In 1966 (the same year this columnist was born), Harry Harrison published a story called “Make Room! Make Room!” about rampant overpopulation. This became the basis for the classic 1973 movie “Soylent Green” starring Charlton Heston and the final performance of Edward G. Robinson.
The movie is about a nightmare dystopian New York City where overpopulation is out of control, homelessness is at a level to where people are just sleeping anywhere they can, resources are diminishing, the wealth gap between the haves and have-nots is obscene, the atmosphere is grossly humid, euthanasia is legal and encouraged, and the only thing keeping people going are these food wafers called “Soylent”, which are supposed to be a combination of soybeans and lentils.
The movie dealt with some issues which were unheard of in the day. Nobody back then really talked about the effects of climate change - a.k.a. the “greenhouse effect” - until this movie. Nobody really showed the effects of rampant overpopulation and runaway homelessness until this movie, save for perhaps one episode of the classic TV series “Star Trek”. Nobody really showed the depth of human degradation until this movie.
Our main character played by Heston is a police detective named Frank Thorn, but his investigations are budgeted. Frank is also really not an ethical cop, as he steals food from his crime victim’s apartment for himself. Food that costs a fortune and you can’t get from a regular store. Frank and his roommate Sol (played by Robinson) eat like kings for a few days while he “investigates” the murder of an executive of the Soylent Corporation, makers of the famed “Soylent” wafers which feed half the world. He also gets to have sex with the victim’s concubine, which is referred to as “furniture” for the duration of his “investigation”. He eventually finds the killer in the middle of a large protest event, which is resolved by police scooping people up like garbage with huge industrial shovels. The killer is crushed in one of these “scoops” along with an untold number of protesters.
We eventually learn the reason why this executive was murdered, even though the police had closed the case and ordered Frank off it after the killer was himself killed. Spoiler alert for those who never saw the movie.
The executive of the Soylent Corporation discovered that the company’s latest and most popular wafers, Soylent Green, was not made with undersea plankton as they had claimed. All plankton on the planet was long extinct at this point. The protein comes from a more overabundant supply on the planet. People. Hence the classic saying “Soylent Green is people!”
As a published writer of both fiction and science fiction, I have to say that this is not a “happy” movie to watch. It’s very disturbing. The level of degradation and misery all through the movie makes one feel depressed. The acting is a tad flat in places, and the scenery is too industrial for the “havs”, but the scope of the dystopian world that it presents is enough to give you pause. You don’t feel happy about this movie, but you do feel thankful that you’re not living in that kind of a world. At least... not yet.
But what if we will be living in it soon?
“Soylent Green” takes place in the year 2022, just a few months away from this article’s posting. While our real-world conditions are still nothing like those in the movie, one has to wonder if we really are just a few years away from that kind of existence.
Overpopulation is very much an issue in certain places around the world. It’s not just a matter of immigration as a certain faction would think it is. It’s also about available resources in any given area. Homes, food, available water. This writer has personally seen huge acres of land previously used for livestock being sold off, plowed over, and turned into housing units. Rural areas have been turning into suburban and even urban areas faster than local officials can keep up.
Speaking of resources, available water is something that is becoming a problem even in the United States. As comedian Bill Maher recently observed, half of America is drying up and the other half is drowning. And, yes, that is due to climate change, and it’s only going to get worse. That part of the movie is happening now. So what you’re going to see is more people leaving the places that don’t have the resources to those where they are in even some kind of supply.
Housing is a big issue. Yes, there are new houses being built, and in many cases they’re being bought even before they’re completed, but in a lot of instances they’re not being bought by families. They’re being bought by corporations. That goes more to the wealth gap that is growing wider and wider and it’s also pricing houses outside of the affordability of many families.
Supply of items is a serious problem in America and around the world. As it stands, freighters are standing outside ports in numbers so large you can see them from space. Between a global pandemic and workplace shortages and dock prices, it’s cheaper to have the ships out to sea. But that means goods are stuck there instead of going to stores and shelves where they are needed. Yeah, “buy American” can help, provided the items are made in America and not reliant on the stuff currently out in the ocean. But then we have a trucking issue as well, and you just can’t hire someone off the street and make them a truck driver. Just ask the folks in Great Britain, who are running out of gasoline because they don’t have drivers to transport it.
Shortages means price spikes. No, not at $130 for a small jar of jam like in the movie... at least not yet. But how long until then? We keep hearing that this supply chain issue is short-term, but how “short”? Because the longer that this supply shortage goes on, the more the prices will go up.
How about the human degradation? No, we are not scooping up protesters like garbage as the movie demonstrated, but we are getting close. Several states and cities have either passed or considered making it legal for drivers to run over protesters. Think back to the carnage that happened in Charlottesville in 2017 when a self-professed neo-Nazi intentionally drove his car into a crowd of protesters. Several states now make that kind of deliberate act legal.
Again, it’s only a matter of time before you see the police using scoops against protesters. Oh, not “all” protesters... only the ones the police hate. And, odds are, those scoops will come from the Pentagon as surplus military items.
The idea of regarding women as “furniture” is something that’s been working its way for years. Look at the so-called “trophy wife”. The woman that’s been there for her man in the early years is discarded when he “makes it” for someone younger, who basically serves as an arm accessory at events and personal concubine away from the cameras. Hell, for four years we had a certain family in the highest office in the country whose family members were seen more as accessories for their patriarch; useful for certain appearances but otherwise kept out-of-sight.
That brings us to the last part of the movie. The “Soylent Green” itself. And here this may just happen sooner than you think.
In 2007, scientists in the Creative Machine Lab at Columbia University came up with a 3-D printer for food. Previously they’ve been able to create simple desserts, but recently they expanded to include chicken, first pureed and then “printed” into shapes that can resemble chicken squares, no different than the wafters in the movie. It was then cooked using a variety of lasers to give the resemblance of grilling. Kentucky Fried Chicken is already working on creating and distributing 3-D printed chicken nuggets.
So my question is this: what stops them from just using pureed-and-printed chicken and calling it such?
We’ve all questioned or heard rumors about chicken strips or chicken nuggets or chicken patties being made with more than just chicken breast meat. Same with hot dogs and sausages. There is already plant-based fake chicken and fake sausage and fake beef on the store shelves. If all it takes is for the protein to be pureed and then printed, what stops some company from doing that to something else and then add that to the actual protein like chicken or sausage or beef? What if they add in something not chicken, puree and print it with the pureed chicken, and pass it off as chicken? Sure we can think that plant-based fake stuff, but what if it’s something else? Something more... human?
Would we know the difference? Would we want to know?
Don’t get me wrong, the introduction of “fake” proteins and the idea of incorporating that in with actual proteins as part of a 3-D printed substance is something that would be reasonable in the near future. It would go a long way to help with diminishing resources and an overgrowing populace. But it would just take an unethical corporate decision to go from that to “Soylent Green”.
Let’s get brutally honest here... “Soylent Green” should be regarded as the cautionary tale that it was intended to be with the problems that we face today in the real world. We can feel uneasy with the general malaise presented, with runaway corporations getting away with literal murder, and the human degradation to the point to where people are considered disposable, worthless, no more than “furniture”, and ultimately good only for reprocessing into food for the starving masses. The only thing that stops all of that from happening... is us making sure that it doesn’t.
Fifty years ago, when this movie first came out, we could laugh uneasily and delude ourselves into thinking that these things could never happen in our lifetime. Never. We could dismiss it as we would “Planet of the Apes” or “Logan’s Run”. Well, it’s about fifty years later. Look how close we are to us actually being there.
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