Guess What, "Hunger Games" Fans, You Actually Live In "The Capitol"

In a rare example of keeping up to the minute with our mindless pop culture, I actually spent this past Saturday night at a screening of The Hunger Games. Normally, I steer well clear of such mass produced tripe, and am actually proud to say I've never laid eyes upon Avatar, Titanic, the second Star Wars trilogy or any of the Harry Potter or Twilight flicks. But the wife has read the entire set of Hunger Games novels, and sometimes you do what you have to do to maintain domestic tranquility.

That said, I didn't hate the movie as much as I thought I might. It was actually better made than most of the garbage that comes out of Hollywood these days. My two biggest quibbles with it were that the supposedly hungry denizens of District 12 actually looked pretty well fed, and the violence was far too tamed down for such a horrific premise. Yeah, I know they needed to ensure they didn't get an R rating so that the teenyboppers could flock to see it. Mission accomplished in that regard, I guess. At least I saw it at my local art house theater, which meant that the audience was not all teenagers and that there were no blaring advertisements on the screen for the 25 minutes we sat waiting for the previews to start. At this point, I'll take any small favors I can get.

The plot of the film has become culturally omnipotent, so I won't rehash it in great detail here. It involves a future dystopia in which The Capitol long ago won a war and now subjects the 12 outlying districts to its will through brute force. The outlying districts are forced to provide the resources which allow the denizens of the The Capitol to live in decadent luxury. Every year in order to reassert The Capitol's authority, The Hunger Games pit 24 teenagers (12 boys and 12 girls) chosen by lottery against each other in a brutal fight to the death as part of a Survivor-on-steroids type reality show.

It's not surprising that this theme would have great appeal to American moviegoers, since the plot is not substantially different from that of the original Star Wars. The Capitol is the Evil Empire, and even though there is not yet a rebel alliance (to be formed in the inevitable sequels, I gather) the main character, Katniss, is a scrappy, tough and resourceful rube from the provinces just like Luke Skywalker.

The theater itself was sold out for my show, and the audience not surprisingly seemed to eat up what was on the screen. As a culture, we just never seem to tire of watching the underdog overcome long odds in a battle against the forces of evil. Yet the thing I couldn't help but wonder as I observed my fellow patrons, especially as we were filing out after the film was over and half of them already had their eyes glued to their cell phone displays, is that none of these people seem to realize that in the real world it is THEY who are the spoiled, easy living citizens of The Capitol, reveling in a seeming cornucopia of luxury in a world plagued by mass deprivation, and ironically distracted from reality by so called reality television shows.

In a Friday Rant I posted last June 17th entitled, "Unlike in the Movies, in Real Life Americans HATE the Underdog," I wrote:

...it’s in the international arena where America most behaves like the Evil Empire, to the cheers of domestic Star Wars fans everywhere. The empire’s legions roam the globe, dropping drone missiles on top of any goat herder’s wedding party in countries where the locals are unfortunate enough to be living on top of vital energy resources and actually have the audacity to insist that they should be allowed to live their lives free of American meddling. You’d think, given our alleged love for the small fry, Americans would be outraged at this injustice and demand that our military stop butchering civilians in our name, but you would of course be wrong. Instead we plaster yellow ribbons on the back of our cars, drape an American flag on anything that doesn’t move quickly enough and warble “Proud to Be an American” at top volume during every ball game.

I was at the time, of course, thinking about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. And now, here comes The Hunger Games, which could very easily be taken as a sharp commentary of how globalization and neoliberal economics, enforced at the point of a drone missile if need be, are designed to ensure that much of the the many Districts' (read: world's) resources continue to flow to the decadent Capitol (read: America). The Hungry are actually those billions of the world's poor living a subsistance-level existence in countries where the economy largely functions either to extract the raw materials or build the cheap consumer products so loved by those queued up in line to watch The Hunger Games.

Granted, the movie has been given such a slick Hollywood sheen that it is really difficult to take seriously as anything other than mere popcorn entertainment. Nevertheless, it just continues to amaze me how the American populace is collectively so lacking in self awareness that it cannot apparently even sense the inherent contradiction of always rooting for the cinematic equivalent of "terrorist insurgents" to overthrow the Evil Empire.


