Unit 2 Paper First Draft

The consumption of food is a common feature shared among all humans on this earth regardless of location or culture because it is something that is essential in order to live. There are different types of foods and ideas associated with them, but when food becomes scarce and our lives are threatened, how does our perception of food change? And are we willing to compromise our moral values in order to survive? This is precisely the scenario presented by director Robert Fleischer in his movie Soylent Green (1973), which demonstrates how food and food-like substances are thought of in the grim and not-so-distant future portrayed in this film.

It is the year 2022 and there is a population of forty million people living in New York City. The Earth’s ecosystems have been demolished because of the high temperatures caused by the year-round heat waves due to the greenhouse effect. All plant and animal life other than humans have been decimated; humans however now exist in surplus numbers. It is in this world that detective Robert Thorn searches for the truth behind the origins of the mass produced foodstuff soylent green. Soylent green is distributed by the Soylent Company, which is in control of the majority of the world’s food production. Along with its other products of soylent yellow and soylent red, soylent green is a newly available product and is claimed to be made from plankton. Due to the large amount of people and the fact that most natural resources have been exhausted, these soylent products are mass produced and have become the stable food in many diets.

            Soylent products are generally tasteless and used mainly for nutrition rather than to enjoy the pleasure of their taste. Consumption of real food, a rarity in these times, is a luxury only the very rich can afford. There is a large gap in financial status in this world, with the leaders of the large corporations that control the food supply being extremely wealthy and the rest of the vast majority of people living in poverty level standards. For this large majority, their choices are to eat the cheap, tasteless, mass produced soylent products which at least give them the nutrition to survive, or to die. The cultural practice of consumption is demonstrated in this film during a scene where the camera is focused on a crowded market area with the sale of many soylent products in the foreground. In the background you see a sign that indicates what day of the week it is – “Tuesday Today is Soylent Green Day” A woman is outraged at only receiving ¼ kilo of soylent green after waiting the whole day in line. The riot police receive word that supplies have been exhausted and prepare for a riot, which followed shortly after the announcement that the supply of soylent green had been depleted. This shows a sense of urgency and desperation among the people as they struggle to get enough food, and being picky about it is not really an option.

            Soylent Green makes you think what life would be like if the food we are used to eating everyday started to run out. Some people are so gluttonous, eating just because they can and because it’s available. This movie shows how valuable and precious food is in an over populated world that is now unable to produce the foods we are used to today. In this futuristic dystopia where many of the natural foods we are used to consuming today are unavailable, rules of supply and demand dictate that with decreased supply and increased demand, prices will skyrocket. An example of this is shown in the movie when detective Thorn enters the home of the bodyguard and takes the spoon off the coaster on the table upon exiting. He gives the spoon to Sol who then tastes it and identifies it as “strawberries hmm? Hundred and fifty bucks a jar, strawberries!” Now it would be highly unlikely we would pay that much for strawberries today, which goes to show how the value of food in a fiscal sense would change with the balance of supply and demand being so one-sided.        

            For the majority of people, food in the form of Soylent products was used mainly for nutrition, in order to survive. Natural food products were exquisite luxury items that could only be afforded by the very wealthy. These natural products, such as sweet strawberries or the elusive and juicy steak as well as a nice bottle of bourbon were a source of both nutrition and pleasure, but since the nutrition aspect could be covered by other products, the indulgence of these products is mainly a matter of pleasure. In the world of Soylent Green, the back-in-the-day reference sol is making refers to the foods we are used to eating presently. However, Thorn and many others like him who have never experienced what it is like to eat natural foods view food, or food-like substances such as the soylent products, as purely nutritional.

            The film portrays the eaters as being very conservative. There isn’t much to eat first of all, so anything that they get to eat is cherished, because even with that little bit of food, as tasteless as it may be, allows them to survive. This is displayed in the movie where Thorn inspects the home of the murder victim. When given the opportunity, even the detective steals from the dead man’s apartment. He then boasts about it to the lieutenant, his commanding officer, who cheerfully applauds this thievish endeavor. In a following scene where these spoils are enjoyed, Thorn and Sol setup simple feast which involved only a piece of lettuce, an apple, and a small stew, but it was portrayed as being such a magnificent thing; that for this one day they would be able to live like kings and indulge in luxuries normally beyond their grasp. This shows how truly valuable and appreciative real food is in this world where it is rarely found anymore.

