Although there are many political and thematic differences between The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, if they are stripped back to their most basic level, that of a fight to the death televised for a watching audience, then they are part of a curious genre.
The idea of life-or-death games as popular television entertainment in a future, dystopian world crops up a number of times in science-fiction. There are many (perhaps too many… no, forget that word ‘perhaps’) episodes of the 1960s US television series Star Trek in which gladiatorial games feature. In two of them, Captain Kirk is teleported off the bridge of his ship to fight on some alien planet, the results of the combat being shown to his crew on their TV-like monitor (‘Arena’, Season One, 1967, Writers Gene L. Coon and Fredric Brown, and ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion,’ Season Two, 1968, Writer Margaret Armen) In another, they encounter a world exactly resembling Ancient Rome, in which the Arena is televised for a blood-thirsty public (‘Bread and Circuses’, Season Two, 1968, writers Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon). In yet another (‘Amok Time’, Season Two, 1967, writer Theodore Sturgeon), Kirk and Spock must fight each other in a Vulcan marriage ritual, once again, to the death in another Roman-style arena. This plot surfaced yet again in Season Three in ‘The Savage Curtain’ (1969, Writers Arthur Heinemann and Gene Roddenberry).
It is possible that the emphasis Star Trek placed on this type of story, and the regularity with which it returned to it, was not entirely coincidental. For American television viewers of that time, coverage of the Vietnam War was itself a real-life version of this idea and would have provided immediate inspiration. Conscripts into the US army were chosen at random by lottery (just as in The Hunger Games). The state-run ‘Draft Lottery’ converted dates of birth into numbers. These were then entered in the draw. The ‘winning’ numbers were published in the newspapers. As in the fantasy gladiator games, these ‘contestants’ were sent to fight to the death in an alien environment, monitored by photographers with stills and film cameras. The footage was relayed to nightly TV news broadcasts to audiences back home. Vietnam was the first televised war, and this concept almost certainly influenced the science-fiction dealing with gladiator-style TV gaming. This was history, not fantasy, however.
William Harrison’s short story, ‘The Rollerball Murders’ (first published in Esquire, September 1973) was made into the hit film, Rollerball (1975), but also inspired Paul Bartel and the Roger Corman studios to produce an arguably superior ‘rip-off’, Death Race 2000 (1975). In both of these films, the population of the future is kept pacified by watching an excessively violent game-show on television, featuring gladiatorial contest and real murder. In Death Race 2000 there is an explicit link made between the celebrity of the racers and the political power of the president. It also shows how vulnerable this political system is, as even the highest can be legitimate ‘kills’ in the Death Race.
Star Trek was probably the most influential of the ‘games’-based science-fiction, but it was not the first. The BBC TV series, Doctor Who, featured this concept well before Vietnam had come to dominate public consciousness. In his very earliest incarnations, Doctor Who battled malevolent, game-playing creatures from Outer Space, most notably the Celestial Toymaker (played by Michael Gough, faced by the First Doctor), the Mind Robber and the Krotons (enemies of the Second Doctor), all of whom set evil puzzles and games that must be solved, or death would result. Another point of comparison from this period would be the deadly jokes and games of The Riddler in the TV show, Batman.
The concept of evil games seems to erupt in the early 1960s, but does not feature too much before this, at least not in film. Philip K. Dick wrote many stories of macabre, lethal games, however. In Solar Lottery (1955), an officially random, but actually rigged game selects presidential candidates. In a second twist, an assassination game takes place, in which ‘contestants’ are randomly picked to have telepathic control of a robot gunman. In Time Out of Joint (1957), Ragel Gumm solves newspaper quizzes for a living in an artificial ‘arena’, not knowing the life-or-death consequences of his play. In The Game-Players of Titan (1963), the alien Vugs maintain control over a conquered Earth by means of an elaborate board game, in which all surviving humans compete.
These stories all have the gladiatorial element and devilish tricks, but lack the televised factor. No-one follows the game-playing as an entertainment in its own right. However, the (unofficial) film version of Dick’s Time Out of Joint, The Truman Show, does include this. The world is hooked on a soap-opera/reality television series featuring the actual life of Truman Burbank. The life-or-death element extends to only one player, Truman himself, who is unaware that he is playing a game, but its deadly implications are made clear to him, and the watching audience, when he tries to quit.
