Was I Not Supposed To Watch The Hunger Games?

Chris Read
March 23, 2012

Chris Read

From: Ottawa, Canada
Web: http://canadiandad.com
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It never occurred to me as I sat down in my seat for The Hunger Games at midnight last night, that they did not make this movie for my demographic. My demographic, as it were, is old man. I’m 33. No, that realization came after I checked my email the day after but we’ll get to that.

You see, I didn’t set out to go see The Hunger Games last night. I was at work, pulling the overnight shift, when I heard a radio station doing a contest for tickets to the premiere later that night. I am addicted to winning stuff, so I entered. I didn’t win any tickets but the DJ said that if any of the winners didn’t show, that I could have the tickets.

And Blah, Blah, Blah, we were watching the movie. We were seated in between two sets of babbling, sniffling, crying, giggling teenage girls, which isn’t as cute as it sounds. Still, it’s normal for two 30 something, heterosexual guys to be there together, right?

The movie itself was pretty good. The actor who played the male lead was a little weak in the serious moments and there were about nine times I counted that I wanted to yell “Run Bitch, Run!!!” to the female lead, but overall it was a good flick. Oh yeah, and the movie is about young children bludgeoning each other but that’s neither here nor there.

I certainly never felt out of place or as if I didn’t belong. You can imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to an email from a National Radio show, asking if I would come in to do a review of the movie “from a parent’s perspective”…I guess my tweets were having their intended effect as that’s how they tracked me down.

There would be two of us on the panel, myself and a 16 year old girl (that’s half my age by the way!). THIS was about the moment I realized that not only was I getting old, but that we were probably the creepy, weird, old guys in the theater that night.

It was fun, I’d never done radio before so I was pumped about it. The 16 year old got questions about the characters and the atmosphere with her friends. She was nervous for her first live event, which I found endearing, and she did great. My questions were geared more towards how I felt being the only dinosaur at a movie made for teens and the emotions I felt as a Dad.

I was honest in that I didn’t know it was for teens and thought, if anything, it should be rated a little higher than it was. I mean, of the many graphic scenes I remember (I’m old, I forgot a bit), one boy snaps another boys neck with no turning away of the camera. It was a shocking sight and one that actually stunned me a bit as it happened. I also spoke of my new found lack of testosterone since having kids. I admitted to crying in Real Steel (robot boxing movie…) and tearing up while reading the book to Hunger Games, as it’s so much more detailed and disturbing for a parent to read.

I guess in the end, I was the old guy at the movie that night. In the 24 hours since the movie ended, I’ve gone through a number of emotions and none of them were from the actual movie. I was happy about getting asked to do the radio show, sad about the reason they wanted me, depressed about being old, excited about being on air (and getting some blog plugs, haha I’m a ninja) and finally, acceptance.

That’s right, I accepted the fact that I am getting older. I even accepted that I may look out of place in certain places (like teen movies). The main thing I realized through all this, is that I have a voice. No matter what your age is, people always want to hear about things from different angles and this is the sort of stuff that keeps me writing.

I am getting old though, I still have nightmares about my kids getting thrown into a ring to fight to the death for other people’s pleasure. When you say the premise out loud, it’s kind of messed up, right??

Cheers!

Chris Read is the owner and writer of the blog Canadian Dad. Please feel free to stop by to say hi and/or follow on Twitter or Facebook

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