The Hunger Games and Sociology

In 2012 the film The Hunger Games hit theatres and became a success. The success of the film was originally fueled by the fan base of the Suzanne Collins authored trilogy of the same name, but it soon gained popularity amongst those who had not read the trilogy as well. You could relate the movie to sociology in one of two ways. The first option would be to write about how the film became a cultural phenomenon or other theories relating to its success. This paper will be written using the other way, which is to write about the movie itself through a sociological point of view by writing about how culture, social control, and stratification are featured in the movie and how people with different sociological perspectives may view the film.
According to Richard Schaefer, author of the book Sociology: A Brief Introduction, Tenth Edition, our culture is based on what we have learned and our experiences (Schaefer, 2013). While watching The Hunger Games and keeping Schaefer’s description of culture in mind you can see the differences between the cultures of Panem and the United States. In the movie the nation of Panem is divided into 12 districts and two young people from each district are chosen to fight to the death as a way to remember a rebellion that had happened in the past (Ross, 2012). That would be equivalent to the United States picking young members of each state to fight to the death as a way to remember the Civil War. While watching the movie people from our culture would see this as a nonsensical way to remember something, but to the characters in the movie it has become a norm and a part of their culture.
Schaefer also described social control as techniques that prevent deviance (Schaefer, 2013). With Schaefer’s defin...

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... whole for having a strong independent female character, instead of the having the female be dependent on a male character that seem to be the norm in most movies.
Most people will watch The Hunger Games strictly for entertainment purposes and never give too much thought to how some of the things the movie portrays can be related to sociology. Although the movie is fictional it shows real life things like stratification and social control while portraying a culture that we would find to be to barbaric to happen in our culture. While watching all of these things in the film we are then able to dig deeper into sociology by thinking about the different perspectives would view them.

Works Cited

Ross, G. (Director). (2012). The Hunger Games [Motion Picture].
Schaefer, R. T. (2013). Sociology: A Brief Introduction, Tenth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.