Other films of relevance or related interest here would include:
The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)
Welcome to Blood City (1977)
The Running Man (1987)
Is there anything that links the idea of gladiatorial games and the vendetta of V? Why should these two images mesh at this time? What connects them?
The word ‘revenge’ should come through to us. One of the key ways in which Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) differs from its source film, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1963) is the theme of vengeance. General Maximus wants his revenge on Emperor Commodus, ‘in this world or the next’ and finally achieves it. His is a vendetta indeed, fought in blood in the arena, but also via intrigues in the senate, threats of loyal troops coming to occupy Rome, a charm offensive to win hearts and minds, and a political whispering campaign to poison the people against the tyrannical emperor.
A popular series of films in the early 1970s reflected these two themes very acutely. In The Abominable Dr Phibes, Vincent Price plays the disfigured anti-hero, tracking down and killing the surgeons he holds responsible for the death of his wife. Each of them is subjected to a gruesome death of their own, related to the Biblical Ten Plagues of Egypt. In many cases, these revenge killings feature bizarre and elaborate contraptions, and in some cases the possibility of escape is dangled in front of the victims, if only they have the wit, ingenuity or courage to take the chance. At the end, the lead surgeon (played by Joseph Cotton) is presented with a surgical puzzle, a test of skill and nerve and a choice that could mean death to his own son.
Are we meant to sympathise with Dr Phibes? He is a death-in-life figure who wears a mask (!) because his true face is destroyed, burned down to the skull in an accident that everyone assumed had killed him. He is clearly modelled on the figure of The Phantom of the Opera, who also wore a mask to hide his facial disfigurement, devised convoluted game-like tortures for his pursuers and sought revenge! Both are very strong contenders to be the origin of the character and form of V in V for Vendetta.
Dr Phibes is a horror, but also is a sympathetic character. We fear him, yet want him to exercise his anger against these enemies. Our enjoyment is in seeing them die these intricate, elaborate deaths. In this, the successors to Phibes in the late 1970s and early 1980s are Michael Myers, the mask-wearing vengeance-killer in John Carpenter’s Hallowe’en, and Freddy Kruger, the facially disfigured, highly inventive and very vengeful ghost in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
In the early years of the twenty-first century, Dr Phibes rose again, this time as Jigsaw, the terminally-ill revenger in the Saw series. Like Phibes, devising ever more Heath Robinson devices to torment his ‘contestants’, Jigsaw uses TV and modern forms of communication to force those trying to save them to watch their fate.
Like a murderous version of Guy Grand from Terry Southern’s The Magic Christian, Jigsaw wants to see his tests fail. He wishes his victims to defeat his games, to solve the puzzles, prove him wrong and live, but they have to exhibit the required level of will to survive. Should they prefer to avoid pain, they embrace death.
There is a strong sense in which Jigsaw is a revenger, although not with a single focus, like Phibes. His is a vengeance against the whole of humanity. He resents their casual acceptance of life and its pleasures while he has had to struggle to survive. He wants them to experience life intensely, or prove that they do not deserve it. They must redeem themselves or die. In Jigsaw’s world-view, everyone is guilty until they prove themselves innocent. If not, his vengeance continues. He, like Phibes, wears a mask, or, more accurately hides his identity behind a grisly ventriloquist’s doll, or (again, like Phibes) by making no physical appearance at all, but speaking his instructions via audiotape, telephone or video. Like Phibes, he is rarely if ever present at the kill, leaving his devices to work in his absence, making his ‘mask’ all the more perfect.
Most of the classic cartoon superheroes of the mid-twentieth century were masked avengers, but these, like the Batman, had masks to protect their anonymity. Although it is rarely explained why this was so important, it is assumed that this was to protect their private lives and family from the anger of criminals brought to justice by their vigilanteism. This seems especially pointless in the case of Superman, however, who doesn’t really need a day-job and, having all the powers of a god, is invulnerable to anyone who might want to seek retribution anyway. Nevertheless, he had a ‘mask’: the identity of Clark Kent, his daytime alter-ego. A long-running series of comic-book heroes from Marvel were even called ‘The Avengers’, although quite what it was they were avenging was never completely clear.
