Reality shows have gained extraordinary prominence on television, providing an instance of Baudrillard's concept of the hyperreal and standing at the basis of the plot of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. A product targeted at the youth, it is nevertheless very different from most of the texts addressed to this type of audience. The story describes an extreme reality show in which teenagers of both sexes must compete against one another to the point of death while the population watches and the political and media powers control them. The great success of the novels and their film adaptations, as well as the originality of a proposal with strong political connotations, explain the relevance and the sociological interest of this paper. With a theoretical-deductive approach, this text develops a critical reading of a product that is at the same time mainstream and unusual, establishing points of contact between the hyperreal and today's society. Thus, it can be affirmed that the simulacrum of dystopia/futuristic world in which the plot unravels constitutes a critique of the social, economic, and technological inequality that already exists in our world, and is offered to the audience as an element of critical reflection.
Hyper-real; Manipulation; Mass media; The Hunger Games.