By Brandon Engel
When it comes to book-to-film adaptations, Stephen King doesn’t really have a consistent track record. Some film adaptations are awful and some are great. With anticipation building for the release of the film Cell with John Cusack, and murmurs about a new film series based on The Stand, one wonders how these new films will measure up against older film/tv adaptations of King’s dystopian stories.
You might remember the TV miniseries adaptation of the "The Stand" which debuted in 1994. It was based on a novel by King from 1978, which told the story of a weaponized version of the flu that escapes from a government lab, and it wipes out most of humanity, except for a few people scattered throughout the United States. In the TV adaptation, these survivors are portrayed by famous performers: “Nick Andros,” a deaf man from Arkansas, was played by Rob Lowe, and “Frannie Goldsmith,” a Maine teenager played by Molly Ringwald. The survivors start to have visions of either the kindly “Mother Abagail,” played by Ruby Dee, or the demonic “Randall Flagg,” played by Jamey Sheridan. Survivors are told to travel to Nebraska to meet Mother Abagail, or to go to Las Vegas to join Flagg.
The eight hour “Stand” miniseries is faithful to the over 1,000 page book, but it is more similar to the earlier abridged version that was released in the seventies than the complete, uncut edition that Doubleday published in 1990. The A.V. Club said in its review that the miniseries reduced the story to a simple-minded duel between good and evil, without the complex nuances of the book.
Entertainment Weekly offered a somewhat backhanded compliment, stating that the "Stand" miniseries was a "sheer messy sprawl" in the most affectionate way a critic can say that sort of thing. In this writer’s humble opinion? The TV miniseries has not aged well. The music, the special effects, and even the actors chosen seem a little dated and cheesy.
Speaking of dated and cheesy: you might also recall an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle based on a book that was attributed, not to King directly, but to King’s nome-de-plume, Richard Bachman. The novel was, of course, “The Running Man,” which “Bachman” wrote in 1982. The novel talks about a man named Ben Richards, who lives in the middle of the United States in the year 2025. The world economy has collapsed, and the general public is demoralized. Richards has a daughter who is violently ill. Because he lacks the finances to pay for her medical treatments, he agrees to participate in a new TV program entitled “The Running Man,” which is sort of like American Gladiators, but infinitely more barbaric.
Contestants on the program try to evade “hunters” — hitmen who are employed to track contestants down, and snuff them out. Contestants win money for every hour they stay alive, plus money for every hunter they manage to kill themselves, plus a billion dollars if they make it for a whole month without getting caught.
When producers approached King with the desire to turn the novel into a film, King insisted that the story be credited to Bachman. The film (released in 1987) starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, and the story was changed. In King’s novel, Richards was an impotent civilian acting out of desperation for the sake of his family. In the feature film, Richards is a former police officer who is wrongfully accused of killing civilians. He is put in prison, but manages finds a way out when he is invited to compete on “The Running Man.”
According to Roger Ebert, "The Running Man" film felt sort of like a videogame or a comic book for the big screen. The film is repetitive, highly stylized, and heavy-handed, but still manages to capture some of the cynical satire of King’s novel. Regardless, ultimately, the film shares many weaknesses with the TV adaptation of “The Stand” — it’s overwrought with dated cliches, and it featured a lot of dubious casting choices.
The bad news? Dystopian fiction is easy to sell to people. It doesn’t even have to be especially well-written (just think about “The Hunger Games” or “Divergent” series). Perhaps part of the reason why there are so many dystopian novels and films in the first place. While King’s dystopian novels are well constructed, bad things happen to these stories when producers get their hands on them. The film studios pander to the audience, and what results are subpar films that look even more ridiculous over time. Cell will be, in its own way, capitalizing on the popularity of the zombie craze. The unlikely pairing of Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack is also worrisome. Cell will probably not be a very good movie. Hopefully, I’ll be proven wrong on this point.
The good news? There are Stephen King film adaptations that were pretty great, such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, which still air regularly on satellite TV networks (more info here). For every thirty crumby Stephen King derivative films, maybe one or two will be truly excellent. Such is life.
Showing posts with label Brandon Engel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brandon Engel. Show all posts
Valentine’s Day and Misery
by Brandon Engel
Valentine’s Day and Misery
While Stephen King is most widely known for his horror stories, in his 1987 novel Misery, themes of romance prevail. Not romance in any conventional sense, however – it concerns the "romantic" nature of the relationship between an author and his writing. And beyond merely that, it also explores the ties that bind avid readers to works of pulp literature. King has often written about writers, and Misery, much like The Shining, offers readers an intimate glimpse behind the tortuous exercise of converting inspiration into a meaningful end product. Utilizing familiar elements of horror, he reveals the pain inherent to the writing process.