The last link in the masked avenger chain is the closest to home. The Wachowski brothers’ previous film hero, Neo in The Matrix (1999), has the biggest mask of all: his entire self. Morpheus tells Neo that his whole identity, life and body are the ‘world that has been pulled over your eyes’ to blind him to the reality of The Matrix, a computer-generated illusion, enslaving humanity. Neo’s telephone call to the machine authorities at the end of the film (spoiler!) gives them an ultimatum. He will show the masses what the machines do not want them to see: ‘…a world … without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries; a world where anything is possible.’ This is a call to a form of political awakening in the bulk of humanity, to become conscious of their situation. The way to defeat the machines is to become able to see them, to recognise their false world for what it is. Becoming conscious of their presence is enough to free the imprisoned of The Matrix.
Likewise, in They Live! (John Carpenter, 1988) the donning of a ‘mask’ (the sunglasses) frees the people. Once the special polaroids are put on, wearers are enabled to see the alien invaders who have taken over America. The creatures normally appear to humans as young professionals in suits (‘yuppies’) or smart business people. The glasses delete their hallucinatory disguise and reveal them in their true form - much like the skull-faced Martians of Mars Attacks!. Of course, the wearers of the enlightening glasses also become less identifiable themselves. Classically, terrorists and paramilitaries from the 1960s onwards have worn dark glasses as part of their disguise. Like the followers of V, the free-thinkers of They Live! also look alike in their glasses ‘masks’ and share a powerful, political secret. At the end of the film (spoiler!) TV viewers across America share in the secret knowledge. V in V for Vendetta brings this back down to Earth... Showing the mass what can be done in rebelling against the repressive authority, he leads them to adopt his identity and dissolve their own into a collective anonymity.
What is a revenger? By definition, it is someone who has been a victim. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, like Vindice in The Revenger’s Tragedy, the dearest wish of a revenger is to get even with those who have done them wrong. The revenger inevitably fits in very well with the concept of the ‘victim hero’, although the revenger crosses a moral line that, for example, the ‘tributes’ in The Hunger Games do not. In making a deliberate, conscious decision to kill or counter-attack, the revenger becomes a willing participant in the fight. The ‘gladiators’ in these modern ‘bread and circuses’ stories are forced into their conflicts, removing any taint of intent.
It should, perhaps, not surprise us so much that revenger stories are popular again now. The original Jacobean revenge tragedies proved successful at a time of rising inflation (the early 1600s) and straitened economic times in Britain. High inflation on both sides of the Atlantic was a feature of the 1970s. People who had made money in the boom years of the 1960s found themselves losing it in their aftermath, with falling wages and a rapidly rising cost of living.
Of course, curiously, V for Vendetta and the Saw series predated the economic crisis, but their resonance with the present monetary and political situation could not be more apposite. If V for Vendetta could be seen as growing out of the ideas latent in The Matrix, there are also reasons why its 1980s storyline would fit in with the situation in 2006. It deals with rebellion against a repressive regime, afraid of terrorists in its midst. Fears of curtailment of civil liberty freedoms in the wake of the War on Terror in America appear in other films, notably Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. There is fertile ground for these ideas from the 1970s and 1980s to be resurfacing now.
Is the V mask a signifier? Yes, it is mysterious, strange and perhaps even frightening to those who have not seen the film but instantly meaningful to those who have… It is a shorthand for those who see the movement to explain what it is. The IRA didn’t start wearing balaclavas because they’d seen them in The Italian Job or something, but they did chose to wear black berets because of the association with the French Resistance, The Black Panthers and the Cuban Communists. They wore balaclavas because they covered their faces and made them impossible to recognise, and Anonymous have done the same thing with the V mask.
None of these signify mass action or group activity. They say ‘Lone Avenger’ or ‘Lone Nut’
It seems to me to be very significant what they didn’t use
For example, many existing mask memes were not used:
Spiderman
Batman
Zorro
Father Death (from Scream)
Freddie Krueger
Nixon / Reagan (Hallowe’en masks)
Hockey masks (Friday 13
Jokeshop ‘Groucho’ glasses/nose/moustache
Cowboy kerchief
IRA-style balaclava
PLO-headscarf
Gimp mask (Pulp Fiction)
Ned Kelly
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