Jason asked this question about
Battle Royale:
Why did Suzanne Collins rip off the idea from this book and pretend she didn't?
Anna
I wouldn't call it a knockoff, per se. More like The Hunger Games is somewhat of an adaptation, a translation of THE battle royale, as a base idea, to…moreI wouldn't call it a knockoff, per se. More like The Hunger Games is somewhat of an adaptation, a translation of THE battle royale, as a base idea, to a western capitalist society. While the two undoubtedly sport nearly identical premises (school-age kids locked into a place together, and given a choice to kill or be killed), The Hunger Games speak more of the individual's struggle against an untenable system in full bloom, Battle Royale is in large part about the cracks showing as an overexerted system slowly starts to crumble in on itself.
The very important distinction is that Battle Royale is about fascism (where the Program is reasoned away as a "military experiment for the sake of national security", and one of the prizes include an autograph from the Leader), and The Hunger Games is about capitalism (where the Games never had the illusion of being anything other than a spectacle, a televised broadcast of starving children being gunned down by professional killers, only to entertain the grossly privileged, and the winner gets to "enjoy" a celebrity status).
For starters, Battle Royale is, strictly on paper, much more fair in its setup: everything is government-issued, the kids all share the very important similarity of being roughly the same age (while in the Hunger Games, the contestants range from being 11 to 17, a huge and significant gap), and even their equipment (while unequal, I mean in what world is it fair to put an SMG and a FORK on the same level???) is decided by the luck of the draw. And if all of that, plus the physical environment, is the same, really their success and failure comes down to blind luck of what they end up being given as their weapon, and the individuals themselves. The physically or mentally strong [Shuya and Kawada], the cunning [Mitsuko], the ruthless [Kirayama], or the ones with connections [Noriko to Yoshitoki, Shinji to his uncle, and the lighthouse girls to each other] do enjoy very distinct advantages (or disadvantages [Sugimura]), but there is nothing stopping them from winding up with the shitty end of the stick, no guiding hand to save them from certain death. They are a caricature of what an egalitarian, but unequal setup looks like- successful fascism, as the characters themselves say, and the spectators are only speculated about. There is notably not even a strictly singular main character whose POV we'd watch it all from, a singular person to whom we are supposed to relate. The message is that we are all differently screwed, and the one way to play well is to stop playing with the other people who are also fucked the same as you, and play the system that put us in this situation instead.
Whereas in The Hunger Games, it was never about individual skill or even much about luck beyond your birth at all. The game never had any illusions of ever being anything other than entertainment, and it was always rigged to favor the privileged. It is a reflection of a capitalist society, in which we follow the path of Katniss specifically from a fist person POV, a woman of color coming from a heavily disenfranchised background, and look upon the happenings through her eyes- those who get it all dropped literally into their laps, and those who fight tooth and nail for everything they have, only to fail regardless. And while the whole battle royale setting in theory is meant to even out the playing field (these are your peers, this is stuff, go kill each other), what with the airdrops and the career backgrounds, it's skewed horribly from the start, and only those against whom it is shifted (not the privileged, including the spectators) TRULY recognize the weight of their own disadvantage, much like in real life.
In the Hunger Games, the evenness of the playing field is an illusion, and while in part it does come down to blind luck in the way that Battle Royale does, the contestants are all very unequal from the start, and the chances of those starting off with a huge handicap winning are so infinitesimal, they might as well be illusory. In The Hunger Games, Katniss is an anomaly, she is special, not just another winner- she is an underdog story the crowd loves, but which doesn't forget where she came from, which is why she ends up becoming the Mockingjay- whereas in Battle Royale, the anomaly isn't celebrated, but winds up hunted for the rest of their lives.
So TL;DR: I wouldn't say that it's a ripoff, and it's definitely isn't plagiarism. I would think that it, like anything else that has to do with the whole idea of "last man standing", could have been INSPIRED by Battle Royale, or something else that came before it that features the same idea, and Collins just so happened to also pick schoolchildren as the subjects. But if anything, the two comment on political situations so vastly different, they might as well have nothing to do with one another.(less)
The very important distinction is that Battle Royale is about fascism (where the Program is reasoned away as a "military experiment for the sake of national security", and one of the prizes include an autograph from the Leader), and The Hunger Games is about capitalism (where the Games never had the illusion of being anything other than a spectacle, a televised broadcast of starving children being gunned down by professional killers, only to entertain the grossly privileged, and the winner gets to "enjoy" a celebrity status).
For starters, Battle Royale is, strictly on paper, much more fair in its setup: everything is government-issued, the kids all share the very important similarity of being roughly the same age (while in the Hunger Games, the contestants range from being 11 to 17, a huge and significant gap), and even their equipment (while unequal, I mean in what world is it fair to put an SMG and a FORK on the same level???) is decided by the luck of the draw. And if all of that, plus the physical environment, is the same, really their success and failure comes down to blind luck of what they end up being given as their weapon, and the individuals themselves. The physically or mentally strong [Shuya and Kawada], the cunning [Mitsuko], the ruthless [Kirayama], or the ones with connections [Noriko to Yoshitoki, Shinji to his uncle, and the lighthouse girls to each other] do enjoy very distinct advantages (or disadvantages [Sugimura]), but there is nothing stopping them from winding up with the shitty end of the stick, no guiding hand to save them from certain death. They are a caricature of what an egalitarian, but unequal setup looks like- successful fascism, as the characters themselves say, and the spectators are only speculated about. There is notably not even a strictly singular main character whose POV we'd watch it all from, a singular person to whom we are supposed to relate. The message is that we are all differently screwed, and the one way to play well is to stop playing with the other people who are also fucked the same as you, and play the system that put us in this situation instead.
Whereas in The Hunger Games, it was never about individual skill or even much about luck beyond your birth at all. The game never had any illusions of ever being anything other than entertainment, and it was always rigged to favor the privileged. It is a reflection of a capitalist society, in which we follow the path of Katniss specifically from a fist person POV, a woman of color coming from a heavily disenfranchised background, and look upon the happenings through her eyes- those who get it all dropped literally into their laps, and those who fight tooth and nail for everything they have, only to fail regardless. And while the whole battle royale setting in theory is meant to even out the playing field (these are your peers, this is stuff, go kill each other), what with the airdrops and the career backgrounds, it's skewed horribly from the start, and only those against whom it is shifted (not the privileged, including the spectators) TRULY recognize the weight of their own disadvantage, much like in real life.
In the Hunger Games, the evenness of the playing field is an illusion, and while in part it does come down to blind luck in the way that Battle Royale does, the contestants are all very unequal from the start, and the chances of those starting off with a huge handicap winning are so infinitesimal, they might as well be illusory. In The Hunger Games, Katniss is an anomaly, she is special, not just another winner- she is an underdog story the crowd loves, but which doesn't forget where she came from, which is why she ends up becoming the Mockingjay- whereas in Battle Royale, the anomaly isn't celebrated, but winds up hunted for the rest of their lives.
So TL;DR: I wouldn't say that it's a ripoff, and it's definitely isn't plagiarism. I would think that it, like anything else that has to do with the whole idea of "last man standing", could have been INSPIRED by Battle Royale, or something else that came before it that features the same idea, and Collins just so happened to also pick schoolchildren as the subjects. But if anything, the two comment on political situations so vastly different, they might as well have nothing to do with one another.(less)
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