The Girl Who Was on Fire (13 page)

For all its marketing advantages, though, Reality TV has to comply with some of the other basic rules of entertainment: to hold on to these viewers, the producers have to make each season fresh and new. In the absence of a script or predetermined plot, viewers would quickly get bored with simply watching a new group of people (or, in some cases, the same group of people) tossed into the same situation over and over again. Dealing with this problem largely translates into a perpetual upping of the ante, a constant raise of the stakes so viewers won’t get bored.

Survivor
is a key example. In the earlier seasons of the show, contestants brought a selection of clothes to the filming location, and the producers then chose what they could ultimately wear (camera-friendly colors, variety so not everyone wore the same thing, no logos). They were also sometimes allowed to bring a luxury item (such as when Colby brought a large Texas flag that he later used to help build a shelter), and the show provided necessities such as clean water, rice, and tools to build a fire.

Compare that to later seasons, where contestants were sent into the game wearing the clothes on their backs (whether that was a business suit or a sundress), weren’t allowed any luxury items, had to hunt for their own water, and weren’t provided
food or any tools to make fire (though there were opportunities for teams to win these items at challenges—effectively inserting another level of competition for the base level resources that used to be a given). As the show grew and struggled to retain its dominance among the viewership, it became less about watching people live and scheme in a difficult environment and instead became about actual survival—the struggle of finding food, shelter, and water. In essence, the show became more brutal, and the driving force behind it all was the viewers—us.

The Hunger Games function the same way. Year after year, the Gamemakers struggle to make the Games appear fresh and new, crafting new arenas and devising new, increasingly sadistic challenges. What might one year be dense forests could in another be a vast arctic wasteland or a picturesque landscape filled with carnivorous squirrels or a dam that bursts, drowning half the tributes. The only criterion is that each year’s arena has to outdo the one from the year before.

Ostensibly these machinations are intended to prove the power of the Capitol; however, a single, simple gladiatorial arena would have been sufficient to accomplish that. But while the Hunger Games are viewed as a punishment to those living in the Districts, in the Capitol they are entertainment and, as with any other reality show, the Capitol is concerned with ratings. Not for dollars, as in our world, but for something far more important: societal domination. The Games are symbolic of the Capitol’s power and dominance: a boring game means the Capitol may appear weak and shy of resources in the eyes of its own citizens, who might then start to reconsider their allegiance to the Capitol they perceive as all-powerful.

Ultimately, as Plutarch points out in
Mockingjay
, the Capitol’s main concern with the Hunger Games is providing
panem
et circenses
: bread and circuses to keep the populace entertained enough that they won’t consider rebellion. To do this, the Capitol continues to up the stakes, game after game. As Katniss realizes when the rules of the game shift again to pit her against Peeta at the end of the first Hunger Games, “They never intended to let us both live. This has all been devised by the Gamemakers to guarantee the most dramatic showdown in history” (
The Hunger Games
). Put another way: it’s all about the ratings, and exploiting that very drive is what allows Katniss and Peeta to survive.

As Katniss and the leaders of the rebellion learn, if they want the citizens to revolt, they have to become Gamemakers themselves, appealing to those same sensibilities according to the same terms: presenting a compelling and entertaining narrative, not the truth.

There’s a famous line from the movie
The Usual Suspects
, where the narrator, Verbal, says of the enigmatic Keyser Soze, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” To a certain extent the same quote, slightly modified, works for Reality TV: “the greatest trick Reality TV producers ever pulled was convincing the world what it’s watching is real.” Even the term Reality TV itself is part of the trick: it presumes Reality TV is an accurate representation of reality, when in actuality there is a difference between what is presented in these shows as reality and what most people would consider to be objective truth, which operates on several levels. (In recognition of this, there is a drive
among some factions to change this to the somewhat more accurate “unscripted television.”)

First, there are the truths presented by the Reality TV participants themselves to the viewer, to their editors, and to the other contestants, all of which may be different. Many Reality TV stars understand that there’s a level of narrative construction necessary for strategic game play, both in terms of manipulating their fellow contestants and in terms of manipulating the ultimate viewer. In
Survivor: Pearl Islands
(the show’s seventh season), for example, one of the castaways convinced the other members of his tribe that his grandmother had died so that they would give him the challenge reward. The castaway knew that by garnering sympathy, he could gain an advantage in the game, which worked. Not even the producers realized the castaway was lying until they called his home to offer their condolences, only to have the “deceased” grandmother answer the phone.

Lying about misfortune to garner sympathy is a tactic employed often in Reality TV, but the opposite is true as well: contestants regularly underplay skills or hide details about their personal lives if they feel it will give them an advantage (such as one housemate on
Big Brother 12
not admitting to being a doctor so that other contestants wouldn’t feel like he didn’t need the money). Katniss herself employed this tactic effectively in the original Hunger Games, concealing her skill with bow and arrow from the other contestants while using it to dazzle the judges.