            The eaters in Soylent Green are mainly meant to be seen as sympathetic. As we live our lives today, with food and resources in bountiful supply, imagine a not-too-distant future where all that we have come to know and enjoy dwindles down almost to the point of non-existence. Food today is many times both a source of nutrition and pleasure, but in the future depicted in the movie, soylent food is strictly a nutritional substance needed for survival, and sometimes you’d be lucky to even get that.

In terms of food and how it relates to disgust, a proper assessment of the situation cannot be made until the end of the movie where you discover what soylent green actually is made from, “soylent green is PEOPLE!” After discovering this shocking fact, you can then see in retrospect how soylent greens are used throughout the movie and what people’s general attitude toward them has been. Once you realize that their soylent food is being made from humans, the food they are eating may then seem horrific, but the view of the eaters in the movie should not change because they are still unaware of the origins of their food products.

This brings up an interesting question, if the movie was to continue and the Soylent Corporation’s secret was exposed, it would be no surprise that there would be an initial outrage. But after this outburst of anger and resentment subsided, would people continue to eat the soylent products as a last resort for survival despite knowing how it’s made. This may seem like an appalling act, but one must consider the alternatives. The Soylent Corporation is in control of producing a large portion of the food supply people depend on to live. The ways of growing crops and raising animals are a thing of the past due to the earths now destroyed ecosystems. And the source of this food is dead human bodies, which would otherwise simply be disposed of in a way that wouldn’t benefit anyone. 

            Up until the end of the movie, soylent green in the eyes the viewer was a perfectly appropriate food substance that provided the essential nutrients needed and was made available to the public in mass quantities. In addition to the shock of learning that the corporations in power have been using false advertising to sell their soylent green as a product made from plankton, what it is really made from opens the pathways of disgust and elicits this response in many different ways. Core disgust is elicited by the consumption of human products via soylent green. The body envelope elicitor of animal disgust is present as well, but in a less pronounced way. Even though the body envelope of the corpses is never shown as being violated, it must have been somewhere along the line in the production of the small, square snack-size morsels of Soylent Green. The sex and death elictors of animal disgust can be grouped together with the elictors of interpersonal contamination disgust when mentioning the use of human corpses and possible viral, bacterial, or parasitic infections that may be associated with their use. Dead bodies being made into food after getting killed, loaded onto a truck with other corpses, dumped in a pit, and rolled down a conveyer belt into a community vat of unknown liquid, yielding a food product that is then eaten by millions of people would certainly play a role in eliciting a response of disgust. All the previously mentioned stages of disgust as well as moral disgust are elicited by the cannibalistic consumption of soylent green and all three of the functions of protecting the body, soul, and social order are violated with this one act. However, distaste disgust is not elicited because its function is only to protect the body and not the soul or social order. Soylent Green’s main purpose as a food, despite its origins, is to be nutritional. Therefore the distaste pathway of disgust is not prompted because its function of protecting the body is not violated.

            When elderly patients are ready to leave this world, they say they are “going home.” What this actually turns out to be in they enter a facility where they select their preferences such as favorite color and type of music. They are then laid to rest in a peaceful setting, and given some sort of death-inducing substance such as euthanasia. This is where the moral conflict starts because people are being killed by man-made methods simply due to old age and not living out their lives and experiencing a natural death. This is a controversial topic and some people may be for or against it. But to make matters worse and violate the moral function further, their bodies are then dumped into a pit where they will eventually be used to make the soylent green food that other humans will be eating. People are eating soylent green without knowing what it is, but technically it is made from humans and they are unknowingly engaging in a processed-food version of cannibalism. This is similar to what happened in the story The Juniper Tree, where the father was unknowingly fed the stew containing the flesh of his son. So what would elicit a greater disgust response, the ones who unknowingly engaged in cannibalism such as the masses of people in Soylent Green and the father in the Juniper Tree, or the ones who were responsible for the killing of other humans and disguising them in food form such as the Soylent Corporation and the wicked step-mother?