Bonus: "Lay down your money and you play your part...everybody's got a hungry heart"

"There's No Tomorrow" - Outstanding Animated Peak Oil Movie

I assume that most of my regular readership has at least a basic understanding of peak oil, and the dire long term implications it has for our modern industrialized situation. The problem with explaining peak oil to the layperson has always been the difficulty in reducing the concept to easy sound bites, something it is far easier for the deniers to do.

Peak oil does NOT mean that the world is, "running out of oil," for example, but that it is in fact running out of CHEAP oil. And while the latter does not mean an imminent overnight economic collapse, it DOES mean the end of real economic growth as we know it. Without all of the debt games being played by Western governments and central banks, the permanent end of economic growth and the beginning of a long era of permanent economic contraction would already be evident to all but the most hopelessly thickheaded.

In the spirit of attempting to disseminate the word about peak oil as widely as possible in an easily understandable manner, here is a link to a brand new animated peak oil film, entitled There's No Tomorrow, by professional animator Dermot O'Connor. I strongly urge everyone who reads this to watch this video and spread the word about it. An astonishing seven years in the making, it is a true labor of love that shows through in every frame.

The Yahoo version of the movie is posted below, but first I wanted to be sure to provide a direct link to the film's website: Incubate Pictures. Also, if you would like to express your appreciation directly to the filmmaker himself, you can sign on to the Hubbert's Arm peak oil discussion forum at this link: Llamedos, where both he and I are longstanding members.

Hollywood Blues: 2011 Was the Worst Year at the Box Office Since 1995

In yet another sign that consumers have less money to spend, there was a steep drop in tickets sales for movies this past year, as reported by the Atlantic Wire:

The numbers are in, and they show what studio execs likely feared and movie-goers likely suspected all along: Not a lot of people went to the movies this year. Box-office tracker Hollywood.com says that "an estimated 1.275 billion tickets sold" in 2011, a 4.8 percent decrease from 2010 making for "the smallest movie audience since 1995," reports the AP. A hodgepodge of reasons for the sour showing were cited in the AP and ABC News reports. Among them: Too many sequels, too many kids movies, too many distracting gadgets, the bad economy, high ticket prices, and, something being called an "'Avatar' hangover" from 2010.

Conspicuously absent from the list was the fact that most of the movies released in 2011 sucked balls.


Bonus: Cue, Billy Joel

Saturday Night Video: "Dead Set" - Best. Zombie. Movie. Evah.

The holiday shopping season is in full swing here in the U.S. Black Friday was a particular disgrace, featuring shootings, pepper sprayings, taserings and a variety of fistfights, most happening at Walmart, interestingly enough. The insane You Tube videos of Black Friday shoppers trampling each other in an orgy of mindless consumerism always reminds me of zombie movies.

So in that spirit, I thought I would link to the full video version of Dead Set, which for my money is the best zombie movie ever made. It first appeared as a five-part teevee show on British television, but the whole thing sans commercials is only a bit under two-and-a-half hours long. Dead Set ups the ante on Romero's Dawn of the Dead by placing its initial outbreak survivors on the set of the British reality show, Big Brother. The acting, writing, production values and the (ahem) bitingly dark humor are the best I've ever seen in the genre, and that includes its American teevee counterpart, The Walking Dead.

Enjoy!

Friday Rant: Unlike in the Movies, in Real Life Americans HATE the Underdog

It’s a standard cliché to say Americans love the underdog. Certainly you would get that impression if you have spent any time watching popular American cinema. From Rocky to the Karate Kid to The Blind Side, we just can’t seem to get enough of stories where plucky, determined protagonists with the odds stacked against them rise up through sheer will and determination and win the day. It’s even sweeter when those that oppose them are rich and snooty, so much the better to see the dismayed look on some second rate actor’s face when the hero/heroine sticks it to them in the climatic scene. Pass the popcorn, ma, that there is some mighty fine entertainment.