Whatever the motivation, creating a compelling narrative is a sound strategy in winning a Reality TV show, especially one in which the recipients of that narrative—the viewers—can influence the game, whether through votes or by driving ratings. This has led to the ever-popular Reality TV romance—coined “showmance” by followers of the genre—which is compelling on-screen but evaporates as soon as the cameras turn off (one need
only look to any of the bountiful subgenre of celebrity dating shows, and the fact that the same celebrities keep turning up for multiple seasons, to understand this). “Showmance” is at the heart of the Hunger Games, when Katniss and Peeta pretend to be a couple in order to influence the viewers’ perception of them. As Haymitch explains after Katniss protests Peeta’s declaration of love during the interview before the Games:

More important than the complicated truth of Katniss and Peeta’s relationship is the idea that they could be in love. This creates a story that viewers crave and that they reward while the two tributes are fighting in the arena (and which readers rewarded by donning Team Peeta or Team Gale shirts while awaiting the conclusion to the trilogy to determine which bachelor Katniss would choose). This also made possible the ultimate act of rebellion: Katniss bargaining for both her and Peeta’s life. Because viewers believe in and root for their love, the Gamemakers are able to save their reputation in the face of Katniss’ rebellion.

This demonstrates a second break between reality and truth in Reality TV, perhaps even more manipulative than the first: how the editors and producers choose to present events. We like to believe that cameras do not lie, that what we see must be real because we have seen it. But contestants in Reality TV are often filmed a majority, if not all, of the day, which leads to thousands of hours of tape being edited down into a weekly show that may
top out at twenty hours total over its full run. How editors choose to cut those tapes can change everything: they can choose to air only those few moments a day when contestants are complaining and make it look like that’s all they do, or they can fail to air moments of contestants pitching in and make them appear lazy. Often, editors will craft a narrative stereotype of each contestant and show footage that backs up said stereotype: the loudmouth, the priss, the schemer, the layabout, the negotiator, etc.

And because many of the contracts between contestants and reality television shows explicitly allow the producers to have a hand in crafting the narrative, such interference is arguably within the bounds of what’s acceptable and expected (in one extreme instance a former contestant on
Survivor
sued the show, claiming that they’d told other castaways how to vote; however, many Reality TV shows air a disclaimer that the producers have the right to consult on making decisions regarding eliminations). The post–reality show trauma ward is littered with former contestants who now say they actually got along quite well with the other contestant portrayed to the world as their nemesis.

Ultimately, editors and producers have not only the most power but also the most motivation to shape a narrative to bolster particular storylines. Sure, on some level perhaps these storylines start out as organic truths, but reality is messy and complicated, and does not fit easily into preconceived archetypes or twenty-two episode seasons. Messy is hard to sell, so the editors give it a push, and ultimately these organic realities are twisted and enhanced to force them in the direction the editor believes will create the most compelling story.

For example, the truth of Katniss’ threat to the Gamemakers when she and Peeta raise the poisoned berries at the end of the
Seventy-Fourth Games is that she’s revolting against their rules and taking control of herself away from those who would use her. However, President Snow, as the ultimate producer of the Games, twists this to show not a rebel, but a “love-crazed schoolgirl” (
Catching Fire
). As Katniss realizes after the Games:

The narrative constructed as strategy by Peeta and Haymitch becomes a sort of reality in and of itself, as Katniss begins to buy into it and President Snow capitalizes on it for his own ends.

Collins, just like the Gamemakers in her books, raises the stakes to a new level in the third book of the trilogy,
Mockingjay
, when she takes the various themes of ratings and narrative and applies it to the way we approach reporting on wars. After all, it’s not unexpected that the same viewership that craves an increase in drama from season to season of a Reality TV show would want the same out of war coverage. And it’s not unsurprising to think that, in order to increase ratings, a television station or other news outlet might be tempted to construct narratives to corroborate the storyline they think
will garner the most ratings. War coverage suffers from the same time constraints as reality television: every military front can’t be shown at all times, and not even everything filmed can make it to air, which means things will always end up being left out. The result can be a story that, even if it’s meant to be objective and accurate, is anything but. What gets chosen to be aired and what gets cut can have an enormous impact on the public’s impression of war.

And sometimes editors determine what to cut and what to print in order to further their own agendas. For example, several historians have claimed that through his propensity for cherrypicking and sensationalizing details and publishing theory as fact, William Randolph Hearst and his
New York Journal
helped instigate the country’s willingness to enter into the Spanish-American war in 1898. Behind the scenes of Hearst’s reporting was a circulation battle he’d entered into with Joseph Pulitzer of
New York World
, and both recognized that the more sensational the headline, the higher the sales. Thus, much of their reporting wasn’t about the reality of the events (it’s acknowledged that most of their reporting came from biased third-hand information), but about what would increase circulation or ratings. Hearst and Pulitzer understood the truth that a well-crafted narrative can be beneficial for the bottom line, whether that bottom line is selling more newspapers, garnering more advertisers, or perpetuating a specific ideology.

This is never so evident as it is in
Mockingjay
, where Katniss is the symbol of the revolution, not through her actions, but through the carefully constructed and edited perceptions of those actions through propaganda. Even those moments that are based in truth, such as Katniss walking through the field hospital in District 8, are later molded into narratives. Shortly after visiting those same hospitals, Katniss and Gale engage in a
battle with Capitol planes, after which Katniss becomes aware of the television cameras and shouts for the district to join the rebellion, essentially turning the moment into a commercial by taking that raw event and crafting it into a compelling bit of narrative about the war.

Katniss is always aware of the message her story sends and how those around her would like to control it for their own ends. As she explains: “They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances ... and all I have to do is play my part” (
Mockingjay
).