Lionsgate's The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

(Author's note: Yes, I reviewed the book already. You can read that review here.)

Yes, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a Lionsgate film, but Suzanne Collins is the real genius here. I have read the book twice and now seen the movie and I still can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that she managed to take a complete asshole villain (and if you never wanted to cut President Snow's heart out with a rusty spoon you've never read/seen the original Hunger Games trilogy.) and turn him into a protagonist that truly resonates with her audience. I won't spend too much time on that because I've done that review, but I still marvel at it. Seriously, Collins deserves some kind of major award for that. 

Of course, there's plenty of action and violence. Young "Corio" is the driving force behind building the Games and continuing them into the future. There is political intrigue. There is friendship, brotherhood, and betrayal. There is an awful lot to this story and it's woven so skillfully that you almost feel like you're living in the world that Collins has created and Lionsgate has replicated. 

HAVING SUMMARIZED MY LAST REVIEW...

I was immediately struck by the differences in "feel" between Ballad and the first four movies. Ballad is much grittier, much grimier, and much darker than the others, and I mean darker in the literal sense of how much lighting they probably had on set. My first impression when the movie came up was one word; "noir." Don't get me wrong. It was in full color, but it had that darkness to it. Even later in the movie when the sets are better lit something about the way it looks (it might be a filter. I took a class called Intro to Film, but I don't remember going over how filters work.) is just less bright and glittery.

I think that's the point though. This is not the Panem of Katniss Everdeen. Panem, in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a nation only ten years removed from a massive civil war that ripped the whole country apart and ended with the Capitol once again holding dominion over its vassal Districts. This is  a world where things haven't been put back together yet. It's a world where the to-be-hated president is a young man from a once-great family. It's a world where The Hunger Games are nowhere near what they one day will be and it looks it.

And seriously, I want to know who designed these sets. Listen folks, I don't watch award shows. I'd rather spend my time watching movies than watching movie stars tell each other how great they are. I'd rather listen to music than watch musicians pat each other on the back. It's weird because they do deserve to be recognized for their efforts and I'm not trying to hate but it's just not my thing. That much having been said; Is there an Oscar for set design? Seriously? If there is, it should go to the people who made Ballad. I'm being one hundred percent sincere here. 

The Capitol goes from grungy to well..

Better.  Not what it will be but not so war torn either. The classroom has the feeling for a Roman amphitheater. Snow's home has that "it used to be really awesome here" look that I'd never think you could be replicated, but they owned it. The Peacekeeper Barracks is kind of cliche-ish, but it's the freaking military where cookie cutter is the order of the day. The bar where the Peacekeepers party feels like a massive honky-tonk of an earlier era where electricity wasn't really much of a thing. The Arena before the explosions looks very well done and exciting, complete to the turnstiles. Volumnia Gaul's office was eerie, creepy, disgusting and awesome. But it's after the Arena after the explosions take place where they really shine.

It was great because there were shades of Caesar Flickerman from the original Hunger Games trilogy and his comment about "The use of the rubble" in one of his favorite older arenas. There was definitely rubble in the Arena in Ballad. There were also tunnels, an arch of sorts, some fans...

It was amazeballs.

It took what would have been a truly lackluster Arena and turned it into a nightmarish land of death. This is where the darker tone really took hold and pushed the story along all on its own. I really got the feeling that you never knew who was coming from where and how things were going to change. 

And yeah, it wasn't the elaborate Arenas of the original trilogy, but it was sixty-five years earlier and that hadn't developed yet. 

The music in the flick was awesome as well. Rachel Zegler has a voice that just won't quit. I've seen stage shows from the upper balcony starring actors and actresses who didn't have voices that strong. They were impressive too. She puts a ton of emotion into everything she sings, too. The definition of good art is that it creates an emotional reaction and Zegler's voice definitely does that. She wins over the Districts, then the Capitol and at some point that Jimbo guy sitting in the theater with her voice. I was in band in high school and I have a love of great show tunes. We played them and I've seen a number of musicals because of the memories they evoke. I have a sneaking suspicion that, thirty years from now, out there somewhere, a forty plus year old former band member is going to remember The Ballad of Lucy Gray-Baird and Nothing You Can Take From Me the same way I remember Jesus Christ Superstar and Memory. Those songs are that good.

