Acting until it's Reality

     In the Hunger Games, it's made clear to us throughout the entire series that, while in the Games, Katniss, Peeta, and presumably all the tributes are told to act a certain way to curry favor from the audience- but, to the audience, everything they see they think is completely true. So what happens when the Games are over? All winning tributes are followed by cameras for the rest of their lives, so how can they stop pretending? The answer is, they can't. The lie that's given to them to save their life becomes their life, because what other choice do they have? To the audience of the Hunger Games, the tributes become friends, heroes to them- if it was found out that they lied, there would be outrage.
     This runs parallel to today's reality television. It's the same thing, really- think of shows like Survival, Wipeout- we like to think that the Hunger Games are a sick perversion of today's television, but we already watch people eat bugs and get hurt! It's really a very small leap to watching people kill each other. And that's acting too, really- it's a known fact that televised wrestling is all acting. We like to think that we're above seeing people kill each other and fake things about themselves, but just look at reality televison. We're really not.
      To add, the main thing I'm thinking off when I post this is Katniss faking her relationship with Peeta. In the end, before Katniss goes on an interview with Peeta, Haymitch hurriedly tells her that "Your only defense can be you were so madly in love you weren't responsible for your actions." That's where she realized that the acts she put on won't end once she's out of the Games- they'll go on until she learns to live them. Because the capitol audience loves their heros, and the heroes have to play to the audience.