The Hunger Games Christopher Brauchli getting it badly wrong.

Christopher Brauchli

Christopher Brauchli is a columnist and lawyer known nationally for his work. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado School of Law where he served on the Board of Editors of the Rocky Mountain Law Review. He can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see his web page at http://humanraceandothersports.com

If you look here you can find an article by the above about The Hunger Games film. If you can't be bothered, he sums up his article with
There you have it and there’s no reason for you or your children to go see the movie. Just read them this column. It’s far less offensive than the movie.
To which I'd have to say bullshit.
I'd back this up by saying that the trilogy is a searing attack on a lot of elements of modern day life that get up my nose. One of them is the way that the poor are the main targets of the military for recruitment to go away and kill and be killed. Another is the obsession with 'Reality' TV and its suggestion that there is only winning and losing, only winners and losers.
I wrote an article recently on the change in the way universities are preparing students for by teaching them to co-operate in groups. This is because employers are finding that unis don't prepare kids for the real world where they have to work in teams to achieve objectives. Instead, they tend to prepare everyone to try to be an island. Everyone works by themselves, helping a friend is cheating, only one person gets to be the top student. Very much the Reality show approach.  Anyway, I don't agree with his points and this is what I wrote in reply.

Hunger Games for Dummies
Katniss is the STRONG Female lead. She looks after and
provides for her 12-year-old sister and is clearly established as a GOOD
PERSON. Her society takes 24 children every year and forces them to fight to
the death. The book and film take care to tell us that this is a BAD THING. (It’s
a bit like the Minotaur story, which was a cheap rip-off of a Central European
slasher story).
When Katniss’ younger sister is chosen to go to the games,
where she will clearly be killed by older teens - a BAD THING, Katniss
volunteers to go in her place. She is a VERY GOOD PERSON. Again, the book and
film make it clear – she isn’t going to kill, she’s trying to protect in the
only way open to her.
Her community of poor, oppressed coal-mining families is
encouraged to view this as a moment to CELEBRATE, but refuses to buy that line.
They bid her farewell in dignified silence. She reports herself as proud of
them for this, thus telling the reader that glorifying needless slaughter is
NOT A GOOD THING.
The other tribute is a boy who has a track record of taking
risks to help her when she has needed it in the past – he gave her bread when
she was starving. He is also a GOOD PERSON.  He tells her that he knows he is going to die,
but wants to find a way of showing that he doesn’t belong to the people who are
running this. He has to tell her this in private because it is a SUBVERSIVE
idea. The people who run this, do it to show that they have total control and
can make people jump through any hoop they want for their entertainment.
Before the games start, there is training. In this we find
that some of the other tributes are very keen to kill and win. To do that, they
would have to kill the GOOD PEOPLE, so we know they are BAD PEOPLE. One boy,
particularly, is very violent and stands out as NASTY.
Once the games start, Katniss just tries to stay alive. Since
people are trying to kill her she is placed on the HORNS OF A DILEMMA. She is
forced to take action that leads to the death of others.
She also teams up with a younger girl who is so CUTE that
you have to be a racist not to just love her on sight. It’s clear that Katniss
could kill this girl easily (she is a STRONG character), but doesn’t because
she is a GOOD PERSON and good people don’t take advantage like that.
When the young girl, Rue, is killed by others, Katniss
mourns her and bids her farewell in the same way her community did to her. This
is seen by people from the farming community Rue comes from and starts a riot. The
message is much clearer in the film – SOLIDARITY BETWEEN OPPRESSED PEOPLES IS A
POWERFUL ENGINE OF CHANGE.
The film goes further in making it clear that the powers
that be then try to spin things to make themselves look better and stop the
revolt spreading by declaring that there can be two winners. This is clearly a
CYNICAL thing because the boy from Katniss’ district has told everyone that he’s
in love with her. Love is a GOOD THING, but being cynical about it is not – ask
any teenage girl.
Near the end of the film, the very violent boy from the
training reappears. His girlfriend has been killed and he repents and disavows.
He recognizes that everything he was told about the GLORY and HONOUR due to
winners in this dog-eat-dog contest was a lie; a BIG LIE.
When only two are left, the powers change their minds and
declare that there can only be one winner, so that they will be forced to fight
and kill each other. Both refuse to do it and engage in the act of eating
poisonous berries as an ACT OF REBELLION, demonstrating to everyone that they
refuse to lay down their PRINCIPLES, even if it means death.
In summary, the way to TRUE GLORY is be GOOD PEOPLE. How? STICK
TO YOUR PRINCIPLES, CARE FOR OTHERS, SHOW RESPECT, HAVE SOLIDARITY, STICK IT TO
THE MAN.

Argy-bargy in the SF World

I found this on Twitter. Of all the authors mentioned the only ones I know are China Mieville and Sherri Tepper. I loved Grass by Sherri and most things that I've read by China (Kraken, The City and The City, King Rat very much, Perdido Street Station not quite so much, Embassy Town - umm, impressed by the invention).
I was particularly taken with one comment in the list. The commenter pointed out that, in this group, Arthur C Clarke would not have been shortlisted for his own prize. Interesting and probably true. The last thing I read by Arthur was The Light of Other Days, which, since it has clearly been done by someone who can do characters well enough to write the biros off Arthur, strikes me as being more a book by Stephen Baxter. I haven't read anything solely by him yet, so I don't know, but I have strong suspicions.
One point this brings up is the difference between the writers of the Golden Age and now. I loved Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke when I was a kid, but I wonder if anything but early Heinlein would keep me interested now. Later Heinlein was too full of people who were essentially Heinlein for my tastes. Asimov and Clarke were a bit like Kilgore Trout, great ideas.
Another point brought out by the commentators was that it was good to see a really good rant going on, especially when this was about SF, which they all cared about. I do too, so I like the fact that people are getting up and shouting about this. I might be going out on a limb here, but I would class The Hunger Games as being SF. In the suburbs of the genre at least. It's in the future, has genetically modified animals and a firm view that people are still going to be people, whatever the tech can do. It's also well written, doesn't have shiny boyfriends or girls who have a pathological obsession with guys who can kill them anywhere. (Is it something about teenage girls liking blokes who show restraint? He hasn't ripped your throat out in weeks, it must be love - and that counts).
I like this as a general trend. I'm really happy that the biggest selling film of the times is one that is set in the future, gets people to think about ethics, uses of technology (oppression), has a really strong independent female lead (father of a 12-year-old girl writing here) and is clearly leading towards revolution. I'm going out to buy the other two books to find out if the word 'occupy' sticks up in them in any way, but won't care if it doesn't.