The Future of Food

The first film I will analyze is Soylent Green from 1973. In the world of Soylent Green, or Earth in the year 2022, the streets are crowded and the environment is almost totally destroyed. The world is in an awful state, and because of this, it has become near impossible to find food. The population lives off of "Soylent," a large corporation's food products, like the meat substitute, "Soylent Green." What the population does not know is that Soylent Green is actually made out of people.   

What I have just typed above is all I knew about the movie before I watched it for the first time today (I know what you're thinking, "why is he analyzing a film he has only seen once?") The reason I chose this movie is because of old stories my father used to tell me about it. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to watch it as it is a fantastic fit for the topic. I decided to watch the film from the comfort of my own bed, as I was sick today and didn't want to leave my room. I also decided to snack on some all natural basil turkey jerky. While it isn't the best jerky, it provided a sufficiently salty replacement of popcorn, of which I had none.

The film opens with a short clip of American society throughout the ages. It starts from the times of The Pilgrims, and works its way to the Industrial Era, to corporate America, and beyond to the world of Soylent Green. The clip is quite startling as it depicts the world we live in today as the step before the dystopian world being chronicled. Usually when I think about the future, I think about a world hundreds of years out, with no real resemblance to the Earth I live on right now. The year 2022 is less than 50 years from the date of production. The writers obviously thought this future state was imminent.

The words "New York City, Population 40,000,000" grace the screen with a smoggy neighborhood background (Fleisher). A voice starts talking, presumably one from the Soylent company, advertising the different types of Soylent. The city is in shambles; buildings are dilapidated and people are everywhere. Within the first couple minutes of the film, I noticed that all the frames have a strange green tint to them. This green is a symbol of pollution, but also can be paralleled with the Soylent Green that everyone is eating. The Soylent Green is a constant reminder of the state of the world. Another interesting piece of symbolism with the color green is its common connotation with life and vegetation. In Soylent Green, the color connotes pollution, destruction, and lack of vegetation.

The movie focuses around a detective, Thorn, and his scholar (his sidekick who does all the research for his cases), Sol. Thorn is investigating the death of a rich man, who he believes to have been associated with Soylent. Thorn is a flawed hero and the director does a good job at humanizing him to paint a better picture of the city. When Thorn investigates the rich man's house, the first thing he does is raid the refrigerator. I love that the director chose to do this; it really shows how important food is in 2022. Although Thorn is one of the only people in New York with a steady job, he still can't afford anything other than Soylent. Real food is so significant to him, he contradicts his lawful nature to steal it. The significance of real food is best shown the following 5 minute scene of Thorn and Sol enjoying the stolen food. There is no dialogue, just 5 minutes of them eating common food that I could find in my dorm refrigerator right now. At times they are crying, overwhelmed by the taste of real food. This message is powerful and caused me to pause the movie and contemplate how readily available food is to me.

While this scene offers an in depth glimpse of two individuals, there are a couple key scenes that offer commentary on the masses' struggle with food and hunger. The first scene is a trip to a nearby church that Thorn visits with a lead that someone there might know something about the murder. People are sprawled out everywhere; Thorn must watch where he steps as to not hurt those staying at the church. In a time of hardship, people turn to religion. I found it interesting that Soylent Green puts religion on such a high pedestal in the future. Right now in the present, the world seems to be turning away from conservative religion as science is, for many, providing explanation for what they used to associate with faith. In this dystopia, science has been proven wrong; science ultimately led to destruction. The masses look to God for sustenance (food) and meaning, but as portrayed by the exhausted, overwhelmed priest, God is absent and the church too looks to be controlled by science; the church relies on Soylent to feed the hungry and dying. Instead of the body of Christ, it's the body of Soylent; the body of friends and family, and no one is getting to heaven with that.   

The other important scene that depicts the hunger struggle of the general population is at the Soylent exchange where only a couple people get Soylent, because of an apparent lack of supply. Everyone mobs and riot men have to keep them in check. Eventually, back hoes come out of nowhere and start storming the mobs of people, running them over and picking them up like a garbage truck picks up trash. This scene is pretty sickening to watch as the desperation in the eyes of the people is quite frightening. Why can't they give everyone food and work together.

