why simply copying the hunger games doesn't work

when I first heard about The Hunger Games I wasn't actually interested in reading the book or watching the movie because I thought it would be a literal competition of who could be hungry for the longest and participants just wouldn't be given any food but then I learned that it's a tournament where teenagers are forced to kill each other and only one remains and is the winner and I thought wow actually that sounds super fun and interesting I was 15 it's a very exciting concept the death tournament you either win or you die it's extremely high stakes it's action it's fun and I love the Hunger Games I will praise that series until the day that I die hopefully not in a death tournament and a lot of other stories have tried to replicate the success of The Hunger Games by taking this death tournament Trope and running with it to varying degrees of success this video may or may not have been inspired by me recently reading a death tournament book that I was severely disappointed by um and so I wanted to do a little Deep dive into it and that's going to be this video a deep dive into the death tournament Trope where did it come from why do we love it so much how is it done well and aren't we all just filthy Capital people for enjoying it by the way if you hear screaming in the background of this video there's a Fair Ground going on all week pretty much right next to where I live I swear that's the reason and there's really nothing I can do about the sound so we're just going to pretend it's a set design audio set design for this video about death tournaments people screaming in the background great okay let us Begin by answering the question where does this Trope come from when I say death tournament I specifically mean a tournament where all the participants have to kill each other it's a fight to the death and the winner is the last man surviving and the official term for this Trope is actually the Battle Royale named after the 1919 book Battle Royale by kosun Takami which was made into a movie in 2000 Battle Royale by kosun Takami is a St opian story where youth delinquency is at its peak teenagers are no longer listening to their teachers at all and as punishment every year one group of middle schoolers one class of middle schoolers is chosen to go on a school trip to this deserted island this uninhabitable island where they are then forced to kill each other until one of them wins and this is as punishment M of the adults to the teenagers for being so unruly the title of this book has popularized the term battle royale the term battle royale has come to mean a fictional genre with a death tournament examples of fiction are the Hunger Games The Purge Ellis in Borderland squid game Danga and books that I recently read that are also quite popular is The Serpent and the wings of Knight popular romance fantasy um and Immortal longings a book by the bestselling author Chloe gong but you may also know the term Battle Royale from games because it has become an incredibly popular game genre where participants are all kind of thrown together in this Arena and they all have to kill each other you know in game and you win by being the last man standing examples being of course fortnite U but also some colge of Duty games and fall guys now I don't have a lot of experience if any experience with games like this but I heard that apparently in a lot of these Battle Royale games the map progressively gets smaller as the game goes on to kind of force more people together in the same area and I recently watched the Battle Royale movie and that is also something that exactly happens in the movie where the map progressively gets smaller so that the surviving teenagers are forced to kind of meet each other on the island also a little side note I know there's been like a lot of discussion about Susanne Collins plagiarizing Battle Royale for The Hunger Games because the concept is so similar also if you watch I haven't read the book again but if you watch the movie it's so similar to The Hunger Games in so many ways and I'm not really going to go into that discussion I just want to say that Susanne Collins claims that she had never heard of Battle Royale um before she published The Hunger Games but first do you also often sit behind your desk like a little Goblin I did for years and I have been looking for a way to make my home office situation better for so long so I'm super happy that this video is sponsored by flexi spot they aim to create affordable and high quality products I received the flexis spot Pro Plus standing desk E7 this is an excellent desk with adjustable height so you can turn it into a standing desk when I'm sitting down I can perfectly adjust the height of the desk so that my shoulders can relax and feel nice and then when I want to stand up because I've been sitting all day it's just one button press away I'm very impressed with how smooth the mechanism is and how well the buttons respond to the touch and the whole thing was genuinely super easy to assemble you can choose the Aesthetics of the hardware yourself and I chose a white frame with a light bamboo desktop the desk has a 30-day return policy and 15-year warranty so you can try it out with confidence flexis spot also has the more affordable standing desk E5 available and the basic standing desk E2 that you can get for $200 you can get your flexis spot E7 for the best price possible using this exclusive code and I will also leave a link in the description so check that out as well okay so now we know that the book Battle Royale has given the term battle royale its modern meaning of the death tournament fiction Trope kind of want to dive into the history of the Battle Royale koshu Takami did not make up the concept of Battle Royale it's an already existing concept from our history now when people think of real world examples of The Hunger Games or Battle Royale Style fights people often mention Gladiator fights maybe this is because of the saying pandm Ates that is popularized by The Hunger Games referring to this phrase that originated in Rome meaning bread and circuses the saying refers to how governments would use very superficial provisions and entertainment that being bread and circuses in ancient Rome to gain political approval in the Hunger Games this is what the Hunger Games it's self served as for the citizens it was the entertainment aside from