The Hunger Games: Understanding its appeal
By Elaine Seiler
I weep for our society....
What has happened to our values? Are we so bored with our lives that we actually choose to see a movie about children fighting each other to the death? Oh yes, The Hunger Games is only a film; we can therefore justify our fascination while we keep our children from watching the nightly news because it is too disturbing. Please someone tell me the difference – are the images from the film really what we want our 12-year-olds to dream about?
I weep for our children whose role models are child gladiators, no longer thrown to the lions in a Roman arena, but rather forced to fight one another just to survive.
Yes, it is a beautifully crafted and absorbing film, but could these talents not be better directed at an uplifting, life- supporting tale, rather than one that portrays control, manipulation and death? I admit I enjoy mysteries, tales of man vs. man or nature, but in these stories, there is always a hero out to find and stop the villain. There is a moral right and a moral wrong. In The Hunger Games, those in control are depraved, greedy, and all powerful; there is nothing that can be done to fight the controlling elite. Rebellion is crushed; compliance and death are the only options.
The above is my three dimensional personality speaking. I found The Hunger Games extremely challenging and deeply distressing. But once I had recovered from my emotional response to the movie, I sat back to try to understand The Hunger Games from a larger perspective. I see the book and the film as a phenomenon of our time on the bridge from where we are in our current society to the world into which we are evolving.
The Hunger Games reflects the low end of the vibrational spectrum, the extremes of polarity depicted in the poverty and slave-like situation of the mass of the population, vs. the over-abundance and decadent, Alice in Wonderland lifestyle of the controlling rich. There is no middle ground; there is no movement towards equity or unity. Are we being given a view of this depravity to catalyze our disgust and determination that such a world will never move from fiction to reality? At least that is my hope!
And, what is the role of violence on this evolutionary path? What outlet is The Hunger Games offering us that we cannot express in our so-called ‘civilized world’? Is violence so basic an instinct that we must see it laid out before us in an extreme way so that we choose another path before we can move into a world where violence no longer exists?Can we, humans, ever be cleared of this tendency to control and kill?
From an evolutionary perspective, as viewers of The Hunger Games we experience in extreme, the world we are leaving. We are currently receiving new, faster vibrations from the outer reaches of the universe. As these frequencies take hold, the values depicted in the film, cannot continue to exist. They will, of necessity be over-ridden by the higher frequency of positivity. If we block that shifting process, we will remain behind in a world of the haves and have-nots, those who control and kill. We evolve or we devolve. Is that the message of the film?
The Hunger Games forces us to look at our humanity and ask questions one hopes never to have to ask. Would we kill a friend or loved one to save ourselves? Who would we put first? Are we, and our children, so disenfranchised that we choose to resonate with the power structure to make up for our lack and our powerlessness?
I certainly hope that the hordes of enthusiastic viewers, the old and the young, are able to see beyond the storyline and get the bigger message that is being presented. We have a choice how we behave; we have a choice about the future we manifest. We even have a choice on how we choose to die. Let’s take control of our lives and walk forward eagerly into the new world where there is no polarity, there is no inequity; there is no child vs. child fighting it out to the end. There is only oneness.
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About the Author: Author and energetics expert Elaine Seiler (SAY Sigh-ler) is at the forefront of explaining humanity's "energetic evolution" and how we can cope and thrive in the face of rapid change. Elaine is a life and career coach, researcher, mother and grandmother. In 1992, after 20 years of work as a career consultant and life coach, she discovered energetics, the study anduse of multi-dimensional energies and their interplay with life on earth. She is the author of Multi-Dimensional You: Exploring Energetic Evolution and Your Multi-Dimensional Workbook: Exercises for Energetic Awakening. Learn more at and Contact Elaine at .