Blog Entry #4

Of all things for Soylent Green to be made of, I would have never guessed from watching this film that the food substitute would be made out of dead humans. This is a very dark and gloomy example of "eating one's problems away"; in order to help solve the problem of overpopulation in the United States, the only viable solution that is presented in this film is literally eating each other out of existence (or, at least, the ones that are already dead). Due to this, the "food" featured in this film is not actually food, or rather food in the sense that we think of. 

The actual food featured in the film (i.e. the meat, apples, and vegetables) is all that we see in terms of ordinary, regular food that you would buy at a supermarket today. In addition, this "real food" is a metaphor for how life used to be and represents how plentiful actual food was in the past. Also, the real food from the past represents the actual variety of food that people were eating in the past (i.e. meats, cheese, fruits, and vegetables among other things). In contrast, the Soylent wafers eaten by the public in this film represent the "modern age" of food and how there is little variety as to what is eaten; as opposed to beef, fruits, and vegetables, the only varieties of the Soylent wafers are in their colors: Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, and Soylent Green. As mentioned in Forster's article, the mass-produced and industrialization shown in this film have drastically affected the humans and their normal way of living; instead of being able to eat regular food, they are reduced to small wafers made of dead humans. Due to this, humans are essentially cannibalizing each other and, as a result, have thrown all of their morals out the window. If I was caught in this situation of low food supply and having to eat other humans to survive, I would try to stave off of my hunger as long as possible and NOT resort to eating other humans. But, if I had absolutely no other choice, I would probably end up succumbing to my hunger and doing what I can to survive. 

The horrifying truth of what the food substitute in the film is actually made of: PEOPLE!