ABSTRACT
As with much speculative fiction, the world imagined by the Hunger Games is a dystopian future America representing ‘almost believeable’ truths about our current society. The Games themselves and the state-media complex which they centre seem explicable as a conjunction of surveillance and ideological management in the ways they work to maintain a hegemonic order and manage citizen-subject’s relations to any possible change. As elements of an overarching media spectacle, they create a web of social controls and desires that is at once visible and invisible. The suppression of any potential to amass capital, and particularly cultural capital, means that all citizens of Panem remain in their assigned locations and stations, with no social mobility whatsoever – except, of course, if one is forced or willing to become a tribute, and a part of the oppressive machine itself. Katniss, however, gradually unpacks the interwoven promises and threats of the Games as a political device, and helps expose and explode the current system of government in Panem. Nevertheless, this remains a cautious victory, and no utopia is finally installed by Katniss’s survival.
