Soylent Green

Soylent Green was released in 1973. What about it is timeless, and what has been lost to cultural shift since the time of its conception? 

 

CRITICAL WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING A LEVEL 4 PRETENTION ZONE. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

 

I think the movie was striking for its appeal to ideas and fears at the time, even though we may be less concerned about overpopulation now, and more concerned with falling birthrates contributing to an aging workforce, it was probably more timely when it was made. The twist, although perhaps predictable, still manages to be shocking with its grotesqueness, and I think this contributes somewhat to the audience reaction. This movie came out in the years (1973) following the publishing of The Population Bomb, which was published in 1968. Despite the author’s claims that he didn’t want his writing taken for prophesy, it was treated as such, and inspired such fear in the populations that various countries took radical and at times coercive and abusive measures to prevent overpopulation. For example, millions of people in Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Bolivia were sterilized, and these sterilizations could at times be coerced, illegal, or unsafe; China implemented a one-child policy; and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi adopted programs that sterilized more than eight million people in one year (1975). Therefore, I believe that this movie is a product of its time: people in the late sixties and early seventies were worried about overpopulation, and so a movie about overpopulation sold well. Harry Harrison, the author of Make Room! Make Room! (1966), upon which Soylent Green was based, said in an interview that he first been struck with the idea after meeting someone in 1946, and that the idea stayed with him as he “watched the population trend go the wrong way”. From this, we can see that Make Room! Make Room!, as modern Cli-Fi does now, adapts climate and human-based fears to try and make a statement or raise awareness about how the world may change for the worse in the future unless something is done about it. The cannibalism, which was not in the original book, can be attributed to the sensationalism of Hollywood. 

I think that seeing the friendship between Sol and Thorn was strangely heartwarming, and Sol's rememberance of the old world allowed him some semblance of familiarity in the reader's eyes, in addition, to being a book collector. He felt like the last connection to reality in a world that had ventured too far into the realm of nightmares. As a result, it was upsetting and confusing that Sol would decide to go home before telling Thorn that Soylent Green was made out of people. I can understand his distress and his sensation of the futility of it all, and that it would be hard for him to tell Thorn the ugly truth to his face, but I feel like the move was actively counterproductive and only done to a) raise the stakes and b) expand the worldbuilding so that they could work the scenes they play on the screens in. Honestly, that whole sequence was successful in being supremely evocative, despite the forced stupidity leading up to it. If I had to pick a second reason beyond timeliness why this film has become a cult classic, it would be that scene. Its length and the diligence and care and softness put into it make it seem fundamentally out of place in the cruel, efficient world of New York City. The people here, the people who are going to be eaten, are offered voluntary euthanasia for their part in this horrible unheimlich world, and they are allowed a long, peaceful death. That voluntary euthanasia is quasi-normalized should perhaps not be a shock in itself, but that they are allowed to see the world as it was one last time is far more human than anything we have seen from the corporations and world in this film so far. What peace there is comes from this and from the churches, and even there the priests are nearly dead on their feet from work, bearing all the weight of human suffering on themselves so that it may not fall so heavily on someone else for some small moment. 

I suspect that, like Stepford Wives, which came out only two years later, the movie also gains some credit for its dark end. It finishes with the symbol of Thorn’s bloody, outstretched hand, a synecdoche for human suffering, striving, and survival. It is rather like the film’s opening, in that it refers more to the existence of footage itself, symbols of a larger whole, than to a specific action. That the film begins with the growth–first burgeoning, then accelerating—of industrialization, city sprawls, and increasing population, and ends with a human hand, may mean that there is some overall message of humanity. Then again, perhaps not. But the hand, even in approaching death, remains a symbol. The only words that matter—“Soylent Green is made out of people”—have been spoken, and from the mouth of the dead, the murderer, the untrustworthy stranger who came to a church to die, thus diminishing the value they should have had. After those words, there are no more to follow. The nature footage that would, out of context, appear cheerful, indicates that Thorn has been put down by the state to prevent the spread of dissent, and it is entirely unclear whether Hatcher is in on the conspiracy of cannibalism, and whether proof will reach those at the Exchange. Unlike Stepford Wives, however, these is an ambiguity that offers the barest chance that word will reach the people at the exchange. It all comes down to the meaning of that up-raised hand. Is it a last, unanswered call for help? Or is it a demonstration of willpower, of defiance to the end? The answer is unknowable, the future like Vermeer’s girl with the pearl earring—we cannot know whether it turns towards the people or away. 

Overall, the movie is well set-up, and while Sol’s death and associated sequence appeal only to emotion and not to logic, that emotion is itself enough, in my mind, to keep the story going. We can tie the movie's success to its depiction of timely fears, the sequence of Sol's death, and the iconic beginning and ending.