Okay, so after reviewing The Hunger Games, I drew one lesson from it. (If you don’t like drawing lessons from things, you’re reading the wrong review.)

The lesson is this: The movie is parodying the media.

I never knew this from what I was told or the few clips I’d seen before, but the whole driving force behind the games is the Media. They run it like that show “Survivor.” Except, there are no volunteers (I don’t count Katniss and the two other “volunteers” because being in the games is still a forced thing,) and the people must kill each other instead of learning how to work together.

Other than those two insignificant facts, the games could be any kind of survival show. The people behind them rig them with extra challenges because the kids being at each other’s throats is not enough, and they monitor the whole thing. There is no escaping, no quitting, nothing.

If the kids did not have to fight each other, their combined skills might be enough to escape and defy the elitists who were forcing this on them. At the very least they might die together, and retain their humanity. (I would’ve like that movie better.) That would be an inspiring story, and more true to what history teaches us about the overthrow of evil.

But not even Katniss thinks of such an idea, and it is never broached.

Think, if the kids had all seen the horror of what they were being compelled to do, they could have made a real statement by refusing with one accord to do it. there would have been repercussions, but if the movie had made it clear that it was the right thing to do, the kids could have overcome them.

Is there any doubt it was the right thing to do?

It’s true some of those kids were evil and demented, but they were that because they had grown up believing these games were their destiny, and that they were prepared to kill. Even if those kids had refused to change their minds, they could have been outnumbered by those who showed more humanity.

Katniss would have been a real hero had she convinced them to rebel against the idea of the hunger games, but we are never given any hint that the idea is even conceivable for them.

Because the games get their districts benefits.

The system is effectively evil, but after 75 years, you’d think someone would get fed up.

But the people have been convinced that this is entertainment. That it’s normal to take an interest in it.  Gale ha the right idea, everyone should stop watching. Katniss shoots that down, wont’ even try it. Don’t people go on strike in this world?

So, it really is the Media controlling it all. The sad thing is, the Media can only control compliant people. People may not listen to plain common sense, but they’ll listen to what someone on TV says.

WE all know better, but it’s easier to listen to Media and ignore our conscience.

Folks, what you see on TV is often no better than the Hunger Games.

There are dozens of shows that involve murder in every single episode, and many more involve crime in each one.

There have been scores of shows that show people disrespecting each other horribly, constantly, while laugh tracks are playing. Even some good kid shows still fall prey to that type of humor. I repeat, the good ones.

There are many more shows than I ever  thought possible that are pornographic.

who taught us this was normal? Who promoted it?

Much as I think the media fully deserves everything said against them, I can’t pin all the blame on the donkey, so to speak.

After all, who bought those televisions? Who turned them on? Who laughed at the shows? Who taught their kids it was all right?

I think its a testimony to my parents’ success in raising free thinkers that I to this day have different standards than the adults I know, concerning TV shows. But what if I did not think for myself?

It saddens me that things like The Hunger Games are so attractive to young people, because it tells me they are too used to little hope, little purpose, and low standards.

Now, I would not encourage people to be snobbish, I have been that, and I recognize now that it is also immature and small minded, but being snobbish is still better than having no standards beyond the Culture’s dictates.

But I will not say every show out there is bad. You all know I like some of them myself. But I am concerned that our focus is on the wrong thing, like who we ship. (If you’re unfamiliar with the term ship, it means who should be with who romantically, and some people use it as a friendship thing.) Or who we like. Or how funny it is. But we aren’t asking what the real message is, and if we should find it funny.

There will always be those who think I am a prude for thinking this way, but if I go by what the Word says, than I can never be too careful.

Here are my fallback verses whenever I start to weaken in my belief that high standards are a good thing.

“I will behave wisely in a perfect (blameless) way… I wills et nothing wicked before my eyes. I hate the work  of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will not know wickedness.” Psalm 101: 2-3

When the Bible uses the word know, it means experience, or know deeply, to get inside someone’s head, or soul really. Too many characters in entertainment are used to get us inside the head of evil. That is what they are designed to do.

My other passage to go to is this:

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good (clear or healthy,) your whole body will be full of light.

“But if your eye is bad (evil or unhealthy,) your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in  you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Matthew 6:22-23.

When I looked up the above passage, I found a bunch of articles about how our eyes actually are a giveaway of how we’re feeling, what kind of personality we have, and how healthy we are. Seriously, look it up, it’s cool.

science always caches up with the Bible eventually. But most of us have looked into other people’s eyes and seen something about them.

Just like everything else about us, the eyes don’t set our personality in stone, they only indicate what choice we are making now.

And what we watch is what fills our minds. Especially what we’re focusing on as we’re watching.

I’ll leave it at that. Until next time–Natasha.