ALPERN AT LARGE-Having just seen the first-rate movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' bestselling book Catching Fire, I was impressed by a variety of take-home messages--some of them pretty straightforward, some of them perhaps a result of my own peculiar, warped view of reality that is influenced by everything from my college humanities courses to my experience as a physician and a veteran of grassroots politics.
First, to the movie: it is first-rate and extraordinarily well-cast--not the very least by Jennifer Lawrence, who was originally hand sought for the role in the first movie and is becoming a veritable force of nature in the world of Hollywood, both by her superior acting skills and her unswerving independence of Hollywood's self-absorbed culture.
Perhaps it's life imitating art, or the other way around, but there's a parallel between Hollywood and its smug, narcistic and dehumanizing culture and the dystopic future culture of the world of Panem--both involve megawealthy, megaprivileged and out-of-touch cultures thriving heartily on the consumption of the impoverished and miserable servitude of the common populace...who are mollified by a bit of food and warped entertainment.
I've written before in CityWatch and the Hunger Games books and first movie and without too many spoiler alerts, I can clearly state that the second movie is more in tune with the books than the first movie, which was both understandably yet unforgivably tame compared to the book.
For those who've read both series written by Suzanne Collins (Gregor the Overlander, written for early teenagers, and The Hunger Games, written primarily for female and older teenagers) who is the daughter of an American military officer, there are common threads that can be determined by her decidedly-antiwar novels:
1) There are, at times, evil regimes that are so intolerable that War is inevitable and necessary to preserve our humanity and our dignity.
2) War is Hell, and no one--absolutely NO ONE--escapes unscathed with respect to the killing, maiming (both physical and psychological) and destruction that are all inherent parts of War.
3) One of the greatest casualties of War is our own humanity, to the degree that everyone must question how far they're willing to go and how far they're willing to take orders--especially because all sides (even YOUR side, the "good guys") inevitably cross the line of propriety and respect of human life and human rights.
Like the great J.R.R. Tolkien, Suzanne Collins is a Roman Catholic, and while Tolkien very carefully (almost imperceptibly, until one has them pointed out) hid his religious beliefs into his writing, Collins either portrays a world without religion whatsoever or a world that cries for some Higher Power to intervene.
No matter how Hollywood warps their writings, both Tolkien and Collins had and have antiwar leanings from their own direct and indirect personal experiences--but they both seem to suggest that the ordinary citizen must heed and take action when reality dictates it's time, whether it's a small hobbit named Bilbo or Frodo, or a twelve year-old boy named Gregor, or a sixteen year-old troubled teenager named Katniss.
And there are plenty of reasons and issues on which to decry and/or take action--and having coincidentally seen this movie in Culver City, we just had a critical and sneaky (and expensive) election for a state Assembly seat in the Westside and Mid-City which was scheduled, bought and paid for by a two-party, combined political/lobbyist machine that threw the honorable former Culver City Mayor Chris Armenta under the bus.
All to ensure that the half-million-dollar-plus money thrown at a 26 year-old, inexperienced young man--and the son of a powerful county supervisor who never held elected office--would destroy and defeat an established and respected servant of the people (Chris Armenta) with 20 years of balanced budgets and representation of the grassroots in ways that those who opposed him have never shown.
As a Jew, I'm violently offended by the timing of the election near "Thanksgivingukkah".
As a grassroots representative who got no small number of queries from neighbors and other neighborhood leaders in the Westside (many of them also Jews, and ranging from the very liberal to very conservative), I can only ask the Westside leaders who threw Armenta (and the rest of us!) under the bus: how on earth do you live with yourselves?
Perhaps this is yet another reason why we should--as did the LA Times--question the timing of pay raises for the City Council, who clearly views billboard companies, developers and paid lobbyists as higher lifeforms than those volunteers and ordinary citizens who toil every day and expect (gasp!) nothing less than honest representation from our elected leaders.
Perhaps this is time for us to take note of our senior Sacramento leadership who are taking a 5.3% pay hike, and those Republican and Democratic electeds who are NOT taking it, at a time when the average Californian is working multiple jobs without benefits...and for less pay than ever.
Perhaps this is time for us to also take note of how our economy is still painfully struggling along, without much success passed to all parties, and with nothing but more misery for those who are out of work for over six months, no matter what the political spinmeisters might do to crow about our delightful "recovery" in this Second Great Depression.
Perhaps the irony is not to be lost of how Ukrainians are taking to the streets to topple Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in their protests at being sundered from the European Union and the West in favor of a trade deal with its former overlords in Moscow.
And perhaps the timing and irony of the backlash against our current "transparent" and "hope/change" presidential administration's secret trade deal to empower corporations, drug companies and banks with the virtual power of nationhood status is worthy of lengthy introspection and consideration...if you even pay attention to the news anymore.
No, there aren't any "Hunger Games" in our society at this time--but there are a lot of people going hungry and finding food more expensive than ever while being overwhelmed by an onslaught of diversionary idiocy and distraction from Hollywood and the Reality TV (and the political media) overlords.
There also is no government of Panem to execute any resistance to its hegemony, but there certainly is a powerful political/media conglomerate willing to destroy anyone who calls attention to the impropriety of a local, state and federal government that sees fit (under whatever rationalization or reasoning it can muster) to control more and more of our everyday words and actions.
And perhaps we will see life imitate art (or the other way around, in that The Hunger Games was in part influenced by the growing extent of Reality TV in our daily existence), and we will see a resistance to the growing dystopian trends around us.
But it will be the little guy--the ordinary Joes and Janes amongst us--who will have to pay for and sacrifice in order to restore the dignity and humanity back to our daily existence.
So when do we get to that point where we will all have to ask ourselves if it's time to "Catch Fire"?
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us . The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 99
Pub: Dec 10, 2013