Why The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the Most Relevant Hunger Games Movie Yet
The Hunger Games predicted a totalitarian future. 15 years later, a prequel exposes the role we’re playing in creating it.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
In 2008, the world of young adult dystopian fiction was introduced to a story that would come to become almost synonymous with the genre itself. The concept was deceptively simple. In the distant future, most of North America is divided into 12 districts that each house an industry—such as fishing, power, or coal. These resources sustain a powerful Capitol, where the authoritarian government organizes an annual competition wherein teenagers from each district fight to the death as punishment for a past district-led rebellion. Out of the poorest, most overlooked district, a teenage girl emerges as the face of a new revolution against the injustice of the Capitol while she navigates a love triangle involving two diametrically opposed men. This was the plot of the Hunger Games novels by Suzanne Collins, and if it sounds formulaic, it’s because this is where the formula was invented.
Katniss Everdeen, teenage rebel leader in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part Two portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence // Photo by Lionsgate via The Standard
Now, 15 years since Katniss Everdeen volunteered to take her sister’s place in the Capitol’s deadly tournament, the Hunger Games has become to young adult dystopian genre what Harry Potter was to children’s fantasy: not the first, not the last, but arguably the most popular and well-known. Following the release of a film adaptation in 2012, the franchise shot to popularity like an arrow from the bow of its protagonist. Along with three more films, it spawned several copycat titles (Divergent and The Maze Runner come to mind), and even a parody movie. The Hunger Games popularized side braids and led to a massive jump in interest for archery, especially among young girls. As a giant of the dystopian fiction category, it also encouraged young people to identify and challenge oppressive regimes and highlighted the impact of acting at the grassroots level amid a landscape of fear, control, and authoritarian propaganda. In other words, it raised the activists, organizers, and informed, rightfully angry citizens of today.
But while the oppressive government of Panem is obviously evil in the original franchise, the descent into authoritarianism is hardly so easy to identify in reality. This is the argument made by the franchise’s latest addition, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the film adaptation of which opened in theatres this November. Serving as a prequel to the original series, it is essentially the villain origin story of Coriolanus Snow (played by Tom Blyth), who will eventually become president of Panem and main antagonist to Katniss and the rebels. In the original series, he is a ruthless tyrant bent on keeping the districts in line and quashing signs of rebellion. As a static, terrifying villain (and brilliantly portrayed by University of Toronto alum Donald Sutherland), he is easy to detest. But when the prequel reveals his origins as an impoverished orphan of the first rebel war, it’s easy to find yourself sympathizing with him. Despite knowing the future of this character, our reaction to his past is a reminder of the insidious stealth with which political extremism is normalized.
How Coriolanus became President Snow: Donald Sutherland in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Tom Blyth in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes // Photos via Panem Propaganda on X
The similarities between Coriolanus and Katniss are surprising. The Capitol of his youth is far from the hedonistic city it is during Katniss’s time, ravaged as it is by bombings and attacks from the first rebellion, which ended ten years ago. Having lost both parents and the bulk of his family fortune to the war, Coriolanus struggles to find a shirt to wear to school and food to fill his stomach. As is true for Katniss in District 12, his life is characterized by scarcity that can only be escaped via the Hunger Games. As viewership of the Games declines, leading to the introduction of a new program wherein Capitol students mentor the tributes who participate in the Games for their tenth year. The mentor whose tribute wins the Games is promised a full scholarship to university, a tantalizing reward for ambitious but poor Coriolanus. When he is assigned to mentor the beautiful and musically gifted Lucy Gray Baird (portrayed by Rachel Zegler) of District 12, he develops a deep connection with her and resorts to increasingly questionable methods to help her win the Games.
