Media has the tendency to saturate trends when something popular hits the scene. “Twilight” turned vampires, formerly creepy mythological creatures you would see in a C-list horror flick or in a “Scooby Doo” episode, into sensationalized figures of pop culture. Additionally, ever since “The Avengers” grossed over $1.5 billion, everyone and their mothers have been scrambling to produce more movies and television shows to get in on the hot take.

Hollywood has found another new hit in the form of young adult dystopian novels such as “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent” and most recently, “The Maze Runner.” There are plenty of people who loved “The Hunger Games” and I have started to hear some rumblings over “Divergent.” It makes me wonder why so many people are fascinated with these particular stories of teenagers, who are trying not to die in dark, scary future worlds.

You could argue that “The Hunger Games” got the ball rolling and Hollywood is just propelling the trend by milking the genre while it’s at its peak. But what if they are also cautionary tales?

One of the dystopian novels I read for school was “1984.”  Written by George Orwell in 1947, it depicts a dystopia where society is constantly watched by an entity called “Big Brother.” Whenever people had rebellious thoughts, they were forcibly conformed to become like everyone else. It was a totalitarian police state, much like the enemies in “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.”

In “1984,” Orwell was cautioning society about what it could become. He feared that superpowers like Hitler would gain enough control to impose whatever reality they pleased onto the world. The scary part of this train of thought is that it is somewhat realistic. You could actually see his world as a potential future.

Even “The Hunger Games” is rooted closely enough in reality. The world would need further advancements in technology, and extended corporate control with a fetish for bloodbaths, before we are living in the cruel dystopia Suzanne Collins wrote about. Since it’s still presented as removed from our current reality, it feels like fantasy.

Stories like “The Hunger Games” are walking paradoxes. They can serve as cautionary reminders as to what we could become, and they can provide an escape into a world that isn’t quite like ours. Humans like to ponder the “what ifs,” and dystopias happen to be a popular “what if” to go to right now, thanks to their current sensationalism and tangible realities.

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