The Death and Life of the Total Work of Art – Henry van de Velde and the Legacy of a Modern Concept

Everyday life in this post-apocalyptic society is dominated by the elaborate rules of
court life. Accordingly, its members dress in remarkable costumes and veil their aspirations
in subtle rhetoric. This play of simulatio and dissimulatio serves as a means
to correspond to the dictator’s expectations, while simultaneously competing with
other courtiers in terms of social reputation. An important highlight for Panem is
the Hunger Games, an event in which the participants—the so-called tributes—
must fight to the death in an outdoor arena controlled by the Capitol, until only
one individual remains.
Moreover, this spectacle is captured in a television show hosted by a famous entertainer
and supplemented with documentation on the former games. All of this
occurs in the arena, which evokes the Roman Empire and its gladiator fights. Yet
different from the monumental arenas the Romans erected for panem et circenses,
Panem’s arenas have no specific architectural shape. Instead, they are made up of
mountains, woods, and deserts populated by dangerous animals and permanently
plagued by natural catastrophes.
While the tributes struggle to survive, the dictator and his team act as stage directors.
Through the use of hidden cameras, they are informed about events in the
arena; when the entertainment value of the games is threatened by a lack of action,
they also intervene—for example, when a day goes by without the death of at least
one of the tributes.
To prevent the show from such deadly boredom, dangerous animals are released
to hunt the remaining tributes, who are generally surrounded by a world solely
dedicated to killing them. Nevertheless, while the tributes are steadily confronted
with the regime’s perverse plans, they are also aware of being observed by a mass
audience expecting a spectacular setting, convincing actors, and dramatic action.
In this respect, there are some tributes who are more convincing than others: for
instance, Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of the story. She falls in love with Peeta,
one of her competitors, though one day he may possibly kill her. The audience is
enormously thrilled by this ambivalent relationship, and Katniss knows that the
popularity of her character could ultimately help her to survive. In short, acting,
entertaining, and performing become a question of death or life.
But what is the point here? Why start a discourse on the legacy of the total work
of art by referring to a novel that at first sight scarcely has anything to do with this
topic? Well, first of all because it once more reminds us that acting, more than
anything else, is indispensable for the maintenance of a regime. In The Hunger
Games, the regime’s decline begins with an unforeseen deviation from the games’
storyboard. Through an unprecedented act of provocation, Katniss forces the regime
to accept two winners instead of one. She and Peeta decide to commit suicide
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