Do you ever wonder if reality shows are actually reality? In some survival shows, contestants go to hotels between cuts. Are they telling the truth? In the country of Panem in Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, children are picked at random, and then sent to fight to the death for the amusement of the people in the Capitol, while in America, the closest thing people might have to this awful competition may be on their television screen.
Not only do the tributes in the games have to know how to hide and fight, more than that, they must kill their allies. In this situation, the competitors must keep a vigil. The tributes in the Hunger Games competition have to deal with a lot of very hard situations during their time in the arena. For instance, the initial bloodbath is a bonanza of killings and a lot of people die on that first day. Twenty-four children are chosen for the competition, two tributes from each of the 12 districts, a boy and a girl at random. In the arena, they must find their own food and water, and go through real combats, sometimes with people that they know very well, until only one of the 24 tributes is alive. The competitors in the games have to compete against their will, even when they are as young as twelve years old. Just as people in horror movies or television shows have to fight, so too in the Hunger Games, the tributes have to battle to survive. After experiencing what tributes do during the games, no one can revert to his/her old lifestyle. Nobody wants to be a part of the Hunger Games while thousands in the United States line up for their shot at a part on a television show.
Television shows are very different from the Hunger Games. The people participating on reality television shows are provided food and water between cuts. Unlike during the Hunger Games, everything is planned out and scripted; also, most things that happen on a large percentage of television shows are not real. Therefore, the competitors know what will happen next. Furthermore, due to liability issues, every participant on the television shows’ safety is guaranteed at all times and everybody finishes unharmed.
It is very obvious that the Hunger Games competition and reality television are very different. Although, there is one thing connecting them, both are made for the entertainment of the viewers at home. Americans should be thankful that they do not live in Panem and will never have to go through the Hunger Games. So next time you are watching television, think about what reality truly means.