the hunger games ballad of songbirds and snakes palestine israel conflict gaza war rachel zegler

This Is Why You Feel Uncomfortable Watching ‘Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’

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I, along with the rest of the world, watched The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes this week. While I did enjoy elements of the movie, I couldn’t help but feel like it hit a little too close to home. 

If you’re not familiar with the Hunger Games universe, it’s set in a dystopian world where the ruling class of the Capitol benefits from the labour of the 12 Districts, using food and the threat of violence to make sure citizens fall in line. 

If that wasn’t enough, the rich and elite Capitol also host the Hunger Games each year. This involves picking two tributes between the age of 12-18 from each district to fight to the death, with the last surviving child becoming the sole victor. Oh, and the Capitol citizens bet and wager on their favourite tribute in a sort of twisted reality TV show manner. 

the hunger games ballad of songbirds and snakes palestine israel conflict gaza war rachel zegler

Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird in the bombed arena. Image credit: Lionsgate, The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes

The film, which has debuted to mixed reviews, has some stark parallels to what’s going on in the world right now. 

I think everybody is finally aware of the Israeli occupation in Palestine and the horrifying number of reported deaths of children in Gaza. The news has people all over the world taking to the streets to protest in the thousands. If you want to read more about what is happening in Palestine, you can find more info here, in this article and here.

According to the government’s media office, the official Palestinian death toll since October 7 has risen to 14,532 – which includes about 6,000 children. So if you thought that people watching children being slaughtered and not doing anything to stop it was fiction, it’s feeling incredibly real at the moment. 

Each morning we wake up to the news of bombs being dropped on hospitals and that is a scenario that Suzanne Collins (the author of the Hunger Games books) literally wrote in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, when Katniss Everdeen films a video as a resistance fighter in District 8. 

“I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I’m right here in District 8 where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children. There will be no survivors,” she declared. 

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Snakes And Songbirds builds on overarching themes of resistance, class and segregation, shining a light on how differently people are treated. It’s perfectly acceptable to the society in power — the Capitol — to kill children in a twisted competition, but when one of the tributes dares to fight back, they are immediately shot. 

The premise of the film revolves around the creator implementing the first-ever ‘mentor’ system for the 10th Annual Hunger Games. The mentors are all students of a fancy Academy Casca Highbottom, and whoever helps entertain the Capitol with their tribute, will win a prestigious Plinth Prize. 

the hunger games ballad of songbirds and snakes palestine israel conflict gaza war rachel zegler

Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird and Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow. Image credit: Lionsgate, The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Snakes And Songbirds

In one scene that was particularly hard to watch, the tributes were thrown into the Capitol Zoo for media and crowds to view through the bars. Snobby student Arachne Crane teases her tribute Brandy by offering her a drink before repeatedly snatching it away, dehumanising and humiliating her.

When Brandy reaches breaking point, she manages to grab the bottle, break it and kill Arachne with a glass shard. The tribute is then instantly shot dead without a thought. It’s obvious in the movie that certain lives are more important to society than others… something that we’re seeing playing out beyond cinema screens in 2023.

How the Iraq war influenced Suzanne Collins to write The Hunger Games.

Suzanne Collins has been open about how she ‘dreamed up’ the dystopian Hunger Games world, and how current events at the time heavily influenced her writing. 

She was channel surfing on the TV back in the mid-2000s, finding herself switching between coverage of the Iraq war and a reality TV show. She began to think about the contrast of the two programmes, as well as thinking about how modern media was desensitising audiences as a whole. “I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story,” she told The Independent. 

the hunger games ballad of songbirds and snakes palestine israel conflict gaza war rachel zegler katniss everdeen

Katniss Everdeen was used as a symbol of resistance. Image credit: Lionsgate, The Hunger Games

The author’s father also fought as an US Air Force officer during the Vietnam War in 1968, a war that has since been seen as unnecessary and immoral. Suzanne remembers growing up hearing about the war, saying that it felt “very frightening”.

“Even though my mum tried to protect us… sometimes the TV would be on, and I would see footage from the war zone. I was little, but I would hear them say ‘Vietnam’, and I knew my dad was there,” she said.

While The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes is difficult to watch (the scenes that show the stark difference between the haves and the have-nots made me physically flinch in my seat) it’s something that is resonating with so many young people across the world. I certainly left the cinema wishing that the dystopian genre was, in fact, only fiction.

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Image credits: Lionsgate, The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes