Is 'Soylent Green' our future?

[riverdeep]

Or some off-shoot of it? Finally got around to watching this last night after years of hearing about it. Except for the typically hack acting by Heston, it was a decent enough movie. The concept was better than the execution, overall.

And what a concept. To summarize, (SPOILERS-avoid reading this paragraph if you don't want to know) it's the year 2022, the world is severely overpopulated, cities are nothing more than dust bowls, no vegetation. No one is allowed out of these cities. The farms that exist are guarded heavily. New York city, once one of the wealthiest in the world, now at 40 million, has most of it's citizens living a third-world existence, sleeping in stairwells, on cots in a shelter if they're lucky. To survive, they eat synthetic products from corporations. People of a certain age no longer remember 'real food'. There are in this world, like ours, the super-wealthy, who can still obtain real food. A jar of strawberry jam costs $150 dollars (and that's imagined in 1973, when the movie was made). A small cut of beef is a luxury that even the rich find difficult to obtain. Into this world comes Heston's character, who makes a discovery about a new variety of Soylent product, Soylent Green-a big hit with the masses. The oceans are now dying, the farms are dying, and well, there are a lot of people.

The scenes with the characters enjoying things we now take for granted were the ones that resonated most highly with me. To look out at a field and see green fields and rivers. To take a hot shower with soap. To eat fresh food. Edward G. Robinson's character asks achingly, "How could we have let this go", or something to that effect. It was his last film.

BTW, if you have a Netflix account and Internet Explorer, this is one of the movies you watch instantly, on your computer.

[fenriswolf]

1. SOYLENT GREEN

IS MADE OUT OF PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Itchinjim]

8. Mmmm, people....

[NMMNG]

2. Probably

In more ways than one. Actually I envision a combination of Soylent Green and Logan's Run. But maybe I'm just too cynical after this nasty primary cycle.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Aren't we already eating our own on this board?

[fed-up]

4. I still have my copy :), next read "The Sheep Look UP" by John Brunner nt

[riverdeep]

10. I looked up the summary of the book.

Kind of amazing how much we actually knew back then (1972, in this case). What would the world look like today if we had acted on it?

"Part of a trilogy (which includes Shockwave Rider and Stand on Zanzibar), Brunner's The Sheep Look Up paints a picture of a not-so-distant future, when our water, food, and air have been polluted as a consequence of corporate greed. Where a disingenuous U.S. government has buckled under the weight of industrial mandates, waging wars on the Third World for scarce resources and protecting big business through cover-ups, propaganda, and a corrupt legal system. Where a chasm has emerged to separate the rich, healthy, and privileged from the poor, sick, and oppressed. Where those with the courage to stand up for justice and equality are labeled as traitors. In other words, it is a bit too close for comfort."

http://reconstruction.eserver.org/BReviews/revSheep.htm

[fed-up]

11. if you buy the reprint edition in 2002? it has a forward by David Brin on GE foods

other wise you can pick up cheap copies for 99 cents online at Amazon or half.com


My sister begged me to read it when I first started getting food allergies about 5 years ago. I looked in used bookstores for a year and couldn't find one locally, so I finally broke down and bought a new copy.

An excellent read! And he was so spot on!

[Ian David]

5. Absolutely. Our future is either Soylent Green, The Stand, or A Boy and His Dog.

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The Stand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand

A Boy and His Dog
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_and_His_Dog

[Homer12]

6. It's! People!!!! Soylent green is People!!!

Heston is not a great actor but how did heet inot some great sci-fi classsics?

[riverdeep]

9. Yeah, he was.

But I still find his acting borderline ludicrous. It makes me wonder how much better the films could've been with someone who could actually act.

[johnfunk]

7. Soylent RED: Made from 100% Republicans!

WARNING: Soylent Red™ may contain unsafe levels of mercury, lead, PCBs, dioxin, petrochemicals and petrochemical by-products, paté de fois-gras, toxic mold and Ronald Reagan Memorial Purple Kool-Aid.

[warren pease]

12. I'm OK with it as long as we eat the rich first. n/t