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I Always Thought Soylent Green Had a Good Idea
Reflections on the iconic sci-fi movie
Even back in 1973, I could see that Edward G. Robinson’s character, Sol, wisely takes the best path available to him. It is what we in 2025 refer to as Death with Dignity.
Charlton Heston’s character, Thorn, is still young and strong, employable by his society as a police officer. But his old friend has come to the end of the line. Society is no longer interested in him, and it provides no means for him to earn a living. What it DOES still offer him, in a corporately compassionate way, is a pain-free, controlled death by lethal injection — preceded by fifteen -minutes of an immersive multi-media video of animals in pristine Nature (taken before all the world’s natural environments had been destroyed) and accompanied by a full orchestra rendition of Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring.
All Sol asks is the assurance that he will “be given the full fifteen minutes.” The lovely young woman in charge of his euthanasia assures him kindly that he will.
I have to say, there are days out of every month when I would accept that. There are many fates far less pleasant.
And then, of course, we have the dystopian denouement of the film. Thorn follows his friend’s body to see how they will dispose of it — only to…