Probably no other movie in our culture benefited more from this supposed American love for those who overcome the odds than Star Wars. George Lucas’s low budget space opera was really nothing more complicated than an old western taken into outer space. The story line couldn’t have been simpler—the good guys were the brave rebels risking all in their battle against The Evil Empire, led by a bad ass dude who dressed in all black and choked his subordinates whenever they displeased him. It was the quintessential mythical American feel good story, and became a cultural phenomenon while not incidentally helping to make Lucas one of the richest men in Hollywood.

Problem is, all those American moviegoers who flocked into the theaters to watch the antics of Luke Skywalker and his otherworldly companions were actually rooting for the wrong side. For Americans may love the rebel forces in the movies, but in real life they have proven time and again that The Evil Empire is much more to their liking.

Oh come on, Bill, I hear you saying. That’s not true. Americans have an innate sense of fair play. You are just being a cynical old meanie, as usual.

Really? Well then, allow me to present exhibit number 1: George W. Bush. If Americans love the underdog so much, how come we were so pathologically determined to install into the highest office in the land the idiot son of a previous mediocre president? Here was a man who went to the best schools only because he was a legacy, used his daddy’s connections to dodge out of going to fight in a war he and his family supported, failed at every business opportunity his daddy’s friends set him up in and spent the first half of his life wasted to the gills. There is no more shining example of an asshole who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, and yet half of the American electorate cast a ballot for him and the rest hardly uttered a peep when he was installed into office by judicial fiat.

To make matters worse, in the wake of that election a large segment of Americans then heaped scorn and derision upon a man who had spent his entire adult life working tirelessly on behalf of the little guy just because he had the temerity to run a third party presidential campaign that they blamed for Bush’s victory rather than the shortcomings of their own preferred candidate. There were the so-called liberals, the ones who are supposed to be the guardians against economic oppression by the elites, trashing Ralph Nader rather than questioning why exactly Al Gore couldn’t arouse any passion among an electorate that had just witnessed eight years of a Democratic administration Gore was second-in-command of selling the working class out to Wall Street every step of the way.

Need another example? Only in a pathologically money-obsessed culture could the likes of the deranged Donald Trump become a major media figure. Trump is the perfect anti-underdog; a rich, arrogant, blowhard jerk admired for his ability to swing business deals that consolidate wealth at the expense of wages and job security for working people. If our society really did view real life the same way it does the movies, Trump long ago would have been besieged by a mob of the unemployed, had that hideous rug ripped from his scalp, and been tarred and feathered and chased over the border into Canada. Instead, the bastard gets his own reality show and tens of millions of working mopes cheer as he berates and humiliates the contestants every week.

Our so-called love of the long shot doesn’t even translate into the world of sports anywhere other than on the silver screen. Major league baseball is dominated by worship of the Yankees and the Red Sox, two franchises that often spend more money on just one player than some others do fielding their entire teams. Millions of people with WAY too much time on their hands tuned into to ESPN for an hour to watch attention whore LeBron James make the simple announcement of what team was going to shower him with more cash for every game he plays than any of them will earn in a year. And let’s not forget the supposedly more genteel sport of golf, where before Tiger Woods was laid low by a sex scandal, 99% of its fans worshiped the hallowed ground upon which the world’s first potential billionaire athlete walked.

But it’s in the international arena where America most behaves like the Evil Empire, to the cheers of domestic Star Wars fans everywhere. The empire’s legions roam the globe, dropping drone missiles on top of any goat herder’s wedding party in countries where the locals are unfortunate enough to be living on top of vital energy resources and actually have the audacity to insist that they should be allowed to live their lives free of American meddling. You’d think, given our alleged love for the small fry, Americans would be outraged at this injustice and demand that our military stop butchering civilians in our name, but you would of course be wrong. Instead we plaster yellow ribbons on the back of our cars, drape an American flag on anything that doesn’t move quickly enough and warble “Proud to Be an American” at top volume during every ball game.

Yep, in real life Americans love the big dog. We throw out our chests and repeatedly proclaim that we live in the greatest nation in the world. Buy me some more fireworks, hon, I’m gonna blow some shit UP this July Fourth.

The only problem is, there’s a bigger dog out there, a nemesis that will make us pay dearly for our hubris. It’s called Peak Oil, of course, and when the day comes that wheels of the American war machine come grinding to a permanent halt, Americans will finally know, once and for all, what it really means to be the underdog.