Milking cash cows for insights : the sociopolitical implications of Shingeki no kyojin and The hunger games' dystopian fantasies

Abstract

The juxtaposition of the two tremendously popular dystopian fantasies –Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy (HGt, 2008-2010) and Hajime Isayama’s Shingeki no Kyojin (SnK, 2013) –is an attempt to throw light on the current sociopolitical reality under neoliberalism. The two texts’ treatment of as well as possible influence on such a reality would be explored. The popularity of HGt and SnK which in some respects follow tired paradigms concerning societal ills and desirable change could point to the existence of certain common blind spots existing in society and the extent to which the neoliberalregime’spropaganda effort succeeds in fostering docility among its subjects. The texts, multi-faceted in nature,would also be studied in terms of their subversive potential. A comparative textual and visual analysis of the two would be conducted to unravel the contradictory forces at work. Their implications and possible impactor the lack thereof within the wider sociopolitical context would be examined alongside critical and cultural theories by scholars interrogating the workings of the neo-liberal order, namely Daniel Singer, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and so forth.