The answer is simple: Corporate America gone crazy. All of the people associated with the murder of the rich man have something to do with Soylent. The rich man had figured out that Soylent was made of people and Soylent took him out, and eventually go after Thorn for his work trying to expose Soylent. Even the governor is in on it; Soylent is worth a lot of money, so company secrets will be kept at all costs. Today this is apparent (on a smaller, but still noteworthy scale) with many companies, especially food companies like Monsanto, a large corn production company. With all the lobbyists and insiders that Monsanto has in the government, things often gets swept under the rug for the sake of the company. If the world got to a state where corn was the only large source of food, Monsanto could control the world, much like Soylent. The writers are speaking out against large corporations, especially ones dealing with food, and their government influence.

The movie ends in two scenes, one at a hospice and one at the Soylent factory. The hospice scene is interesting as Sol leaves a note for Thorn and checks himself in, as he found out that the bodies for Soylent come from the hospice. Sol sacrifices himself because he knows Thorn will follow Sol's body to the factory and get proof of what's happening. Sol dies in an enclosed room with a TV showing clips from the past; clips of nature and life. Where the green symbolizes death, the orange tint of the hospice room symbolizes life. I find it interesting that it is once someone chooses to die that they get to experience the natural beauty of life. The body is then transported to the Soylent factory and Thorn finally proves his theory that Soylent Green is indeed made of people, by watching Sol turn into it. This scene is my favorite because up to this point, it is never explicitly stated that Soylent Green is made of people, it is just assumed from the clues Thorn discovers. Watching the people turn into Soylent Green right before my eyes was startling. Maybe I just couldn't picture it before, but the actual process took me off guard. Large tubs of hot water and melting flesh were scattered around the factor, slowly but surely turning each human into a pile of Soylent Green, to then be transported down a conveyer belt for packaging. Just the thought of this process makes my stomach upset. The movie concludes with a chase scene and Thorn dying from a bullet wound from a Soylent hit man as he yells to a group of bystanders, "Soylent Green is made of people!" (Fleischer).

 Does this dystopia seem possible in our world? Could we one day be living in a world with one main food source controlled by one company? My answer to these questions is yes, but probably not. With the quick and powerful rise of food corporations in the past couple decades, it does not seem unlikely that a company could get to such a high level of power and influence. On the other hand, people are already working against large corporations, trying to get the word out that most big scale food companies are bad. Right now, food corporations are playing it sneaky and most of America is uneducated on the subject. I believe that there enough people who care about eating right and value their food choices that a food company could not get as far as Soylent. I also believe that there are enough people who understand the repercussions of destroying the environment and how that would affect food supply.  In regards to overpopulation, it could cause some problems, but nothing in the immediate future. Overpopulation could definitely negatively impact the environment and affect the food supply, but it's hard to say how long it will take, say, New York to reach 40 million people. With technology rapidly expanding, it seems more likely that we will make colonies on other planets before that happens

All in all, Soylent Green offers a brutal view of the future; a future controlled by a corporation controlling the flow of food, shaped by science, and inhabited by a massive, starving population. Although it may be a bit exaggerated in my opinion, it offers a lot of great commentary and social critiques that are as relevant today as they were in 1973. This is world of horror; an eat or be eaten world: live to eat the little that is given to you and suffer constant hunger and agony, or starve and be fed to someone else. This is a place where one has no solace in a religious afterlife; even death does not allow escape. Death allows one the opportunity to take part in the system; to feed the hungry with flesh. Death offers a pseudo escape that will cycle over and over again, as people die and become substance for someone else who will one day die.

As I glance over at my empty bag of green basil glazed beef jerky, I start to feel a little sick. 

Bibiliography

Solylent Green. Dir. Richard Fleischer. Screenplay by Stanley R. Greenberg. Perf. Charlton Heston and Leigh Taylor-Young. Amazon. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.