The acting was awesome as well. Tom Blyth makes an awesome Coriolanus Snow. He makes that character live like no other could have. Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray-Baird is amazing. She goes from scared to strong to looking toward the future in a way that few others could. Viola Davis is a perfectly creepy Dr. Gaul. She needs to be. And of course Peter Dinklage is great in whatever he's in. That's just him.

In short, I loved every minute of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I'd go see it again tomorrow if I could. I can't wait till this thing comes to streaming so I can watch it another few times. I mean that. Snow always lands on top.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Scared Tributes

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Lionsgate, 2023

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Suzanne Collins's The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Suzanne Collins is an amazeballs author. I mean that seriously. It took me longer than it should have to start reading the books (Not my fault. By the time they were on my radar, I had heard that they were just like Twilight. I tried Twilight. I can't do it. Bella is everything I teach my daughters not to be and I can't read a series with a MC that I have no respect for.) but I saw the first movie with a girl that I knew and I was hooked. The books are even better. Some people will hate on Ms. Collins because she writes in first person present tense. Some people can kiss my butt. I get so sucked into Collin's writing that I forget to eat. I'm a three hundred and seventy pound man. I NEVER forget to eat. I often eat when I shouldn't. But when I get locked into one of this woman's books, as they say on the streets of New York, "Fugetaboudit." She has kept me up all night a few times too. That probably makes her evil on some level, but this is the kind of evil that I fully condone.

I was, however, kind of hesitant with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.Why? Because it's the story of President Snow from the original trilogy and that guy was a villain's villain. I mean, who wants to read about a dude who slaughters children as part of his job? But then, I mean, it was Suzanne Collins and my oldest daughter did love it and...

Well...

I caved, okay? I'm not proud of it but I totally gave up my inhibitions and through myself face first into the book. I'm glad I did though, because I had been acting like a total turdface. Listen, this is a good book if you just like... read it. It also helps if you think of the character by the name Coriolanus Snow (his full name as given in Ballad) as opposed to President Snow.

What Collins has done here is two things:

1.) She kept in mind the single most ubiquitous thing about every human being and their mindset: We are all the hero of our own story. From the outside looking in, what Snow will do later (and, indeed, some of what he does in Ballad) is evil. But to him, it's a necessary evil. The Hunger Games trilogy depicts Snow as an evil man, doing what he wants. Ballad not so much. Here we see a young man (or maybe boy is a better title) doing what he has to do because he has to do it.

and 

2.) The Greatest Harm is Often Done with the Best Intentions. Seriously, the Hunger Games terrorized twelve Districts full of people. It's how they're kept in line. It's how society continues and, honestly, what are the rights of people as compared to the rights of society? Snow is, in short, a believer in the Social Contract. And like many other followers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (that's the guy who wrote the actual book called The Social Contract for those of you who don't have degrees in history) he simply believes that killing people is an acceptable way to enforce it. I mean it worked for Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot right? And, I mean, seventy five years of The Hunger Games killed a lot less people than the Reign of Terror in France, right? And that was, after all, the first massacre conducted due to Rousseau's teachings.

At any rate, in his own mind Coriolanus is working for the good of all and to prevent another war like the one that ruined his family, destroyed his country and killed his father. I mean, it was a really bad time not just for Panem but for Coriolanus personally. He went from seeing his father on TV and leading parades to being raised by his grandmother. It couldn't have been easy. 

And that's the magic of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Collins has taken a man that I hated and turned him into a sympathetic character that I could root for. I never would have believed it possible but she did it. The Snow in this book is really a guy you can root for. Once you understand his intentions, what he's doing becomes, well, not admirable but at least understandable. After all, as badly as life sucked in the Capitol during the war, the Districts got it worse. Of course, it helps that she shows Corio as being capable of loving another human being. That's not the impression I got from the original trilogy.

