Alabama and South Carolina.  In The Hunger Games, 23 kids are sacrificed; in real life, California sacrifices entire generations.

In The Hunger Games, all citizens are compelled to watch the slaughter.  In real life, Californians– and now New Yorkers– cast their votes and turned their backs on their children.

The most powerful forms of resistance in the Hunger Games turn out to be connection and compassion.  They may be forced to kill, but the young heroes of Collins’s novels never treat their opponents as anything other than human.    It’s something to keep in mind as history, politics, technology and the economy continue to isolate us from each other, to force us into parties and camps: the most radical form of resistance is to remember that your opponent is human.