being like punishment for the People The Hunger Games was also entertainment to distract the people especially the people in the capital from all the wealth inequality that's going on in the world of The Hunger Games and because of this like Latin saying I think people often think about Like Gladiator fights when they think of historical examples of hunger game style tournaments but I don't actually think that gladiator duels are an accurate comparison to this hunger game style Battle Royale cuz it's more like a duel you know it's usually Man versus man or Man versus animal instead of this freefor all that categorizes the Battle Royale instead the Battle Royale seems to have its origins in sports before it was known as a story Trope Battle Royale was a real term in wrestling and boxing there's actually an excerpt in the book Battle Royale about pro wrestling a character says with Battle Royale 10 or 20 wrestlers all jump into the ring and then you're free to attack anyone oneon-one or 10 against one it doesn't matter in any case the ones who fall lose they have to leave the ring then there's only one player left in the ring and he's the winner which which makes me believe that this is where the author of B Royale has the term B Royale from and maybe even got his idea so B Royale Sports matches have existed since the 18th century early versions being more like freefor all boxing matches they were usually public events to serve as entertainment for a very excited audience and they were very very popular for a few decades here's an example of an advertisements from 1743 in the amphitheater in Oxford Street that says there will be a Battle Royal between the noted Buck horse and seven or eight more and for a few decades this style of wrestling and boxing was very popular but then towards the end of the 18th century the popularity dwindled a bit as the British looked at the tradition and thought to themselves actually we are way more Posh than this this is way too dangerous for civilized Place such as the wonderful United Kingdom and so it moved overseas to the American colonies where the Battle Royale boxing matches took on a very different kind of history in the American colonies Battle Royale boxing matches were still popular but it was very specifically a type of boxing match where black men and boys would be paid to fight each other some context on the time period of these Battle Royal in the United States it was introduced in the 18th century where they were most popular among enslaved people then battle Royals became popular again During the Reconstruction to as late as the 20th century when black people in the US were no longer enslaved but the Jim Crow laws and segregation were still very present a PBS film about the Battle Royal beginnings of African-American boxer Jack Johnson describes the events as follows one of the most humiliating creations of the gim Crow era the Battle Royal a back room spectacle in which six or eight or 10 black boys often blindfolded were set to punching one another while drunken white men Jered them on the last one standing got the price usually a fist full of tossed coins these battle Royals were very popular on carnivals Fairgrounds festivals and they were kind of seen not as like a very professional boxing thing but more as like a comical event something to laugh at and they were often advertised specifically about the fact that this was black people fighting each other sometimes even having special seats reserved for white patrons in the audience in my research I found that there seems to be a narrative in some places that the black participants actually really enjoyed these fights um or that it was actually beneficial to them because some people have used it to establish their professional boxing careers and although this did happen like for example um the boxer Jack Johnson started out his career in these battle Royals let's not understate the humiliating nature of these kinds of um events Franklin Hughes writes in an article for the Jim Crow Museum at ferah State University most often the Battle Royal was a comedic mockery and provided the participants with little more than the opportunity to be laughed at and ridiculed this is all exemplified by the fact that sometimes the participants were blindfolded for no other reason than that it would I guess create more chaos and is therefore like more fun to watch descriptions of these boxing events include this is all from like advertisements and fly 's comical boxing bout with a comical exhibition of a Battle Royal between five black people who pummeled each other with large boxing gloves Battle Royal to set the fans in a cheery mood an hour full of fun wild swings hay makers uppercuts amusing ludicrous free fun for everybody so it's clear that during these events the participants were very much reduced to something to ridicule something to laugh at and because of that it's the audience members that position themselves as Superior as the ones that are laughing at the inferior people in the ring and I think this is a good example of how entertainment and like laughing and being laughed at is something that very often has very political underpinnings you know like who is the person being laughed at and who is the person laughing who is seen as inferior and who is seen as Superior in this specific example it was very clear that black people were still seen as inferior by white people who enjoyed laughing at them so that was the I think often forgotten history of the battle royal I think now when people think of Battle Royale they uh only think of the Japanese book and that like being the beginnings of it but I just thought it would be interesting and also important to share the other history that is behind this word and Trope and where the idea originally came from now of course originally the Battle Royal term whether referring to just like the friendly boxing matches in the UK or the very racist boxing matches in America they weren't to the death I didn't mention that I hope you all understood that like they weren't to the death it was just like until you fall and so you've like lost in boxing but this whole like to the death thing that is a very key aspect that kosun Tak me at it and that is how he really turned this term battle royale into what we recognize it as today the death tournament so are we all capital people when we enjoy a battle royale game or story or movie when