Bullying and The Hunger Games...

I'm gonna be honest, I have not read the Hunger Games Trilogy, okay. My wife is currently reading it and I enjoy her abridged accounts. Once she finished reading the first installment, we decided to go see the movie.

So, my disclaimer to you die-hard Hunger Game book-readers: I'm a poseur.

That said, I totally dig the story and really, really liked the movie. If you're like me, and you didn't know much about The Hunger Games prior to it's blockbuster status, its a tale of kids in an post-apocolyptic America. The kids (and the rest of the country) are being seriously oppressed by "The Capitol," (see also: The Man).

The most disturbing part of their oppression? Every year a group of kids are selected to participate in The Hunger Games and they must fight to the death.

That's messed up, right? Right.

It made me wonder a couple of things.

For the past few years I have been working in public schools and I noted well before the blockbuster movie arrived, that a lot of kids were reading these Hunger Games books. I thought it was curious, but never paid any mind.

Once I found out the premise, it made me think: "Why would kids like these books so much? It's about kids killing each other to survive? Forced to do things they hate? Forced to find an identity in a crumbling and oppressive world?"

Very quickly, my mind turned to the research I conducted for my Master's Thesis at the University of Utah: Bullying.


Kids like reading about the Hunger Games because they can RELATE to the character's situation on a pretty profound level. Thus, the premise of the books isn't disturbing, but the level of relatedness they portray is.

The kids in the Hunger Games are pitted against each other while adults and peers stand idly by. After surveying the research literature surrounding bullying, you would be hard pressed to find a more appropriate metaphor.

Bullying is a form of coercion that serves any number of functions for the perpetrator: Power, control, survival. Victims of bullying fall prey not only to the perpetrator, but to those that stand, watch and accept it. Peers and adults basically allow this to happen. It is...permitted.

Before sending your child into a version of The Hunger Games, contact Dr. Springer about how to prevent bullying on a school-wide basis and how to teach your child to respond to bullying.

Thank you, and may you manipulate the odds in your favor.