when Haymitch says that Proserpina wasn’t a bad person, but just extremely clueless, he backs his argument by saying that she wasn’t evil, she just had a lot of things to unlearn. which is a funny choice of words, cause while Katniss see her team as dumb kiddos, who couldn’t know any better cause they simply didn’t have the brains to do so, Haymitch doesn’t see their problem as a lack of education. In fact, by saying she had a lot of things to unlearn, instead of saying that she wasn’t very intelligent or that she needed to learn better, he is subtly recognizing that the crux of the problem is not necessarily the quality of the education or how much capable those people were to absorb it, but how biased their system was in stimulating the critical process of their children. As far as we known, the Capitol’s strategy was to corrupt their minds with the strongest method of brainwashing: systematic Information control. They held unlimi-ted power of how further their children could go in terms of knowledge. they manipulated the truth, made up scenarios and changed the narrative so they could force them into unnoticed submission.
Intelectual control is the best way to make sure your people won’t start questioning your methods, cause as long as they don’t know any different, they don’t have anything to compare you to. and if you can hold the power of how much of the reality they know, you can easily control their natural desire for change…
and saying they are like that because they are child-like dumb is pushing them way too shallow into the conversation. the point of the capitol isn’t the lack of education. the real problem is how much their academic influence aren’t used as a tool of ideolo-gical control. the smartest kid at school will still look up at the games as a blessing, because snow’s intention was to efficiently erase the reality off their brains so they could work in his favor. so as long as you don’t have a reason to think out of the ordinary, due to some specific experience, or has the means and desire to educate yourself against what the common sense says, you won’t go any further…
and it’s fun cause most of those people wouldn’t even try to go out of the box, because that system was comfortable for them. if your choice is either to be starved in a war or to be comfy with your family in your three stores mansion, eating shrimps and going to parties in your fancy clothes at weekends, and the price for it is just to watch, for a week every year, twenty-four unknown children sacrificing themselves for the cause (which most of the people in the capitol believed to be a privilege to them, since that was the propaganda the tributes had to sell during interviews —which is another can of worms i am not going to open now), why would you want it to end? if all the government asks you in exchange for your protection is to be in line and don’t let your mind wonder to uncomfortable thoughts you didn’t even want to visit anyway, why would you? that’s the world you’ve been living on since ever, you don’t know anything else. in school they teach you that this is the only normal and you don’t have anything else saying it isn’t, so why would you think that way? at home your mom and dad tells you the games are fun, so why wouldn’t you think they’re fun? should you feel bad just because you were lucky to be born in the capitol? that’s not your fault, that’s just what it is. if the districts choose to revolt years ago and then lost the war because of it, that’s their fault, not yours
As Katniss says herself:
“In fact, all three are so readily respectful and nice to my mother that I feel bad about how I go around feeling so superior to them. Who knows who I would be or what I would talk about if I'd been raised in the Capitol? Maybe my biggest regret would be having feathered costumes at my birthday party, too” Catching fire, page 46
my question is, in this line of responsibility, where the submission ends and the oppression begins? if we can’t blame them for the way they think, be-cause of how much knowledge they were granted by snow’s tendency of masking the reality, can we blame them for not realizing sooner that it was wrong? and not being to blame for the ideals that had been violently carved into their scowls, does exonerate them from everything they did?
i don’t know, those people are just so interesting
[and to be clear, i am not talking about the high classes of the capitol. it’s implied that those who’d access to real information, either from somehow being related to politics or for fitting the category of sponsors who were more or less involved in the underground outcome for the victors, are part of a limited range of people! the majority of the capitol, though still extremely problematic, weren’t granted a close view to the backstage, thus most of their knowledge about it came exclusively through Snow and his controlled, manipulated narratives]
