Politics & Perspective
‘If We Burn, You Burn With Us!’
The Question of Belonging and End Purpose
This article’s titular idiomatic cry by the character Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence, in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I, is emblematic in the 2014 movie of the pain and rage of witnessing relentless authoritative strikes against the marginalized; this time, airstrikes, that destroy by fire a hospital of innocent, suppressed civilians. It is the insensitivity to the value of life deemed unequal by The Capitol and their indiscriminate killing that inspires this anguishing utterance.
It rallies inspirational revolt by the weaker and minorities as their metaphoric expression of the same method by which the oppressors choose to destroy the oppressed; by the affliction of incendiary scorching and the callous prolonged annihilation by incineration, the oppressed shall set ablaze and burn down everything as well such that the oppressors are brought down along with the oppressed and likewise be torched by their oppressors’ own scourge.
Film & Fact
It is as powerful and nonfictional a concept for a movement in the movies as it is in current world events from the past year in Hong Kong to now in the U.S. after the brutal murder of George Floyd by police in…