The first meeting of Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird // Photo via Lionsgate
Indeed, the future president’s fate appears to be tied to the girls of District 12. From the songbird imagery used by Lucy Gray as her personal brand which reflects Katniss’s mockingjay symbol, to the rebels’ use of a song first penned by Lucy Gray, several details suggest his later rivalry with Katniss is personal, even if she doesn’t quite know why. Of course, Coriolanus and Lucy Gray’s love story has a distinctly unhappy end. Simmering tensions between the districts and the Capitol poison their connection, seeping into their interactions as seemingly minor disagreements about the Capitol’s iron-fisted governance. Despite his feelings for Lucy Gray, Coriolanus cannot outrun a lifetime of being conditioned to blame his problems on rebels and the districts, which people in the Capitol seem to group together more often than not. Upon discovering that his friend is a rebel sympathizer, Coriolanus swiftly reports him to the Capitol, and is praised by his superiors for his actions. Later, Coriolanus and Lucy Gray decide to run away from Panem, but the promise of power and status is too much for him to refuse. Recognizing his true nature, Lucy abandons him in the woods, but not before taunting him with a final song that accuses him of betrayal. When he can’t find Lucy Gray, he empties his rifle into the trees where the mockingjays have picked up the melody. As we watch the fury in his face, we can’t help but feel heartbroken—for the failed relationship, yes, but also for the dark path audiences familiar with the original series know he will go on.
Lover turned fighter: the beginnings of Coriolanus’s radicalization // Photo via Panem Propaganda on X
Coriolanus’s arc throughout the story is a clear warning. Like anyone else, he was not born hating the districts. In many ways, his radicalization mirrors that of Katniss: both have suffered due to the actions of a political faction but remain skeptical of the extremist rhetoric that surrounds them, until personal losses push them to turn against their opponent. While she leads an uprising to take down the corrupt Capitol, he grows bitter and desperate for power to control the districts. This difference in their responses reflects the prequel’s interest in duality, particularly that in the morality of humans. While Lucy Gray believes that there is a “natural goodness born into us all”, Head Gamemaker Dr Gaul (played by the outstanding Viola Davis) justifies the Hunger Games as a reminder of one’s inherent brutality. Therein lies the distinction between the songbird and snake, and Ballad suggests it’s not always easy to predict which we’ll become.
The ascent to power—and descent into tyranny // Photo by Lionsgate via Entertainment Weekly
But as the audience of the franchise, we must consider another possibility: that we are the people of the Capitol, consuming suffering for entertainment. Are we not tuning in by the thousands, enthralled by the violence of the Games and rooting for our favourites? It’s a disquieting notion, but one that aligns with our response to global conflict and catastrophe in the age of social media. Even as conflicts and catastrophes take hold of the media’s attention, they will inevitably be replaced by another world event with a brand new hashtag to go with a brand new display of misery. Overexposed to suffering, we treat it like a trend—outrage, Instagram stories, and fundraising links fizzle out just as quickly as they appeared, and our attention can only be held for so long. In Ballad, Coriolanus recognizes this desire for stimulation and newness when he proposes gambling and sponsorship programs to boost the viewership of the Games. Like the people of the Capitol, we are drawn to the destruction and the despair of others, but only so long as it can keep us entertained.
The Hunger Games: a gruesome spectacle we can’t turn away from // Photo via Lionsgate
It seems difficult to reconcile this interpretation with the legacy of the franchise. Media like The Hunger Games raised the generation that now leads climate strikes and protests against unjust violence, such as the walkouts and rallies recently organized at UTSC and UTM in solidarity with Palestine. How, then, can the final message of this series be so bleak?
The answer may lie with us. What Ballad wants us to know is that each of us has the choice to allow unjust and oppressive forces to grow powerful or to actively resist them. It wants us to sympathize with Coriolanus, but only so we realize how quietly but firmly radicalization can take hold of us. We see the early signs in the comments Coriolanus makes about the need for controlling the districts, parroting stereotypes about savage behaviour and innate violence. He fears the wilderness of District 12 and the freedom of the mockingjays, created as the byproduct of a genetic engineering failure by the Capitol. Left unchecked, seemingly minor infractions and comments lead down a slippery slope to totalitarianism.
Youth climate activist—and real-world Katniss Everdeen—Greta Thunberg arrested at anti-oil protest // Photo by Henry Nicholls via Getty Images
If the original series was a predictive vision of what our future could be, the story of its villain is a reminder to identify the undercurrents of injustice in our daily lives and fight back against them. Amid the deadly snakes, unsuspecting songbirds, and the audience watching the hunt, we can choose to resist the narrative—and choose to be the mockingjays.
