By Robert Scucci
| Published 21 seconds ago
Spoiler alert: Soylent Green is people. Though, since the movie came out in 1973 and has been referenced countless times in pop culture, you already know what Soylent Green is all about. Unfortunately, the title isn’t available on any subscription streaming services, only through on-demand purchases, which is an absolute shame. This is the kind of film that should be readily available to the masses, not tucked behind a paywall like an ancient curiosity.
An eerily prophetic dystopian sci-fi thriller, Soylent Green’s big third-act reveal shouldn’t be what draws you in, because there’s so much more socio-economic fallout at play to witness. While it’s set in the year 2022 and real life has already marched past that point, the kernels of truth explored in Soylent Green still ring uncomfortably true today. I’ve downsized my physical media collection over the years, but this is one I still keep at arm’s length, because it’s the cautionary tale of the ages.
It’s Just Suffering All The Way Through
During the Soylent Green commentary, director Richard Fleischer stated, “There’s no middle class, and it’s just suffering all the way through,” when describing the world he created from the source material, Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room!
Here, we have an overpopulated New York City with 40 million residents living in squalor, while the elite ruling class occupies fortified mansions with captive concubines they refer to as furniture. The women involved in this arrangement are submissive, frightened, and treated as property. If someone moves out of a luxury apartment and someone else moves in, she is simply owned by the new tenant, no questions asked.
The lower class, which makes up roughly 99 percent of the population, survives on products manufactured by the Soylent Corporation, with Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow being the most common food sources available. A new product, Soylent Green, is introduced as a more nutritious option, supposedly derived from plankton. The green wafers, which are still a far cry from the natural foods that no longer exist unless you’re filthy rich, cause riots due to its scarcity, and this is how most people are forced to live.
When NYPD Detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is tasked with investigating the murder of William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten), a member of the Soylent Corporation’s board of directors, he’s introduced to the victim’s concubine, Shirl (Leigh Taylor Young). Terrified of how her new owner might treat her, she submits to Thorn, who often mulls over his cases in his run-down apartment alongside his elderly roommate, Solomon Roth (Edward G. Robinson).
Corruption With No End
While Thorn is, by most measures, a good detective, he takes kickbacks whenever the opportunity presents itself. His nightly “investigations” frequently involve raiding the elite’s cupboards for food, drink, and soap, which he brings home to share with Roth.
Roth remembers the before times, when overpopulation, scarcity, and unchecked corporate greed didn’t rule the landscape. He insists that people have always been awful, but the world itself used to be a beautiful place before it got to this point of no return.
Thorn has reason to believe Simonson was murdered because he was sitting on a dark secret about the Soylent Corporation and needed to be silenced. His guilt, Thorn suspects, would have eventually driven him to tell the truth, which brings us right back to that spoiler from the opening paragraph.
What’s most unsettling about Soylent Green is the sheer disparity between the grievances of the ruling class and the working class. Thorn hears bellhops complain about how the manufacturer for some luxury item no longer exists, or how it takes too long for these indulgences to be repaired.
Meanwhile, Thorn and Roth generate their own electricity at home by pedaling a stationary bike. Thorn doesn’t even know how to eat an apple until he smuggles one home and watches Roth weep over the beautiful piece of fruit, now so rare that it’s considered a precious commodity.
The Worst Kind Of Future We Should Avoid At All Costs
Soylent Green is a brutal indictment of everything that goes wrong in a corrupt capitalist society when the powers that be are left completely unchecked. Its message is never delivered through preachy monologues, but by showing the audience just how bleak such a future could be. This world is communicated through its smog-choked aesthetic, endless food lines, and an expectation of permanent scarcity, while the ruling class hoards resources and strips women of their right to exist as autonomous human beings. It’s an archaic future, and one we should avoid at all costs.
Sorry for leading with the spoiler, but Soylent Green has never been about its big reveal. It’s about everything that leads up to it. The movie is over 50 years old, and we all know it’s made of people.
That knowledge shouldn’t deter anyone from hearing what Harry Harrison, screenwriter Stanley R. Greenberg, and Richard Fleischer were trying to say. The only real deterrent here, from a working-class perspective, is having to pay for a digital copy instead of firing it up on one of the dozens of streaming services we’re already subscribed to.
I know a paywall isn’t an ironclad way to keep people from sharing information, but for most viewers, it’s enough of a hurdle to default back to reruns of The Office instead. As of this writing, Soylent Green can be purchased digitally through YouTube, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Fandango at Home.
