Cannibal culture still hasn’t quite replaced cancel culture.
Cannibal culture still hasn’t quite replaced cancel culture.
In 1973, “Soylent Green” envisioned the world in 2022. It got a lot right.
The Washington Post, January 9, 2022
I n the last few decades, sci-fi apocalyptists and political opportunists hit on the general rule that when you speak of the true disaster, the moment when the Spam will really hit the can, you always peg it at about ten years in the future. Forecasting calamity is like owning a bar that posts a “free beer tomorrow” sign. Because math is hard, people will usually forget the specific year in which you are offering the grim tidings. (It’s now been 16 years since Al Gore said we had ten years to fix our addiction to fossil fuels in order to save the planet.)
Before that, though, Team Doom used to affix specific dates to their prophecies: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) is set in 1991; Blade Runner (1982) is set in 2019. Soylent Green (1973) outlines a dark vision of the world of 2022. Did it get anything right? Let’s review.
Soylent Green: Desperate people desperately eat synthetic food because they’re desperate.
Reality: Meat-free Impossible Burgers are a niche luxury novelty product consumed exclusively by wellborn Park Slope trustafarian virtue-signaling foodie-hobbyist Vox writers because faux cow costs three times as much as real beef.
Soylent Green: Everyone is really sweaty because of global warming. The temperature never drops below 90 degrees.
Reality: Charlton Heston was sweaty in Soylent Green because Charlton Heston liked to be sweaty in movies. Driving chariots in Ben-Hur, building pyramids in The Ten Commandments, being chased by monkeys in Planet of the Apes . . . the man lived to perspire. Today, though, people are less sweaty than ever, mainly because unlike in 1973, almost everyone now has A/C.
Soylent Green: Mass poverty, even in America, is driving people to extremes.
Reality: Global poverty rates have fallen in half since 1981, and America’s “poor people” are so relatively rich that they make Europeans so envious they probably want to eat a can of us for lunch.
Soylent Green: Pollution is utterly revolting and out of control.
Reality: Thanks to some Nixon-era reforms, the phasing out of leaded gasoline, and a general change in attitudes, we look back at pictures of what the environment was actually like around the time Soylent Green came out with stunned fascination. Can things really have improved that dramatically? Yes, yes they . . . can have.
Soylent Green: The shelves are bare because the Earth is running out of food.
Reality: The shelves are bare because Joe Biden won’t sign a piece of paper that would unblock the shipping lanes because he’s afraid of unleashing the malign force from a different ’70s Charlton Heston dystopian movie: the apocalyptic march of bloodsucking, hell-raising, they-don’t-know-they’re-dead-and-don’t-care vampire zombie armies (of labor unions).
Soylent Green: $279 for a salad.
Reality: $279 for a Pioneer 43-inch 4K UHD Smart Fire TV.
Soylent Green: 137 murders a day in New York City.
Reality: Nah, that sounds more like Chicago.
Soylent Green: Is People!
Reality: Nonsense. Everyone knows Mutual of Omaha is people.
Soylent Green: In America, only the decadent rich get to take a hot shower.
Reality: The decadent rich are the only Americans who don’t take hot showers. (Just as they’re also the only ones who are starving.)
Soylent Green: Edward G. Robinson winds up in the ready-to-eat aisle of the supermarket, next to the Dinty Moore.
Reality: Ridiculous. Can you imagine anyone eating a can of Edward G. Robinson? It would taste like cigars and fedoras.
Soylent Green: The population of New York City in 2022 will be 40,000,000.
Reality: After eight years of Bill de Blasio, the population of New York City is down to 173 people, half of whom are spending their lunch hour browsing the Zillow listings for Nyack and Maplewood.
Soylent Green: People eat one another and like it.
Reality: Well, only on Twitter. Otherwise, ew.