Of course there's more to Ballad than just that. The story revolves around the Tenth Hunger Games, long before Katniss Everdeen and her time in the arena, or even her birth. And it's weird to say this, but it's kind of cool to see how small the games were when they started. The arena is small and not all that well equipped. Muttations are not really a thing yet. The same arena is used every year and it is not in good shape at all. The Games are not very popular and there are no such things as sponsors or betting yet.  These Games are similar to the Games that Katniss played in some ways, but they're so much smaller. It's almost eerie.

There is plenty of good, old fashioned violence to keep a fan of the original trilogy engaged as well.  There is action both in the arena and outside of it. It wouldn't be a Hunger Games story if someone didn't get it in the neck at some point and that's what happens here. I mean, we all know that only one of the Tributes is going to make it back to their District. I'm not going to reveal who it was, but that remains, well...

Not the same because this time it actually is only one.

But that's neither here nor there. Seriously, go buy the book and read it. Then come back and thank me for recommending it. This is some seriously good stuff.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Worrisome Essays

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press, 2020

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is available for purchase at the following links. If you click it and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you. 

Somebody Help Me Out Here

Okay, so I just don't grok something. I tend to think of myself as a pretty smart guy. I've got a decent IQ. I did well in every subject I've ever studied except handwriting and I'm told that that's because smart people tend to sign quickly and without putting a lot of thought into it. That's one of the reasons that doctors are known for poor handwriting. They tend to be pretty smart people. Here's my thing: I just don't understand something here and it's Science Fiction related in this context so I'm going to write about it: How in the BLUE HELL is the society of Panem, found in Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games series considered to be a rightist culture? It is true that Ms Collins has been interviewed multiple times and considers herself to be a leftist. I respect that. She has the right to be a leftist. But seriously, I just don't get this. Let's go over the evidence as it is contained in the text and someone here, anyone here, please explain to me how this adds up to a rightist society. I'll start with the most obvious reason that this is a leftist government and go from there.

All economic activity is controlled by the government.

Seriously. All of it. The first thing that happens in District 12 when it gets a new mayor is that they close down the Hob. Why? Because unregulated economic activity takes place there. It's not taxed or controlled. People meet and exchange goods freely and the powers that be see this as a bad thing. It is literally illegal for people to have a freaking flea market because the government isn't getting their cut. Listen, I get the necessity of a certain amount of taxation, but seriously why shut it down? At worst there could have been some taxation put in place. The fact of the matter is that the government in the Capitol couldn't stand the thought of someone making money that they weren't taxing and would rather burn something down that allow the people of the District to profit by it. That's a leftist thing folks. The Hob is a free market. That's what those of us on the right support. Burning it down and punishing the dealers there is the mark of a Communist, not a rightist.

And yes, I get the fact that the people of the Capitol are rich. Guess what? Josef Stalin had five dachas and a chauffeur driven car. He was the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Yes, my friends, the leaders of Socialist/Communist nations have always been rich. "From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs" is the Marxist idiom. It's weird how the leadership in a Marxist nation always "needs" more than the family of four in the three hundred square foot apartment.

Religion has been eradicated

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

It took me a minute to realize what was missing in the books here. Religion has been killed so thoroughly that it's not even brought up as a taboo subject. Seriously, we don't get so much as an "Oh God" when a tribute is wounded or a quick prayer by that one weirdo when their friend/child/brother/sister/whatever gets chosen as Tribute. There isn't even a crumbling old church that has been abandoned for a generation or generations. There is literally no trace of religion whatsoever. The Marx quote above says it all where that's concerned. The father of the Communist movement hated religion and so do his followers.

