Hunger Games x Frames of War
Material Girls
Rehak Hannah
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2025
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're back from our summer break with an episode about The Hunger Games. Heads up that this episode connects the fictional world of Panem to real-world issues of representation and human rights, drawing parallels between the text and the genocide in Gaza. In this conversation, Hannah and Marcelle dig into representations of violence, resistance movements, and the normalization of child death. They then explore how Suzanne Collins' dystopian series engages with the concept of "grievability" and they consider The Hunger Games' immersive marketing campaigns that cemented the work as a mainstream cultural phenomenon.
To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team! Thanks again to all of you who have already made the leap to join us there!
***
Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.
*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both. Materialist critique is interested in the question of why a particular cultural work or practice emerged at a particular moment.
Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Thinking you've made a mistake with your uni choice? |
| 0:02.0 | Maybe you've changed your mind about those big lecture halls and that theory-heavy course. It's not too late to choose a practically focused law degree that gets you career ready. Switching through clearing isn't settling for second best. It's giving you more opportunities to find your perfect match. At the University of Law, you'll benefit from more academic coaching, more hands-on learning, and more tailored support |
| 0:20.9 | to achieve your ambitions. |
| 0:22.4 | Our dedicated clearing team are ready to match you to the right law course today. |
| 0:26.0 | Apply to the University of Law through Clearing. |
| 0:28.0 | Your successful career in law starts here. |
| 0:32.5 | Oh, oh, oh. Oh I need a new mind |
| 0:49.3 | I need a new brain |
| 0:50.3 | I want to take a ride on a mini train. You can have it all at the show me. |
| 1:02.5 | Hello and welcome to Material Girls, a pop culture podcast that uses critical theory to understand the zeitgeist. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm Marcel Cosman. |
| 1:11.5 | And I'm Hannah McGregor. |
| 1:13.2 | And, okay, Marcel, we are talking today about a hugely zeitgeist-y, like, kind of book and movie series. |
| 1:22.3 | Is it Harry Potter? |
| 1:24.8 | It might as well be. |
| 1:26.2 | It's The Hunger Games. |
| 1:27.4 | Might as well be in terms of scope. Yeah. Amazingly, |
| 1:31.3 | we've never talked about the Hunger Games before. This feels almost surprising, right? I mean, |
| 1:36.7 | I believe you, but I don't believe you. Surely we've talked about it. I mean, probably in passing, |
| 1:41.3 | but like never with any real focus. So I wanted to just ask, like, what's your relationship to The Hunger Games? You read these books? You seen these movies? What do you think? Yeah, both, both. You know, I like to go to movies knowing nothing, right? So it's like, oh, there's a movie playing and I don't have anything to do, so I shall go to this movie. I wonder if it's good. |
| 2:02.1 | So you hadn't read the books before you saw the first movie? You went in totally like... |
| 2:06.1 | I went in totally... Tunger games. Free of expectations. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rehak Hannah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Rehak Hannah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.