About Hunger Games

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/what_came_before_the_hunger_games/
“The Hunger Games” taps into a vibrant current of pop culture and indeed of Western civilization in general, one that never really runs dry. It’s the idea that our species remains cruel and barbarous at heart, that the strong will always rule the weak by whatever means necessary, and that our collective obsession with sports and games and other forms of manufactured entertainment is a flimsy mask for sadism and voyeurism. Collins’ only real innovations to this formula are a post-Buffy female action hero at its center — clearly a crucial component of her success — and a slick, propulsive packaging with very little scene description or social context. (The first-person, present-tense, limited-omniscient narration of “The Hunger Games” feels more like a movie treatment than a conventional novel.)