we are watching The Hunger Games aren't we all basically just the capital people that are enjoying the entertainment of young people slaughtering each other when we enjoy stories with this Trope loving the tension and the action are we not exactly what Suzanne Collins is criticizing I do think it's important to of course note that it is fictional so we're not actually laughing at real people dying we're not actually forcing anyone to fight each other to the death but I do think it gives a lot of context to the Trope to know how these kind of battle Royals were used in the past to make a mockery of certain groups of people people who were deemed infer whether that is like black people but also when you think of like Gladiators you know normal Gladiators usually didn't die during Gladiator fights these like death fights between Gladiators were usually um for slaves and prisoners and like criminals those were the ones that were usually executed in the ring again because these people were deemed inferior and so was fun little entertainment to watch them die things like racism or class divisions really show when you start having a tournament where you laugh at the violence or death of others by the way don't get me wrong this video is not me trying to make the point that it's immoral to enjoy death tournament tropes not at all not at all I just think it's interesting how history shows that battle royal tournaments are often actually very political and a display of power it's a very important question question who is the one laughing and who is the one being laughed at and these kind of tournaments often exemplify the existing power dynamics in that Society whether that is racism or certain class Division and I think in order for a story to do the death tournament Trope well the story needs to be like aware of it and kind of use the death tournament to show these power dynamics that exist in the fictional world and you can very easily tell when a story has a death tournament just for funsies and like the cool action of it all but we'll get to uh what makes death tournaments work let's first go into why we actually enjoy this Trope so [Music] much I think the tournament part is very obvious it's just fun to watch a tournament like we love competitions I always feel like tournaments in fantasy books especially are just the fantasy version of sports like there's not usually like sports in fantasy novels so instead you have magical tournaments I think a magical tournament SL competition in a fantasy book scratches the same itch as like a sports Trope would in a contemporary book except in contemporary Sports stories of course the stakes aren't life or death unless you were the all for the game series always the exception so I think it makes sense why we like tournaments in books uh but what about the Death part the Death part is kind of new introduced by Battle Royale the book popularized by The Hunger Games and now a pretty common fantasy Trope in a Barnes & Noble article by Eric Smith recommending books with dangerous games Smith says they're thrilling and exciting and shows what happens in the face of a terrifying absolute power I really think the biggest difference between a normal tournament and a death tournament it it's really just the tension like you could die like the stakes are pretty high here and it's not just because only one Survivor wins there's this really big risk that the main character like the character that you're following doesn't make it but also it's the fact that your main character is forced to kill tension doesn't just come from the risk of a character getting killed it's seeing a character having to kill other people that also immediately adds tension so I think like death tournaments are like free tension and Stakes for your story also because there's only one winner you might know that your main character is probably going to make it cuz of course they're the main character but what about their allies what about the friends that they're making what about the person they might be falling in love with romance romance so many romance options you know all death tournament stories have that what I would like to call um how will they both survive moment either the love interest is going to die which is not fun or you have to ask yourself wait how are they both going to survive this it's free Stakes intention but yeah you can very clearly tell when an author just uses the death torn for the free stakes and tension um because then the rest of the story tends to kind of fall apart so let's talk about that now what are some examples of death tournament that I think are very well done and how do they [Music] fail there's kind of two aspects where I think a lot of death tournament stories go wrong the first one is you need to have a really really really good answer to the question why on Earth would anyone willingly participate in a death tournament the characters really need to be very very desperate in order to willingly put themselves in a position where they not only highly risk getting killed they also have to kill other people I think this is why good examples of death tournaments often have characters just being forced into the tournament like in The Hunger Games the oppressive government forces people from the districts to enter The Hunger Games as a punishment for a revolution in the past in Battle Royale the adults Force middle schoolers into this death tournament as punishment for all the youth delinquency and the insubordination towards teachers so the characters aren't voluntarily joining the tournament instead there's usually some kind of aoral figure that has a good reason some kind of motivation for forcing people to kill each other some good examples of stories where the characters are not forced into this tournament uh the first one is actually also the Hunger Games because of course Katniss everine our main character famously says I volunteer as tribute and she has a very strong motive for this and that is to save her sister um but very importantly this is an event that is very very very rare you know the rest of the characters are forced into this tournament cuz it's it's pretty difficult I think to get you know enough participants that are willingly going to join a tournament like this the whole volunteering Works in The Hunger Games because it's just Katniss who does it you know it's like a rare thing and it shows that she's