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In the Race
Now, here, you see, it takes all the blogging I can do to keep in the same place. If I want to get somewhere else, I must blog twice as fast as that! You see, I'm in the Red Queen's Race...
Food, Glorious Food
By Janet Evans
Monday, Apr 21 2008, 07:19 PM
Hearing about the insanity of people overreacting to what they believe are food shortages in the United States; where they somehow believe they need to hoard rice, while people in third world countries are actually rioting due to real shortages, brought to mind the 1973 movie Soylent Green.
"A tale of Earth in despair in 2022. Natural food like fruits, vegetables, and meat among others are now extinct. Earth is overpopulated and New York City has 40 million starving, poverty stricken people. The only way they survive is with water rations and eating a mysterious food called Soylent. A detective investigates the murder of the president of the Soylent company. The truth he uncovers is more disturbing than the Earth in turmoil when he learns the secret ingredient of Soylent Green."
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Have you seen the movie? It’s a classic in my book. A little hard to watch because it was poorly made. It’s playing quite often on American Movie Classics channel. Because it’s an old movie, I’m going to take license to talk all about it and the ‘secret,” so for those who haven't seen it, and want to without it being spoiled, don’t go any further.
The early 70’s was a time for this type of movie, and Charlton Heston, who stars in Soylent Green, also starred in another “the world is ending” movie in 1971, called Omega Man.
Here we have only the very wealthy somehow being able to find black market bits of real, old fashioned food, while the masses live on different colors of Soylent – a dry cracker-type product.
Processed Soylent Green Wikipedia
And because the city is so over-populated, when you feel you just can’t take it anymore, you are encouraged to “Go Home” by way of a center that cleans you up, puts you on a gurney with crisp sheets, an lets you spend your last minutes before you are euthanized watching a surround sound movie of what times used to be like on Earth. One last feel-good fling. But there are many, of course who have never known the way the Earth once was. They have only heard stories about it.
Edward G. Robinson (Sol) "Going Home"
Then you are wrapped up in your sheets and carted off to a garbage truck, taken by the load-full to a processing plant and processed into….
Food, glorious food….Soylent Green.
So, in the 70’s, they were warning us...the beginning of the movie is black and white beginning in pioneer times, and moves all the way through industrialization and modern times…showing how we took the beautiful, clean Earth and destroyed and over-populated it.
While we won’t be making Soylent in the near future…. we are already, and have been for quite some time bioengineering food. There are many people not happy about that. And there are many concerns regarding the safety of such foods.
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