Soylent Green, Grim but Relevant
https://news.asu.edu/20220411-global-engagement-did-1973-movie-soylent-green-get-2022-right Soylent Green is a classic dystopian film set in the then-futuristic world of 2022 New York City—a place overcome by pollution, climate change, food shortages, and extreme wealth inequality. Now that we’re sitting in 2025, it’s easy to look back and say, “Well, none of that really happened.” True, we are not being fed human wafers, and the world didn’t collapse in quite the way the movie predicted. But brushing it off as an outdated or over-the-top would be missing the point. The movie still lingers in our cultural memory because the anxieties it tapped into are very real—and they are still with us. Take wealth inequality and overpopulation. The film paints a society where the elite live in luxury, while the masses fight over crumbs—literally. Today, billionaires are racing to space while entire communities lack clean water or access to decent housing. Sure, we haven’t reached Soylent Green...
