The Olympics as The Hunger Games
How the London Games mirror the dystopian novel, and what it means about America.
by Stephen Kurczy
It’s a spectacle of grueling physical exertion held years apart, mostly for the amusement of wealthier nations with the spare cash/time/manpower to host/watch/sponsor the wildly expensive event. The games will be hailed as a great moment for human civilization, a moment when states stop bickering/fighting/warring and instead give athletic representatives the honor of battling in an arena. Unsurprisingly, strong states will boast the strongest contestants, and weak states will lose miserably.
Although sometimes an underdog manages, through grit/steel/luck, to win it all.
Sounds something like the 2012 London Summer Olympics is about to kick off, but I’m referring to the Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy may be fantasy, but its similarities with Olympiad XXX are hardly fantastical, which, as you watch tonight’s opening ceremonies, may become eerie to the point of disturbing.
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