The Search For Neutral Ground: A Catching Fire Reaction Paper

STS THY / Group 6
Cadiz, Marianne T.M.

First, is the film Science Fiction? Why or why not?
     I would argue that the film Catching Fire barely qualifies as science fiction. The science isn’t really thought about, it’s mostly just the mechanism by which the events in the movie are explained. The technology is very present in the movie but it’s barely explored besides the fact that it’s a convenient way to explain the plot and it looks impressive on a movie screen.

Second, is the film a commentary on past, present and future human society?

     I believe that the film is a commentary on present society. It could be a commentary on future society, but I really hope that’s not what happens. We, like them in the movie, live in a really tech-linked age, and it’s not that hard to find most of us online or on any sort of technological network. If you don’t use the computer, you’ll at least have a cellphone with a SIM card. If you were to be hacked, it’d be relatively easy to spy on you, like what President Snow does.

     The film is also a commentary on a dystopian society in which there is an elite ruling class and a suffering working class—and it’s all based on where you were born. It’s not nice to think about, but yeah, we have so many institutions that promote that kind of discrimination, when something completely out of your control is taken against you. In this case, it’s so bad that they have a competition in which you get lucky, or kill or be killed.

Third, how does science, technology and society fail or succeed in the world of the 13 Districts?
     Besides the fact that the technology in the movie’s universe is used to subjugate everyone (even the Capitol is being manipulated), it’s also shown to be very useful. In the arena, they would have died had they not had the spigot with them, which was their main source of drinking water. I think the main point the movie makes is that science and technology itself is neutral. It can be used for bad—as I previously mentioned, the President of the Capitol uses cameras, microphones, etc. to keep an eye on the people he rules and to make sure all hints of dissent are quickly stamped out, but it can also be used for good, basically whenever Katniss and her allies use technology to fight the authoritarian rule of President Snow.

     It’s not that science and technology is inherently good or inherently evil, but in the movie it’s shown that it depends who is using it, and to what end. After all, the technology that frees Katniss and the tributes from the arena in which they were to die is the same technology that was supposed to kill them.