Paper Monitor
12:32 UK time, Tuesday, 27 March 2012
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Paper Monitor tried to duck and dodge The Hunger Games hype. Just another Twilight-esque saga with a dewy-eyed lead and a noble hunk for hormonal 13-year-olds, right?
But today's headline in the Daily Mail merited a second look - "". Guts and gore in the tween world? Paper Monitor read on, blaming the Roman "bread and circuses" syndrome.
It is set to rival Harry Potter and eclipse Twilight as the must-see teen franchise. But with blood-curdling scenes that show children as young as 12 being skewered with spears, parents are questioning whether The Hunger Games is suitable viewing for the whole family.Parents trying to steer clear of such savagery on family night might tune into Britain's Got Talent or The Voice, for a tame, inspirational evening.
But for The Independent's Harriet Walker, the "" of The Hunger Games is more a healthy dose of reality than an indulgence of savage instincts.
"I'm not being facetious when I say I'm relieved that teenagers have ditched the vampires and wizards in favour of something a little more realistic," she writes.
"The premise - a futuristic totalitarian state asserts its strength by recruiting 24 children every year to fight to the death on telly - may seem far-fetched, melodramatic, even overly bloodthirsty, but it parallels the modern adolescent existence in a way that makes old farts like me only too glad to have narrowly escaped growing up in the internet age."
Not so fast, says The Guardian's Tanya Gold, who claims the Hunger Games is really . Gold's not referring to the eardrum-cracking warbling of the casting call episodes, either. Cruel judges and viewers on a power trip wreak emotional havoc on "broken" contestants, she says.
"Call it a God complex or Judy Garland Syndrome, but our hunger for the emotional violence of reality TV is unsated," she writes.
The 
