You may have heard of this slightly anticipated film, The Hunger Games, is opening this weekend. A significant portion of the youth group here will likely be falling asleep in their Friday classes as they are heading to the midnight showing.
Now, I am not that crazy, especially as I am still getting over a very nasty bug and have the Michigan Catholic Young Adult Conference Friday and Saturday. However, I will be going to see it on Monday afternoon (me, Imax, and a tub of popcorn - it's a date).
The books offer countless points for discussion. Accordingly, it didn't take much for the teens to convince me of the need to use the trilogy as the texts for the April, May, and June book club discussions.
For those that love history and want to draw parallels to the Roman Empire and Christ's teaching you can compare Panem to Rome. The Games to the Coliseum. The pull of the worldly illusion to the call to love of Christ.
For those that wish to focus on relationships (afterall, we work with teens), you can spend hours discussing the main characters as friends, families, strangers who become surrogate sisters, strangers who support, strangers who destroy, and strangers who become enemies.
For those that have a social justice bent, there is plenty to examine through the lens of Catholic Social teaching. The value of life, the idea of Common Good, preferential option for the poor, rights of workers.
There is just so much. I hope that the movies end up being well enough done that we can use them in youth ministry. While there are the issues of violence to address, I believe The Hunger Games trilogy offer some unique opportunities of discussion and reflection with the youth.
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