Environmental Nostalgia in *Soylent Green*

 

In an article celebrating the thirty year anniversary of Earth Day, Ronald Bailey argues that “Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions” (“Earth Day, Then and Now”). For him, Earth Day and the environmental policies it represented were necessary in 1970. Yet the, what he calls, “prophets of doom” were “spectacularly wrong” (emphasis Bailey’s). In fact, “many contemporary [2000] environmental alarmists are mistaken when they continue to insist that the Earth’s future remains an eco-disaster that has already entered its final act” (Bailey). To substantiate these claims, Bailey delineates categories of predictions provided by these prophets of the 1970s that have since, in his mind, been proven wrong: “Soylent Greens,” “Polluted Thinking,” “Synthetic Arguments,” and “Nonrenewable Anxiety.”

Although Bailey, Science Correspondent for the on-line magazine, Reason, attempts to debunk predictions from the 1970s in order to justify mass capitalism and consumption, his categories align with cinematic reactions to the environmental movement. And even though Bailey seeks to discredit what he calls doomsday prophets, his solution to environmental problems—wealth, another form of profit—would lead to a world where “forest growth … will increase” and “air and water quality will begin to improve.” Bailey, like the prophets he critiques, harks back to a world where humans and nature coexist harmoniously. Even though he advocates development more than preservation, he believes (or at least claims) that that development will result in a more ecologically sound earth.

Like Bailey, films responding explicitly to Earth Day, the establishment of the EPA and other environmental programs of the 1970s look back nostalgically on Earth in its more natural state. In a direct reaction to the environmental movement, Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), and Silent Running (1971) all embrace the memory of an environment and ecology that no long exists on their earth—an eco-memory. At the same time, though, these films reflect a nostalgia for a world that does still exist for its viewers, both in the 1970s and today. These films represent the categories Bailey outlines in his article because they so clearly respond to the 1970s environmental movement (See articles by Gaylord Nelson and the EPA Website, for example). They also provide a way to exploit environmental ideas for commercial gain. Nostalgia, however, most directly connects the films to one another and to the ecology they all seem to have lost.

As a reflection of the Green movement, class warfare, and a changing Hollywood in the 1970s, Omega Man, Soylent Green, and Silent Running foreground environmental messages that focus on the creation of a tragic hero who, like Bailey, remember a green Earth with nostalgia. Omega Man includes two nostalgic looks at the environment—one from the perspective of the “infected” zombie-like humans, and the other from those humans who are, or are trying to become, disease-free. Soylent Green, too, foregrounds two different nostalgic visions of Earth’s past—one from the intellectuals’ (the Book’s) perspective, sometimes in relation to food, and the other from that of the corporations at the point of a human’s termination. In Silent Running, food serves as one manifestation of eco-memory, this time in terms of food Freeman grows but the other crewmen no longer wish to eat. Freeman also looks back nostalgically on an Earth covered in trees as in the biosphere-enclosed forest he presumably saves. All three of these films seem to respond directly to the 1970s environmental movement. The films also highlight isolated heroes who serve as doomsday prophets with messages similar to those to which the films seem to respond.

Of these three films, Soylent Green falls most neatly into Bailey’s discussion of the “apocalyptic predictions” he claims Earth Day 1970 provoked. Although Peter Biskind describes Charleton Heston as one of the “Old Hollywood Right” (130) and disregards Richard Fleischer altogether, Soylent Green is clearly a film of the 1970s. Unlike the anti-war movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the environmental movement was supported by a cross-section of Americans, including those with right-leaning politics like those of Richard Nixon, under whose presidency the EPA was founded. So it comes as no surprise that a film like Soylent Green directed by an old-school director and starring an “Old Hollywood right” actor embraces so strong an environmental message.

Soylent Green seems like a direct reaction to Earth Day and the establishment of the EPA. It also seems to follow the same rhetorical strategies as do the doomsday predictions of contemporary environmental activists like Paul Ehrlich, whom Life Magazine called “ecology’s angry lobbyist.” The film seems to agree with Ehrlich’s predictions in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb and illustrate them through its own prophets of doom. From the film’s opening montage shots of and increasingly over-populated and polluted earth to film’s 2022 urban New York City setting where every inch is packed with people, the “population bomb” idea seems to jump off the screen. In a world so overrun with humans, food sources for the masses come in the form of “soylents,” including the infamous soylent green—people. Soylent Green provides a picture of what would happen on earth, if Paul Ehrlich’s predictions came true: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” he claimed in April 1970 (quoted in Bailey). Charleton Heston’s character, Thorn, serves as a prophet revealing the most horrifying result—“Soylent Green is made out of people.”

A more interesting consequence of the environmental themes in Soylent Green relates to the way it relies on ecological memory and nostalgia to make its point. From its opening, Soylent Green harks back to better times. Here a series of old photographs from the nineteenth century until the 1970s demonstrate the burgeoning population growth that devastates the natural environment and leads to humans’ reliance on soylent green for survival. Photos from the nineteenth century show small groups of people sitting peacefully beside an ocean, perched on a hill, fishing on a bridge, lazing on a hay pile and then riding in street cars, cars and then planes. As the pictures reflect the turn into the twentieth century, automobiles and industry seem to take over the pastoral scenes from the earlier photos.