different she really cares another good example is actually squid game in which their participants are forced into to this deadly game free-for-all game where if you win you get a lot of money the thing about squid game is that the fact that people are going to die is kind of vague you know when people are invited into this game they don't know a lot about it they're usually not aware that people are actually going to die if they lose so they're more likely to to join because they don't actually know that it's a death tournament but then when the main character finds out that people die or when all of the characters find out that people die they still stay there most of the people that are participating are in very very big debt or have very strong financial problems and this kind of fits with the whole point of the show which was to show how desperate people get uh when they are in depth and how hopess life can seem when you have financial troubles to the point that you are willing to to put yourself in a ridiculous situation like a death tournament just for the chance of getting some money you're even willing to become a killer now an example of a bad a book that does this badly this is just I just want to make this video cuz I want to rant about this book we have here Immortal longings by Chloe gong it is a fantasy book where people have the ability to jump between bodies so they can like take over other people's bodies and then like use that body for themselves and then jump back into their own body and there is another death tournament organized by the like evil King that doesn't care about his civilians people fight each other kill each other and if you win you get a wish from the king is it a wish or just a lot of money anyway you get something from the King he gives you something now one of our main characters Kella joins this tournament and her motivation for this is as follows she wants to kill the king because she hates him and he doesn't properly care for the citizens he doesn't care about these citizens he keeps them poor just lets them die out on the street and she hates them for it so she wants to kill the king okay motivation clear right there but because the winner of the death tournament gets close to the king during like the winner ceremony she wants to win the death tournament so she can like have a chance at killing him which means that kala is willing to risk dying she's willing to kill all these other dozens of participants just to get close to the king during the winning ceremony surely there's another way I feel like this is in fact not the path of least resistance also the reason that she wants to kill the king is because he treats his citizens poorly so kala is willing to kill multiple citizens during this tournament so she can punish the king for not caring about the citizens again I feel like there are other ways another thing that happens in this book is that as a participant you can be disqualified if you lose your participation bracelet uh so at some point someone tries to K K kala by stealing her participation bracelet instead of killing her so that she will be disqualified after 24 hours to which I immediately thought why doesn't everyone do that why does everyone choose so easily to just kill when they could also steal each other's bracelets one of my pep Peeves in stories is when authors Overlook the extreme hurdle of killing others when authors just completely understate how big of a deal it is to choose to start killing as a person and just all of the characters in the fantasy story are just suddenly so eager to kill and I'm like I feel like you should maybe explore this a little bit more of course I cannot read the author's mind but it definitely feels like the author is just putting these characters in a death tournament situation just just because it's cool just for the free stakes and tension and without actually understanding the political and societal implications of a death tournament which kind of brings me to the second thing of what makes for a good death tournament and that is that the death tournament should say something about the world whether that is the fictional world that the author has created or as like a metaphor for our world this is um a quote that I found to be honest on like a random forum from writers trying to write death tournaments great source but I just really agreed with the what this user swamp said I think a good death game often reflects a very real conflict Battle Royale was about Cutthroat Academia and the horrible effects on young people squid game shows the desperation that can leave you in where even probable death is worth just a chance at getting away from it good examples of how death tournaments say something about the world again is The Hunger Games I just love the Hunger Games I'm Al always going to talk about The Hunger Games in The Hunger Games The Hunger Games itself say something about this fictional World it just shows the dynamic between the capital all these rich people in the capital versus the workers in the district that nobody cares about but it's also in many different ways a metaphor for our society it shows how workers are pitted against each other making each other their enemy instead of their boss or their author author why can't I say this word authorial figure authorial figure great the people of the districts are pitted against each other so they make each other into enemies instead of seeing the real enemy which is the capital just like how workers can be pitted against each other so they don't um unionize basically Susan Collins was also very inspired by reality TV talking about how Spectators often don't care about the wellbeing of the people in the reality TV shows as long as it's entertaining The Hunger Games death tournament has very very clear messages about our society and also builds the world of The Hunger Games another good example in my opinion maybe controversial is actually the serpents and the wings of KN this is like a fantasy romance book and I know fantasy romance is often kind of looked down upon as not having great world building or anything and I'm not saying that this book is like a masterpiece it's really not but I do think well first of all it's just really fun it's really fun book but I think the death tournament in this book also works really well because of the World building in this book it doesn't have any kind of political