The Hunger Game Series by Suzanne Collins had become a worldwide phenomenon. After the movie, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the majority of people knew of Katniss Everdeen’s and Peta Melark’s fight for survival while apathetic citizens watched uninvolved. Some might say that the citizens were cold hearted. Other may call them cruel. But I say Collins presents an important phenomenon through these citizens: desensitization.
But what is desensitization? By definition, it is the act of making emotionally insensitive or unresponsive by long exposure or repeated “shocks”. Ergo, a person becomes emotionally “numb”.
We become expose to graphic images through the media (movies, TV shows, videogames etc.) In modern day society, citizens become bombarded by messages of assail.
The connection is seen in a study done by Nicholas Carmeagey, Craige Anderson and Brad Bushman. All three men are psychology professors whose study was done to find a correlation between the effects of violent videogames and physical response to violence. They did so by testing 257 college students for their heart rate and galvanic skin response to violent videos after playing videogames. Some of the participants played shooter games while others played puzzle videogames. They found that there is a significantly less physical response to violent scenes with the group who played shooter videogames. This response was seen even after the person plays for a measly 20 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong. Desensitization is not necessarily harmful. In some professions such as the military or police, it is needed. If a soldier has an emotional breakdown every time he goes into battle, he would not be able to preform his job properly. In some life threatening situations, they may not only endanger themselves, but their comrades as well.
Nevertheless, for the general population becoming less sensitive to violence is not beneficial. It has a negative effect on our mental health. This is shown through the probability of a person becoming more violent being increased greatly when desensitized. This can lead to the utmost scenario of one becoming inspired by images of suffering to inflict pain onto others. For example, a multitude of mass murderers found their inspiration from radicals seen in the media. This is only one extreme example of how our culture and many others have created an environment in which the common Joe can become effortlessly detached from reality.
Similarity, there is a moral issue at hand. We pride ourselves as humans with our ability to be sympathetic towards our kind and even creatures of other species. It is that single value that we believe not only separates us from wild animals, but also makes us their superior. Alas by numbing ourselves, we lose what it means to be human.
Henceforth, we have to ask ourselves the important question of: Are the indifferent attitudes of the citizens in The Hunger Games really just fictional?
