I recently watched the movie Soylent Green. It was made in 1973 (“based on” a 1966 novel) and set in 2022.
The movie was not nearly as shocking as I'd been made to think it would be. Which doesn't say good things about how dystopian the world has been turning since the early '70s, or how callous I may be.
It seems to me that the core problem in the movie is a truth-in-labeling issue. Turning a massive glut of corpses into food seems a good use of resources (protein) under the fictional overpopulation scenario depicted in the movie.
I can't imagine that the people of that world- seeing what they have become accustomed to tolerating- would really have that big an issue eating the processed remains of their fellow humans.
Maybe Thorn was acting like it was a big deal, but no one else cared. That is where the movie ended, after all. He screamed the truth, the cameras shut off, and people shrugged and went on about their miserable lives, with bigger problems to worry about.
Come to think of it, that feels like the response to most uncomfortable truths about government and lost liberty that I feel people should care about.
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I remember watching "Soylent Green" in the 70s and having much the same reaction. Even then I was dubious about the dystopian futures being predicted. I had also read "Stranger in a Strange Land" by then, so the notion of cannibalism wasn't quite as shocking an idea as it might have been. And honestly, I think Heston's freak-out at the end was the most memorable thing about the film.
ReplyDeleteI love the reference to it in a "Futurama" episode (Fry & the Slurm Factory):
Fry: What if the secret ingredient is... people!?
Leela: Oh, there's already a soda like that. Soylent Cola.
Fry: Oh, how is it?
Leela: It varies from person to person.