At first glance, The Hunger Games have a passing resemblance to reality television. They are a competition, like many reality tv programs. They’re filmed and broadcast nationwide, and the interviews with Caesar Flickerman even serve as pre-show confessional booths. However, I would argue that reality television is not nearly as harmful or morally corrupt as the games.
The first problem is that reality television is a very diverse form, not a homogenous genre. If you feel like killing people after watching Property Brothers, it’s not because of a sense of competition or intensity, but because people have no sense whatsoever of what houses really cost. A baking show is very different from Survivor, or a show about wedding dresses, or a WWE match, or any other of the hundreds of subjects that reality television can cover. In a way, asking if reality television can encourage violence is like asking if scripted television can encourage violence. Of course some things can, but it’s ridiculous to lump everything in that same form in together.
This is why I favor the reading of the games as a metaphor for war. Like the military, the games provide a financial compensation for entering the games– Katniss isn’t paying for college, but she still needs to enter a potential death trap in order to provide for her family. The people in charge are distant and removed from the reality of the violence. No gamemaker is really in danger of being killed the way these children are, just as no person making or operating drones in the United States is really able to connect with the death and destruction they cause in countries halfway around the world. The mental illnesses and physical disabilities that Katniss and Peeta will later suffer, including PTSD, deafness, and amputation, are also reminiscent of the injuries that lots of veterans suffer from. Ultimately, the games are a war zone that is used for entertainment, but not exactly reality television.
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