The Propaganda Games: An Analysis of Sunrise on the Reaping

UPDATE: Lionsgate tried to clap me with a copyright strike so I had to quick do some choppy choppy. If there are a couple awkward or jarring cuts that's why. Or I messed up in the original edit. That too. Sorry.


This video essay is about the use of propaganda in Suzanne Collins' newest Hunger Games novel, Sunrise on the Reaping.

Sunrise on the Reaping is a prequel to the original trilgoy, and set 40 years after the events of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It focuses on the character of Haymitch Abernathy as he navigates his way through the 50th Hunger Games and second Quarter Quell.

Collins' novel focuses quite a bit on propaganda, especially through the character of Plutarch Heavensbee. Heavensbee and President Snow try to turn every character in the series- from Finnick Odair to Katniss Everdeen to Haymitch Abernathy- into pieces of propaganda. But what is the point of this? What might Collins be trying to tell us? And, above all, what can we learn from Sunrise on the Reaping and apply to our own politics? How do we avoid falling for the propaganda, or worse- becoming the propaganda?