Literary Musings: Addendum

I'm not feeling so bad anymore about my one sentence.

Last night, my friend PT pointed me toward articles that noted the plot similarities between The Hunger Games and the Japanese book (and subsequent movie) Battle Royale, published in 1999.

I'd totally forgotten about Battle Royale. I rented the movie several years ago, and it was over-the-top gory. I hate horror movies, so I'm not sure why I watched it...probably in part because it's a pop cultural reference that I thought I should know and because it was one of the top grossing movies in Japan of all time. The moment PT mentioned Battle Royale to me, I immediately saw commonalities.

Battle Royale tells the story of Japanese middle school students who are randomly selected and forced by the government to participate in a fight to the death as a result of the BR Act, which was passed after 800,000 students walked out of school. Sound familiar?

Upon arriving at a remote island, the students are instructed by a cheery orientation video that they have three days to kill each other until there's only one student left standing. Each is given one weapon and a useless object to level the playing field and ultimately, the two protagonists survive by faking their own suicides. Also sound familiar?

Suddenly, the perceived similarity of my one measly sentence to the first line of The Hunger Games pales in comparison to ripping off an entire book. I probably shouldn't say that so flippantly though. Suzanne Collins insists that she's never read Battle Royale and her legions of fans insist that the context and setting are sufficiently different to engender different central themes. The Hunger Games take place in a sci fi future, for instance, whereas Battle Royale takes place in a dystopia more similar to our own world. The Hunger Games are publicized whereas the Battle Royale takes place unbeknownst to most of Japan. Etcetera etcetera. I suppose Collins' fans would argue to the contrary, but I don't believe these differences are sufficiently significant for them to claim that Hunger Games is wholly unique; highlighting these details is akin to pointing out the variances in brushstrokes of two artists who painted virtually identical paintings. The differences in context and setting and characters are there, but the core premise and the themes of sacrifice and loyalty in extreme circumstances remain the same.*

While I've thus far found The Hunger Games to be entertaining and its language compelling, it pales in comparison to the brutality, violence, and pain of Battle Royale. Let's be clear--The Hunger Games is for young adults; Battle Royale, not so much. The Japanese Diet almost banned Battle Royale. Given what Japanese society permits these days (hentai, for starters), that's really saying something. This isn't to say that gore and shock value necessarily make for good literature--quite the opposite, in my opinion--but there was something more visceral about the way in which the aforementioned themes were presented in Battle Royale, in part I think because the latter dealt less with romance and emotional confusion and more with the moral ambiguity and brutality that comes with trying to survive on an island. Or maybe I just need to see the Hunger Games movie.

In any case, the moral of this rather long-winded post is that I just need to stop worrying and write.

*The second and third books of the Hunger Games trilogy deal with revolution, war and other issues not engaged by Battle Royale, but that's beyond the scope of this post.