message it's very clearly just kind of there for the funsies and the stakes and the tension but it works because of the World building and I'll explain so in the world of The Serpent and the wings of night we follow the only human girl that lives among this country of vampires and the realm is literally ruled by the goddess of death who the vampires all worship very devoutly and there is this Tournament being organized where all of the vampires go against each other in Trials usually killing each other and the one winner will win a wish from this goddess this death ornament very clearly says a lot about the world not only are we dealing with vampires they like a good dangerous fight a little bit more than the average human they're not afraid to kill they have a completely different set of morals and rules and in this world this death tournament is also shown to an audience of people who are like enjoying watching it because you know they're vampires and they just enjoy watching vampires kill each other they enjoy the Bloodshed and secondly the country literally worships the goddess of death I feel like a tournament to the death kind of fits that Vibe you know it kind of fits it shows how these vampires worship literal death and I'm going to give another bad example in my opinion from this book Immortal longings by K gong um so I said that in this book The Magic system surrounds body jumping so people can like jump take over someone else's body which is technically illegal but people do it all the time especially during this death tournament because you know if someone's trying to kill you you just jump into someone else's body and fight with that body so that when someone kills you they don't actually kill your body they you they just killed someone else super useful it means that people who cannot jump are constantly running the risk of getting jumped into having their bodies displaced or worse having their bodies being used in violent duels and potentially even being killed and throughout the book the main characters are constantly using the bodies of other random nameless characters to fight and run around in which I think creates a very clear power dynamic between people who can jump and people who don't jump which is something that would be wonderful to reflect in this death tournament but just doesn't really happen so the death tournament takes place not in like an arena or an island or a theater but just in the city among all the other citizens it just happens on the streets which means that you have this like group of like what 30 50 100 I don't know a bunch of people that are actively trying to kill each other that are having violent fights among citizens and they're also constantly jumping into random citizens bodies to try to kill each other which means they there are a lot of Civilian casualties and yet we are supposed to believe this tournament is great entertainment and that people love watching it on the TV like when I talked about this book uh with my patreon book club we were all kind of like if I lived there I would be terrified I wouldn't enjoy watching that tournament I would live in constant fear of going out outside because some of the participants of the tournament could jump into my body and use it to get into a deadly fight like that doesn't sound like something I would find fun and entertaining at all so you have these participants that have willingly joined this tournament in which they are happily killing off civilians disrupting the city and yet we're supposed to believe that the civilians are enjoying watching this tournament for entertainment I feel like the author kind of lacked understanding of the power Dynamic that this creates between these two groups and the power Dynamic that are usually there when you have someone watching someone else for entertainment as we talked about at the beginning and this is why I think good death tournament stories have something to say something to say about the World building something to say about the real world some kind of message not because I think every story needs a message I think there are plenty of great stories who don't have some kind of message but because if you're writing a story where people are willingly joining a fight to the death or forced into a fight to the death there needs to be some good explanation for that the author needs to show understanding for what it means to their world if one group of people likes to watch another group of people kill each other for sports like how the boxing battle Royals in America showed how black people were still seen as inferior by white people the Gladiator duels where prisoners and slaves were pitted against animals for the enjoyment of Spectators as an execution method said something about how prisoners and slaves were seen as inferior in ancient Rome and I think that's what makes for a good death tournament if the author understands that you can't just use it as free stakes and stanion but that a story Trope like that comes with some baggage it comes with some need for understanding what kind of world you need to create for a death tournament to exist in it that was my ramble I hope you enjoyed my ramble if there is any other Trope you would like me to do a deep dive on I've done the not likee other girls Trope I've done the fake dating Trope I've done the enemy still lovers Trope if there's any other Tres that you think could make for an interesting deep dive please do let me know in the comments and if you want to make sure you don't miss the next one and want to see more videos about books uh do subscribe don't forget to use this exclusive code to buy the flexing spot E7 now for the best price a big thank you to all of my patreons for supporting me with a very special shout out to all of my Elite patreon members whose names you see here if you join my patreon you get access to my book club and this month we are reading a study in drowning by Ava Reed which I am so so excited about so I will also leave that in the description if you want to join that um that being said I hope that you enjoyed this video I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I will see you soon with another video very soon next week all right [Music] goodbye [Music] for

Channel: The Book Leo

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Id: iospJR_FyRs

Length: 37min 43sec (2263 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2023