Okay, so it's been about two years since Scribe recommended this movie to me. Yes, I have that many movies que'd in my Netflix. So sue me. There's a lot of movies I want to watch.
Thorn: It's... people... Soylent Green... is people!
I forget even what conversation we were having over at God V. Darwin, but I'm sure it was a hum-dinger (they usually tend to be over there...), and Scribe mentioned something about this movie that (horrible actor) Charlton Heston was in, Soylent Green. Having never seen the movie, I added it and (two years later) I was surprised to find that sometimes Charlton is a semi-decent actor (it lasts about five minutes in one of the beginning scenes...)--much better than he was in The Omega Man (remade into I Am Legend, starring Will Smith), but I died laughing at the end--partly because Rich hates it when he can't get closure, but mostly because it was just sooo over-the-top!
And--perhaps this was just me, I'll have to ask Rich later--I wasn't the least bit shocked, surprised, or even remotely disgusted at the end. (Perhaps I should send in a resume to the Donner Party?) But one thing kept running through my head in this not-really-post-apocalyptic-but-certainly-seems-like-the-end-is-near movie: Do you think the Catholic church (or any rabid, controlling fundamentalist church-like organization including but not strictly limited to evangelical Baptists and the like...) would change their stands on sex, procreation, abortion, or birth control, if the world ever does get to such a state of being? China herself has very strict birthing laws due to just such over-crowding type problems! (DISCLAIMER: I am not condoning the practices and laws, just pointing them out...)
I mean, listen: Right now the position is "All life is sacred," ergo, "Abortion is murder," thus "All women must be incubators whether they want to be or not," and as such, "Women cannot have the right to determine when and if they give birth to another human being" or "They are murderers." (One wonders what keeps them from supporting an amendment to the Constitution which states as much...)
Granted, ever since the mid- to late-seventeen hundreds (Okay, okay, probably earlier, but this isn't exactly a history lesson...), the church hasn't been exactly on the "cutting edge," so to speak, on the advancement of knowledge and scientific truths, granted. In fact, most times the church in its various forms and splinters seems hell-bent (no pun intended) on preventing any type of knowledge or thoughts which don't flow directly from that which they hold sacred--their interpretation of their holy book (Note, not the book itself...), and thus we are left with this unbreachable schism between "those of faith" and "those of reason," with a moderate number floating about the middle trying to make sense of it all, hoping to stumble on the Holy Grail of speech and reason that will appeal to everyone and end this silly debate over who killed who...
Of course, the eating of Soylent Green could just be like communion every day--except for the part where they aren't all really the body of Christ. But if you're Catholic, just get a priest and Sha-Zam! it suddenly IS the body of Christ (you sick little cannibals...), and I suppose that would be one way for the Catholic Church to get behind the whole "let's use our dead for food" position while still allowing for the over-population as a blessing, a "quiver of arrows," as it were. Can you hear it? The official Vatican pronouncement?
as homosexuals cannot procreate, no Soylent Green for them
since they did not produce the food which God has blessed
us with; But no condoms! For man shall know woman and produce
after their own kind so that their kind may eat them as small
green wafers upon their demise as they are transmuted into the
body of Christ for our salvation and nourishment."
Of course, there'll be a lot of kneeling, a holy hand grenade or two, something in Latin for the older folks who haven't been made into Grinch-wafers yet, and a boys choir who had to eat their own balls as Grinch-wafers just to hit those really really high notes, but you get the picture--there's nothing a religion can't spin to keep the crowd under biblical control... Their version, of course, not those guys or them guys or those really far out guys...
If you're Baptist, I suppose the best you could hope for was that this future Earth was the reign of the Anti-Christ and you just happened to miss the rapture...
And if you're anything else? Ask your rabbi, pastor, imam, whomever--I'm sure they can find a verse or platitude to ease your troubled mind. After all, that's what they're there for...
But I digress at this point (I know, too late...) simply to point out that, even in the future?--all the Furniture could play with was a very bad imitation of Pong...
How odd is it that I find the lack of good video games in the future worse than people eating Sponge Bob-shaped people guts?
You're right--I suppose I will send that resume off to the Donner Party now...
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