The Hunger Games Prequel, Songbirds, Is a Satire on the Ruling Class
Novelist Suzanne Collins has returned with a prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy. This time, she writes about the fictional world of Panem from the perspective of its ruling class, which makes her satire on our own society all the more cutting.
The prequel centers on a young Coriolanus Snow, the antagonist in the original trilogy, played by Donald Sutherland in the film adaptations. (The Hunger Games / Lionsgate)
The Hunger Games series was a popular sensation after the release of the first novel in 2008 and the film adaptation that followed four years later. The work of Suzanne Collins rapidly became a touchstone for twenty-first-century dystopian fiction.
Much like The Matrix and Mad Max, the title itself has become a kind of shorthand for the dystopian characteristics of our own society. The phrase “Hunger Games” evokes images of poverty, authoritarianism, and the sacrifices demanded of ordinary people to keep the system going.
The iconography of The Hunger Games has also become a fixture in real-world political uprisings. Protesters for democracy in Thailand took up the three-finger salute that symbolizes the fictional rebellion in the series. So did demonstrators against the coup government in Myanmar more recently.
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