Gun Control is absolute

"Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the party." - Mao Zedong

Read the books. Watch the movies. Owning a gun, or even a bow and arrow, carries the death penalty. The reason for this is simple: An unarmed society is a society full of slaves. The Districts are Hitler's labor camps writ large. (And yes, the leader of the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party was a leftist.) Would anyone with a gun put up with the government seizing their child to fight in some sick game? Taking the guns out of the hands of the people and placing them all into the hands of the government is a common tactic of every totalitarian government and was pioneered by the Left. Oddly enough, gun control in the United States started as Jim Crow laws that sought to keep blacks from owing firearms. Yep, you guessed it. It's easier to lynch a man that can't shoot back to defend himself. And those are the same laws pushed for by the Left in the states today, only now it's the state doing the lynching and the general citizenry, as opposed to just one race of it, that is forced into subjugation.

Even in the Hunger Games, where the entire POINT is to kill everyone the Capitol still doesn't want anyone getting funny ideas about guns. I don't see that as just a coincidence. The fact of the matter is that guns are dangerous to oppressive governments and the Capitol knows that. What if the kid with the gun won and told other people how to use guns? (And for the record, no that's not as easy as the movies make it look.) They're scared of guns. They're scared of what the people will do if given the ability to resist. They're communists.

Media production and consumption are controlled by the Capitol

"A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer." - Vladimir Lenin

Leftists have always understood the power of the media, whether in their hands or the hands of their enemies. I wish I saved the notes I took for a paper on the effects of nationalism on the troops serving on the Eastern Front during World War II. The Capitol uses the media both to inform and to terrorize. Forcing people to watch the Hunger Games every night is an intentional reminder of the war they have lost. It is also a reminder that things will be worse if they rebel again. Snow states as much in his office. He uses the games to take hope away.

Media control is thought control and it's something that every Communist government has used. Lenin, yes, but also Ma, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, the list goes on. Control the media and you control the message. Control the message and you control belief. Control belief and you control the people. It's simple really. It's what the Capitol does. It's what Communists do.

The Peace Keepers are Ubiquitous

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." - Barack Obama

One of the defining characteristics of a fully developed Communist state is it's ability to react overwhelmingly to threats within its own borders. The media controls the mind, the national security apparatus controls the bodies. Whether it's the secret police ala the KGB or its forerunner the NKVD or tanks rolling on Tiananmen Square, a  hard left government must always have the means to crush an uprising should they lose control of any aspect of the society for one to develop.  The Peacekeepers are clearly that force. They're feared by the populace. They're never shown serving the public, but simply in keeping it in check. Would you call a Peacekeeper to help you find your lost child? Neither would I.

Oh, and let's talk about District Thirteen for a second. Don't they beat people up for the "crime" of over-eating? They're more Communist than the Communists. And who does Katniss execute at the end of the series?  President Coin of District Thirteen. The one who allows this to happen. So, we execute the Communist who is more Communist than the Communist and this is a book a rebellion against a rightist government? Huh?

So here's my question:

Why is it that an avowed leftist has written a book where the central government is controlled by leftists? Where food is withheld from people to enforce obedience and given to them in reward for government service ala the zeks in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago? Could it be because, even to an avowed leftist, a truly leftist government is the scariest thing she cold come up with? That her villains are ultimately the very thing she claims to support? I mean, how much proof do you need? When your own supporters think that you're the worst case scenario isn't it time to back up and evaluate what you're doing?

At the end of the day, I think that a work (series of works?) like this reveals the problems better than anything else in fiction could. Yes, there are real world examples of why this doesn't work. Some have happy endings, the death of Nicolae Ceaușescu being the most obvious example. Others still don't. North Korea is still imploding. China is still nominally Communist while working toward a free market-ish economy. It should be noted that the lives of the people are improving.

There is a disconnect here and it bothers me. I don't get how to get my head around the fact that a supposedly leftist individual can write a book that's all about a rebellion against an obviously leftist government and this is supposed to make sense. Now, don't get me wrong. I love the books. That's why I put the effort into A.) reading them and B.) writing about them. I just don't get it. Any help figuring this one out would be appreciated.

The books and movies of The Hunger Games series are available at the links below: