What is Soylent Green?

I've read several references to this such as this one ...

"Thomas then goes batshit insane, with the kind of rhetoric that, in a civilized nation, would have him locked into Bedlam with the rest of the screaming lunatics: "Having been conditioned to accept killing, even killing by the state according to an arbitrary standard of who is 'fit' to live and who is not, it will be a short step to killing Grandma and Grandpa in their 'assisted living' centers, which quickly will be transformed into centers for assisted dying." Man, the Rude Pundit can't wait until all that tasty soylent green is on the supermarket shelves."

From here: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/


A google search revealed a si-fi move of the same name. Descriptions alluded to a food of questionable origin but were not specific.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

Sorry, that's honestly all I know. I think it's from that movie?

that's a quote from the movie. :evilgrin:

Mmmmmm soylent green . . . .

i am so clueless....

the world becomes overpopulated and they feed the masses with soylent green, which is supposed to be made out of some kind of seaweed but in fact it's made out of dead old people. the main character is played by that nutcase charlton heston who is the one that screams out "SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!"

n/t

It is an old Charlton Heston movie where he discovers they are "recycling" dead people into food.

tasty, tasty people.

to imply something that appears good but the truth behind it is macabre? Or something like that?

and marketed by the soylent corporation. due to world overpopulation and effects of global warming (referred to in the movie as the greenhouse effect), the soylent corporation harvested deap sea plankton and aquatic life to convert into foodstuffs (since agriculture went kaput to greenhouse gases).

problem is, they realized that because there were so many people (one bird two stones connect) they started to use human beings as the source of their new product soylent green.

the soylent corporation, in kahoots with the government, rounds people up and takes them to processing centers where they are converted to foodstuffs.

going to a community suicide center where they are voluntarily euthanized.

where heston is on "clean up" patrol and the police/sanitation men are walking around with football helmets on scooping up people in garbage trucks. . .

they take them to the soylent plant.

When you said rounding them up, I pictured more like going door to door and grabbing people, etc.

Those scooped up were rioting, etc. I don't know if that counts as "rounding up"

BUT, you're right, it wasn't just the voluntary suicide folks.

the opening still-frame montage was eerily prescient.

and they make a great reference to this film. The main robot manufacturing company decides to stop making spare parts for older models, and concentrate on upgrades (higher profit margin).

The "sweepers" pick up the old robots which are melted down to make new parts.

It's PEOPLE (recycled ones). That dystopian film didn't make it big at the box office, but it's since become a cult classic, and NOT because it was campily crappy. It was a great movie, but it didn't 'click' at that time. Probably, it was poorly promoted and/or distributed.

Here are the Amazon reviews: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B00009NHBM/ref=cm_rev_all_1/103-2649212-7267814?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=dvd

pnorman

david

LOL, I have got to get the Futurama DVDs :).

The DVDs are fantastic! The commentaries rock and are almost as good as the episodes. Everyone gets involved and there's always a lot of cool joking around and some insight too. You can tell everyone who worked on the show really loved it.

Some cool bonuses too, like one Animatic per set, and the deleted scenes alone are worth the price of admission, just kinda wished they had versions with the scenes added back in. Some of them are the funniest parts of the show!

Pick 'em up and enjoy!

david

:P

but it varies from person to person

:P

I love that episode

Grunka lunka dunka din dredient
Please do not ask about the secret ingredient!

Grunka lunka dunka dim darmed guards...

I'm gonna laugh for 20 minutes just thinking about it.

"They think they have a good union but they don't... they're basically slaves."

david

Lurr from Omicron Persei 8 (or is it 6 ?).

and her compellingly short garment!

It's 8, btw.

I watch the entire series about once a month. I'm insane

david

Honey comes from a bee's behind, milk comes from a cow's behind.

and have you ever used toothpaste?

Just enjoy it. Any questioning of the composition of Soylent Green may be considered a threat to National Security and you may be detained for long term questioning at the Soylent Green manufacturing plant.

(well, a smaller one) :P

president" instead of the more precise "appointed dictator", then realized , right it's just fictional.

In the year 2022, earth's face has completely changed. New York's population, for example, has grown to 40 million mouths to feed. The greenhouse effect has risen the temperature into nearly unbearable regions, and the people are kept in the cities by law. The rich live in separated luxury apartments (with women as part of the rented furniture) but also experience the lack of natural food. Strawberries are at $150 for a glass of them. Police Detective Thorn investigates a strange murdering case of a official from the Soylent corporation, which feeds the masses with a palette of their creations: Soylent red, yellow, or, even more nutritious, green. He soon stumbles across the real source of Soylent Green, which is not soy beans or plankton any more.

moof note - great movie 9.2 -
one of the last chances to see Joesph Cotton and Edward G. Robinson
with decent roles. Edward G. Robinson had a great part and his actions were what lead Detective Robert Thorn, the Charlton Heston character, to discover what everyone was trying to keep secret from the population.

A side note the riots are usually " food riots " and which start when "they" run out of the " Green ".

not people. The movie is based upon the book, "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison (the same guy who wrote the Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld books). It's been quite a while since I read the book, I seem to remember it was quite different than the movie.

there was this book, written (I think) by Harry Harrison, called Make Room! Make Room! It's a speculative fiction novel of a future where overpopulation causes an incremental breakdown of American civil society. It happens so slowly that the population never quite figure out what's happening-- but gradually, the utilities stop working, and the police stop responding to calls (at first because they're bored, later because they're too busy guarding the trucks carrying the food and water), and ultimately even the food stops showing up. It's even more depressing, in its low key way, than John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, about an ecological breakdown caused by obvious malfeasance by the powerful. In this book everything just kinda falls apart, not with a bang but a whimper.

Anyway, by the end of the novel, the only food on those trucks is something called Soylent Green, which as one poster above noted is supposed to be made out of soybeans and lentils.

The movie called Soylent Green introduced the whole idea of surplus people being processed into food, which wasn't in the book at all.

"They didn't change the recipe like they said they would!"

This was Edward G Robinsons last movie he died shortly there after.
Kinda ironic.

Oh, wait, that's a different movie....

:evilgrin: