I crouch before her, staring up helplessly at the embedded weapon. There’s no point in comforting words, in telling her she’ll be all right. She’s no fool. Her hand reaches out and I clutch it like a lifeline. As if it’s me who’s dying instead of Rue.
That poignant moment in The Hunger Games finds reluctant warrior Katniss Everdeen empathizing with a young peer also forced into mortal combat. Rue, a rival-turned-ally, has just been abruptly eliminated from the games by a boy’s spear. After comforting the dying girl, Katniss honors Rue by covering her body in wildflowers.
If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, how did this scene make you feel? No doubt author Suzanne Collins and filmmaker Gary Ross have strong, mature opinions about what that moment means to them and what they hoped to communicate through it as storytellers. The emotional resonance. The symbolic significance. But scenes such as this could deeply upset others who process violence differently—especially children.
Tim King, writing for the Huffington Post, expressed concern over the teen-on-teen violence in The Hunger Games, stating, “It’s just too evocative of Derrion Albert, who at Katniss’s age was beaten to death by five other teenagers outside of his high school a couple years ago, or of the more than five hundred Chicago youth murdered, mostly by other children, since 2008.”
Harvard Medical School professor of pediatrics Dr. Michael Rich had a slightly different reaction. He told the Chicago Tribune:
What the research shows is not that kids see something in the movies and go out and imitate it. The problem is they see things over and over again that become increasingly normal, and they stop being in touch with their natural fear of and revulsion to these things. It shifts their frame for what is acceptable and what is desirable for the way we get along.
He’s talking about desensitization.
Have you ever wondered how the citizens of The Hunger Games’ fictional Capitol could develop an appetite for children fighting to the death on live TV? Collins tells us that the Games were instituted as punishment for a rebellion long ago. But I think there’s another element at play, similar to how the ancient Romans grew to crave gladiators finishing off opponents or lions tearing Christians to pieces. Subtly. Over time. Perhaps President Snow and his garishly adorned subjects were first amused by bloodsport involving animals. Or virtual murder by digitized avatars on a computer screen. Maybe it all began with viral videos of wacky treadmill mishaps. But audiences got bored. They grew desensitized. It took more to hold their attention. So perhaps the powers that be felt the need to ratchet things up a notch. And another. And another.
As a parent, I’m wary of any entertainment likely to desensitize my kids to pain and suffering. One perennial offender is America’s Funniest Home Videos (now just AFV). In between the clips of cute babies and nutty pets, we see all sorts of freak accidents. Arguably, a college kid trying to jump over a shed on his bicycle is asking for trouble. We laugh at his stupidity more than his pain. But what about the granny who falls off a horse, or a toddler who face-plants on the playground? My wife and I have tried to help our children see that there’s nothing funny about that, despite what the show’s producers believe.
Longtime AFV honcho Vin Dibona told ABC’s Nightline, “There’s nothing funnier than seeing your grandmother slip on a banana peel, you know?” Then he added, “So long as she’s safe.” The trouble is, we have no way of knowing which clips may have led to emergency room visits. But before we can flip the empathy switch, a laugh track jumps in as if to say, “Aw, go ahead. Yuk it up. That old lady probably needed her hip replaced anyway.”
Are we becoming a culture desensitized to people’s pain and suffering? I’m afraid we are. And as a Christian, that concerns me, not just because of how it can cause us to treat one another, but because it may mute our reaction to what our Savior endured—when He died for our sin.
Today many of us are celebrating Good Friday. It’s the day Christians reflect on Jesus Christ’s willingness to endure extraordinary pain and suffering on our behalf. Beaten and mocked. The hair of His beard yanked out. A crown of thorns pressed into His brow. Flogged with strips of leather gripping shards of metal and pottery. Hands and feet nailed to wooden beams. And it was all inspired by love. He submitted to all of that brutality and more to save us from a fiery eternity separated from God.
So what happens when our society becomes so desensitized to violence that even Christ’s pain fails to resonate? We can’t afford to grow numb. His suffering should always break our hearts and drive us into the arms of God, who loved us enough to send his own son into the “games” so that the odds would be ever in our favor.
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