The Hunger Games is a book and blockbuster movie set in the dystopian country of Panem where people are oppressed by a corrupt oligarchy; it is the future Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer truly feared. As two prominent members of the Frankfort School, a group of scholars who fled Nazi Germany for the United States in the 1930s to escape persecution for their Marxist philosophies and their Jewish religion, Adorno and Horkheimer were primarily concerned with how mass culture through monopoly capitalism could lead to totalitarian rule. In their 1944 essay, “The Culture Industry”, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that there exists an American culture industry, encompassing the commercialization of all culture. Motivated by money, those
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The trailer for the movie is sensationalistic. The high budget movie posters contain catchy dramatic slogans. The attractiveness of the main actress, Jennifer Lawrence, and the main actor, Josh Huchterson, is emphasized along the way. The serialization of The Hunger Games franchise into four movies has created a loyal fan base that will attend all of the movies in theaters. With a domestic gross income of over 408 million dollars according to IMDb (“The Hunger Games”), it is clear that the American film industry has profited off of The Hunger Games. Adorno and Horkheimer would look at the movie as an example of how money rather than artistic merit has made a film popular. It is true that The Hunger Games would not have been so popular and widely appreciated if there had not been so much aggressive commercialization, but this does not mean that the movie lacks underlying messages or that for the movie “only meaningless is acceptable (Adorno and Horkheimer …show more content…
The constant focus on Katniss’ beauty in the movie, for example, serves as a criticism to mass culture’s obsession with the superficial. Katniss is touted throughout the movie as “the girl on fire” because of her hair being synthetically on fire at the Hunger Games opening ceremony. Everything is done to appease the cameras similar to Big Brother and other reality shows and the emphasis on attractiveness is an important part of this. Another example of this obsession is the excessive luxuries of fashion and makeup that decorate the people of the capital. The excessive makeup and fashions shows the fake and manufactured nature of their culture and this is a direct parallel of Adorno and Horkheimer’s criticism of commercial culture. While most of the audience may not realize this, the obsession with appearances in The Hunger Games serves the purpose of showing the dark side of mass culture’s obsession with appearances and material
The trailer for the movie is sensationalistic. The high budget movie posters contain catchy dramatic slogans. The attractiveness of the main actress, Jennifer Lawrence, and the main actor, Josh Huchterson, is emphasized along the way. The serialization of The Hunger Games franchise into four movies has created a loyal fan base that will attend all of the movies in theaters. With a domestic gross income of over 408 million dollars according to IMDb (“The Hunger Games”), it is clear that the American film industry has profited off of The Hunger Games. Adorno and Horkheimer would look at the movie as an example of how money rather than artistic merit has made a film popular. It is true that The Hunger Games would not have been so popular and widely appreciated if there had not been so much aggressive commercialization, but this does not mean that the movie lacks underlying messages or that for the movie “only meaningless is acceptable (Adorno and Horkheimer …show more content…
The constant focus on Katniss’ beauty in the movie, for example, serves as a criticism to mass culture’s obsession with the superficial. Katniss is touted throughout the movie as “the girl on fire” because of her hair being synthetically on fire at the Hunger Games opening ceremony. Everything is done to appease the cameras similar to Big Brother and other reality shows and the emphasis on attractiveness is an important part of this. Another example of this obsession is the excessive luxuries of fashion and makeup that decorate the people of the capital. The excessive makeup and fashions shows the fake and manufactured nature of their culture and this is a direct parallel of Adorno and Horkheimer’s criticism of commercial culture. While most of the audience may not realize this, the obsession with appearances in The Hunger Games serves the purpose of showing the dark side of mass culture’s obsession with appearances and material