‘Let the Hunger Games begin’? Biden’s inauguration draws dystopian fiction comparisons as new president calls for ‘unity’

While pop star Lady Gaga helped to kick off Biden’s swearing-in on Wednesday afternoon with a performance of the national anthem, observers appeared more enthralled with her oversized broach. Netizens immediately likened the pin to the iconic ‘Mockingjay’ of Hunger Games fame – the symbol of the film’s fictitious rebellion against the despotic ‘Capitol.’

The uncanny resemblance was not lost on the film’s official Twitter handle, which joked “we’re missing one of our mockingjay pins, has anybody seen it?”

Though the singer earlier clarified that the pin is, in fact, a “dove carrying an olive branch,” that did little to stem the comparisons to the film – in which the ruling Capitol forces youths to fight to the death each year in a bloody battle royale, a punishment for a failed revolution by the movie’s 12 oppressed ‘districts.’

The similarities did not end with Gaga. During Biden’s inauguration address, he dubbed “unity” as the “beating heart” of American democracy, echoing a speech by the Hunger Games’ fictional President Coriolanus Snow, who dubbed the authoritarian Capitol the “beating heart” of the nation.

“The districts are the body. The Capitol is the beating heart. Your hard work feeds us, and in return we feed and protect you. But if you resist the system and starve yourselves, it is you who will bleed,” Snow says in the third installment of the film series as a warning against rebellion – also referred to as the “dark days” in the movie, perhaps not far off from Biden’s prediction of a “dark winter” amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The ‘Hunger Games’ parallels were not the only time life imitated art during Wednesday’s inauguration event, with netizens also finding likeness to franchises from ‘Star Wars’ to ‘Game of Thrones.’

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