Wednesday, January 12, 2022

The Future Is Here

In 1973 I saw a sci-fi movie called "Soylent Green." Now considered a classic, the movie stars Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson (in his final film). 

"Soylent Green" depicts a horrifying future for New York with illness, food shortages and misery. Most inhabitants suffer badly while a privileged elite are comfortable behind guarded fortresses.

The year depicted in the film is... 2022. Think about that for a moment.



23 comments:

  1. It's...the future!!

    PS - Don't eat the Soylent Green. ;-P

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    1. Soylent Green is... people. So not vegetarian (even if made from vegans)

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  2. A few years back we reached the same year as the role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2020. A game set in a world of rampant corporate greed, corruption, the megarich, and a wrecked climate.

    Make of that what you will. 🙂

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  3. Interesting follow-up post to meatless chicken. You never really know what's in that highly-processed food you're eating. ;-)

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  4. I often wonder if things that happen to our society are a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've read so many horrible dystopian books (I hate them but I am so compelled to read them once I've started them!) and I just often think people write about these horrible things and thus make them happen.

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    1. Perhaps. But most predictions about the future that come true are because the writer is extrapolating already-existing trends.

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    2. Margaret Atwood said of The Handmaid's Tale that she didn't include anything that was not happening already somewhere in the world. So dystopia is often as much a reflection as a projection.
      Perhaps the best we can wish for is - in Samuel Delany's words - "an Ambiguous Heterotopia".

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    3. Exactly, Susie-Jay, which is why I like smart sci-fi. It's a reflection on the present.

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  5. This sounds eerily prescient.

    I had a similar experience while reading a book called "Twilight of Democracy" -- I was just reading about how any democratic government had the potential to become authoritarian at the same time that the January 6 insurrection occured.
    claire @ clairefy

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  6. I remember in the 70's in high school we watched a "horror" movie which depicted the year 2000 as way futuristic and very bazaar. And now I wonder if we are that bazaar but are just desensitized to it. We are kind of bazaar, but the futuristic thing doesn't seem so scary, unless you consider facebook and twitter. LOL

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  7. I just saw this movie for the first time last year.

    It's been very strange (& sad/scary) seeing and reading things from the past only to see them either come true now - or not change at all.

    Karen @For What It's Worth

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  8. I need to watch this. I like dystopian films and Charlton Heston was a phenomenally talented actor.

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  9. Even as a perpetual (realistic) optimist, I cannot help but wonder if a future like that isn't terribly far off for our planet if we don't take substantial measures to halt + reverse some of the horrific damage we have done to the Earth, as well as (hopefully) stop fighting over things that hold little actual consequence or importance. It never ceases to amaze me that (many, at least) humans fail to recognize that we share infinitely more in common with one another than we do elements that differentiate us.

    Autumn Zenith 🎃 Witchcrafted Life

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