THG being inspired by the Vietnam War is fine to me, I like Star Wars too which also pulls inspiration from that war originally, but it’s the way it’s told that feels off. Incomplete.
The Vietnam War, or rather US invasion of Southern Vietnam, was the first war to be widely broadcasted to American audiences as the middle class switched from radios to TVs, this included its draft lotteries that used a glass roller to select men with “low or high numbers” (like odds) based on their birthdays which feels similar to Reapings and the Games like a being forced into some gorilla fighting War Zone.
The parallels you’re meant to make seem to be watching your kids be drafted, and the lesson you’re supposed to take is that they’re being made to fight a pointless war and you can only hope they come back. Some glorify the Games (War) and some are more disillusioned. And while there’s similarities to gladiators, volunteering for someone’s draft known as the substitute system also happens in war, although it became prohibited in the Vietnam War there were ways to get past it, typically for family members while gladiators volunteering was typically for fame.
Perhaps Career District’s culture is closer to Rome gladiators, other Districts are closer to Americans being drafted, and the Vietnamese people… well at the time Vietnam was seen as a deadly jungle dangerous place which is referenced in SC’s other book she wrote while writing THG called “the year of the jungle” where she repeatedly calls Vietnam “the jungle.”
I’ve seen people say the 74th Game being mostly woods was solely plot armor for Katniss and sure, but it’s also her being drafted and thrown into the jungle, just a more forest like as it’s in (post) America.
My issue with this emerges from how the Districts are read the Treaty of Treason each year about how they deserve the Games, blaming them for this cycle of violence similar to how people would justify the War in Vietnam known as “War Hawks” (peace doves were given to those who opposed the war and we know SC loves bird symbolism.)
What this creates is making the Districts both about a generation of Americans getting drafted/reaped to invade, and being victims of it by listening to how they are the real violent ones each year.
THG is still critical of America’s involvement in the war, the moral being they’re basically using us for slaughter, but it tells the story through an American centric lens. Because the tragedy was the exploitation and occupation the US did to Vietnamese people who just fought for their own independence from France.
But it was all for a good cause, to save the Vietnamese people from themselves, from communism, but in truth, it was the spread of communism in nations that never had anything to do with America that scared us because that would mean declaring them as enemies. (Katniss gets both, she is forced to fight and still kills a commie lmao.)
When America finally began to pull out of Vietnam it was known as Operation Homecoming. Also an American centric view of the war because some people in Vietnam still face effects from things the US did like Agent Orange today. It still hasn’t ended for them.
And the war didn’t happen on American land. It happened over 8,000 miles away. And the body count was higher for Vietnamese people than it was for American soldiers. THG’s references to the Vietnam War feel lukewarm and not in that way where it has to be written straightforwardly because its target audience is tweens/teens, but in an American centric and lowkey American Saviorist way.
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