The photographs pass by more and more quickly as earth’s population increases mathematically and the waste produced by industry and technology destroys more and more of the planet. A montage sequence showing increased numbers of machines and cars, devastating pollution, dying birds, smoke stacks, nuclear explosions, humans wearing masks, and oil wells point to the painful repercussions of a population explosion. As the opening sequence nears the current time of the film, the photos slow down, revealing garbage dumps, more smoke stacks, polluted water, over-developed urban centers, and cities covered in smoke. Then the title, Soylent Green, comes up, with a setting note—The year is 2022. This is New York City, and its population has now reached 40 million.

These passing photographs reveal progression towards the film’s current setting. But they also demonstrate a nostalgic view of a past before over-population and environmental devastation. The nineteenth century photographs are yellow and faded, but the people they show us are happy, well-dressed, and relaxed. Later photographs show only the results of an overpopulated world—pollution, nuclear war, the death of nature. The first human enters the current setting only after the last montage shot of the polluted city. We hear a voice state something about “first stage removal.” Then in Thorn (Heston’s) apartment we see and hear the governor on an old television talking about soylent green. Sol (Edward G. Robinson) and Thorn (Charleton Heston) talk about what “books” can do to help solve a police case, but these people seem cramped in their dark apartment, not lazing happily on the ocean’s shore.    

Sol serves as the reminder of better times—when “real” food was plentiful and the natural environment thrived. When Thorn offers Sol some soylent crackers, Sol exclaims, “Now, when I was a kid, food was food.” But that was before people “poisoned the water, polluted the soil, [and destroyed] plant and animal life,” according to Sol. Sol remembers and looks back nostalgically on a world before the “green house effect.” When Thorn leaves for work, the reason for such a dead world seems clear: people, so many that Thorn must climb over or through hundreds sleeping on stairs and in the streets. What was once a world of plenty has turned into a corporate dictatorship where only the rich can afford fruits, vegetables, and meat—food other than the soylents they produce.

Food symbolizes the nostalgic world of plenty in Soylent Green. When William Simonson, a corporate executive, is murdered, it is the food he leaves behind that gain Thorn and Sol’s respect and attention—lettuce, tomatoes, apples, celery, onions, and even beef. Thorn takes the food—and some bourbon—as his reward from Simonson’s apartment. When Sol sees the beef, he weeps. “How did we come to this?” he exclaims. “Nobody cares. Nobody tries, including me. I should have gone home long ago.”

Since Sol remembers a better world, he creates a real meal for himself and Thorn and serves it on linen, giving Thorn the one set of real silver with which to enjoy it. After feasting on beef stew and apple, Sol exclaims, “I haven’t eaten like this in years.” But Thorn doesn’t remember more plentiful times: “I never ate like this.” “Now you know what you’ve been missing,” Sol tells him. “There was a world once, you punk.” Sol provides the memories Thorn is missing—of beef stew and strawberries stolen on a spoon. But their real meal is juxtaposed with Sol’s research on Simonson and Soylent Green.

Sol’s research, too, brings up memories—of his previous life as a full professor, with as many books as he could read. Now the elite have air conditioning, showers, and space. The masses sleep in piles and fight over genetically engineered food. With such a large population, “farms are like fortresses. Good land has got to be guarded, just like the waste disposal plants,” so there’s no place for Thorn and Shirl (Simonson’s furniture girl) to go. Intellectual property, too, must be guarded at what they call the Supreme Exchange.  At the Exchange “books,” former intellectuals including judges, perform research using the last real books, helping Sol solve Thorn’s murder mystery but also making a much more devastating discovery about Soylent Green. Their discovery prompts Sol to seek the ultimate nostalgia—home, the place he claims God might be found.

Going home brings up both corporate and individual nostalgia for Sol. Going home means going to a corporate hospital for termination, but it also means enjoying twenty minutes of the earth’s past glory. In a clean and spacious room where he is served by two attendants, Sol lies on a comfortable bed and enjoys his favorite color and music as they surround him. But the memories of earth—his home—are what he seeks here, eco-memories of deer in woods, trees and leaves, sunsets beside the sea, birds flying overhead, rolling streams, mountains, fish and coral, sheep and horses, and lots and lots of flowers—from daffodils to dogwoods. In the end, Thorn shares Sol’s nostalgic moment. “Can you see it?” and “Isn’t it beautiful?” asks Sol. “Oh, yes,” says Thorn, with tears in his eyes. “How could I know? How could I, how could I even imagine?” he gasps—now understanding what he and the rest of the world has lost.

With the knowledge of not only earth’s losses but also its tragic future, Thorn readily sacrifices himself to provide evidence that Soylent Green is people. Nostalgia and memories of nature give him enough incentive to want more, to want what the corporations provide the dying only in 20 minute increments. So the closing credits serve not only as a reminder, an eco-memory, but a road to hope. The film closes with the scenes Sol had seen on his literal death bed, but this time no death is connected to them. The film begins and ends with nostalgia, with scenes of what Sol calls home. And when Hatcher, Thorn’s superior officer, carries him away, it seems as though the corrupt political structures controlled by Soylent Green are breaking down. Even a cop on the take like Hatcher responds to the powerful message Thorn tells him. Soylent Green is a film of the 1970s and responds to the civil rights and environmental movements as it critiques contemporary (corrupt) political structures (see Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate, for example). But it also looks back fondly from 2022 to a world very like that of 1973—especially after Earth Day and the EPA intervened—with nostalgia.