How The Hunger Games anticipated Donald Trump’s rise

During NBC’s election coverage on Tuesday, every time the network called a state for one candidate or another, it played a martial chorus of bells and drums and projected the candidate’s face onto 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with flags waving in the background.

It’s a weirdly familiar image, one likely recognizable to anyone who’s seen any of that little dystopian book-to-movie franchise called The Hunger Games. In The Hunger Games, whenever one of the children forced to battle to the death on live television dies, the evil and corrupt Capitol broadcasts a picture of the child’s face across the sky as a martial anthem swells in the background.

The Hunger Games has been an oddly recurring, prescient presence in both domestic and foreign politics for the past few years. During the Ferguson protests, protesters scrawled a Hunger Games slogan across the St. Louis arch. During Thailand’s 2014 protests, it became illegal to give the Hunger Games’ three-fingered salute.

The Hunger Games has continued to be a presence in our political sphere because it understands something fundamental to American culture, and something fundamental to why Trump did so terribly, terribly well during his campaign. And that’s the fact that in our culture, a really strong, compelling narrative trumps everything, every time, no matter what side you’re on.

For those unfamiliar, the premise of The Hunger Games is that every year, an evil totalitarian government forces its impoverished and disenfranchised citizens to send some of their children — chosen by lottery — to fight to the death in televised gladiator games. Viewing is mandatory.

But the key to the books isn’t the entertainingly sick premise with all the flashy child-on-child murder. It’s the idea that to win the Hunger Games, you don’t necessarily need to be strong or a great fighter. You just need an angle. You need a compelling narrative.

That’s because viewers can choose to sponsor their favorite contestants in the Games, sending them money for food and weapons and supplies. So to win, contestants need to win over their audience. Every contestant has an angle: Some are strong and silent, some are sly, some are sexy.

In the end, the protagonists, Katniss and Peeta, don’t win because they’re stronger or more virtuous or more deserving than anyone else. They win because they have a better narrative: They have a love story, one with movement and sweep and drama, and that’s what wins over the Games’ viewers.

And in the end, their love story is instrumental to bringing down the evil totalitarian government. It’s not the fact that the government forces its citizenry to send off its children to murder each other every year. It’s not the fact that citizens are starving or dying in the streets. It’s the fact that two photogenic teenagers with nice onscreen chemistry and a story that the country is invested in film some catchy propaganda pieces for the revolutionary movement. That’s what turns the tide for the revolution and destroys the totalitarian government.

There are a lot of factors that led to Trump’s enormous success in this election, and those will no doubt be hashed over and rehashed over the next few weeks. But what’s inarguable is that Trump is a weapon forged in the fires of reality television. That’s where he learned how to sell the public a narrative, how to figure out what an audience wants, and how to give it to them. And that’s part of how he managed to do so well.

It’s not nice or flattering for us to believe that our culture can be so easily swayed by something so base as reality television, swayed so much that it can affect the election of the highest executive office in the land. But it manifestly can. If this election has proven anything, it’s that the power of an effective narrative cannot be underestimated.

The Hunger Games knew that all along. That’s why it’s our most relevant dystopia: because the dark mirror it holds up to our face isn’t distorting our reflection much at all.