Misery was inspired by a dream King had on a plane flight to England, concerning a popular writer who fell victim to a psychotic fan. Waking up, he wrote down a description of the character that would later become "Annie" on a napkin. King centers the primary focus of the novel on Paul Sheldon, the author of a best-selling Victorian romance series about a character named Misery Chastain. When Sheldon is rescued by Annie Wilkes from a car crash, he slowly finds that she is sickly obsessed with his work and will do anything to have the recently killed-off protagonist revived. Even if it means sacrificing Paul himself.
The novel was adapted into a film in 1990 by Rob Reiner and starred James Caan and American Horror Story star Kathy Bates (who would later star in another King adaptation: Dolores Claiborne). We follow Paul (Caan) as he rewrites this story while being tortured by the seemingly-harmless Annie. King shows us the literal blood, sweat, and tears that had been put into Paul’s writing – making it the most meaningful piece in his career as an author. The relationship between the author and the writer is one that is carefully portrayed in Misery. King shows us that this pain is almost necessary to succeed, and sometimes, that pain itself provokes a twisted and perverse sense of pleasure.
Extreme fandom is personified in Annie (Bates), showing us just how obsessive certain individuals can be. Her crazed eyes and apparent insanity is enough to have Paul terrified for his life. Although Annie was just one single fictional woman, she had paranoid viewers rethinking their safety and security. The threat of other "Annie" types was enough to provoke some viewers to take dramatic action, turning to Charlotte ADT Security or Chicago Security Doctors to protect themselves. As we see Annie torture Paul for the fun of it, we recognize characteristics in her that we've seen in other people (or even ourselves). She isn't that nuts. She just loves the characters in her favorite stories as though they were her own flesh and blood. She is dependent on these novels as a way to escape her own lonely life, and like any fan out of touch with reality, she reacts in devastation when she learns that a beloved character has died. To her, these are real people - and she wants her protagonist back. Though perhaps not to this level, Though perhaps not to this level,
She is dependent on these novels as a way to escape her own lonely life and like any crazed fan, Annie reacts in devastation when she finds out that a beloved character dies. To her, these are real people and she wants her protagonist back. Though perhaps not to this level, we have seen this before in crazed fans, who believe they know what’s best for their particular franchise.
The Annie-Paul duo takes our breath away in this dynamic relationship of abuser and abused. Bates skillfully portrays a sweet and caring individual who has the capacity to turn into a woman scorned, once she has the proper reason to enact revenge. Paul is a departure from Caan’s previous performances, but he was definitely able to portray the controlled, terrified victim who seemed to have no chance at being saved. The film received mostly positive reviews and was seen as one of King’s best film adaptations to date. Perhaps this is because Misery exceeds generic horror. It isn't about in-your-face scares or supernatural beings- the real horror is within everyday people.
Valentine’s Day and Misery
While Stephen King is most widely known for his horror stories, in his 1987 novel Misery, themes of romance prevail. Not romance in any conventional sense, however – it concerns the "romantic" nature of the relationship between an author and his writing. And beyond merely that, it also explores the ties that bind avid readers to works of pulp literature. King has often written about writers, and Misery, much like The Shining, offers readers an intimate glimpse behind the tortuous exercise of converting inspiration into a meaningful end product. Utilizing familiar elements of horror, he reveals the pain inherent to the writing process.
Misery was inspired by a dream King had on a plane flight to England, concerning a popular writer who fell victim to a psychotic fan. Waking up, he wrote down a description of the character that would later become "Annie" on a napkin. King centers the primary focus of the novel on Paul Sheldon, the author of a best-selling Victorian romance series about a character named Misery Chastain. When Sheldon is rescued by Annie Wilkes from a car crash, he slowly finds that she is sickly obsessed with his work and will do anything to have the recently killed-off protagonist revived. Even if it means sacrificing Paul himself.
The novel was adapted into a film in 1990 by Rob Reiner and starred James Caan and American Horror Story star Kathy Bates (who would later star in another King adaptation: Dolores Claiborne). We follow Paul (Caan) as he rewrites this story while being tortured by the seemingly-harmless Annie. King shows us the literal blood, sweat, and tears that had been put into Paul’s writing – making it the most meaningful piece in his career as an author. The relationship between the author and the writer is one that is carefully portrayed in Misery. King shows us that this pain is almost necessary to succeed, and sometimes, that pain itself provokes a twisted and perverse sense of pleasure.
Extreme fandom is personified in Annie (Bates), showing us just how obsessive certain individuals can be. Her crazed eyes and apparent insanity is enough to have Paul terrified for his life. Although Annie was just one single fictional woman, she had paranoid viewers rethinking their safety and security. The threat of other "Annie" types was enough to provoke some viewers to take dramatic action, turning to Charlotte ADT Security or Chicago Security Doctors to protect themselves. As we see Annie torture Paul for the fun of it, we recognize characteristics in her that we've seen in other people (or even ourselves). She isn't that nuts. She just loves the characters in her favorite stories as though they were her own flesh and blood. She is dependent on these novels as a way to escape her own lonely life, and like any fan out of touch with reality, she reacts in devastation when she learns that a beloved character has died. To her, these are real people - and she wants her protagonist back. Though perhaps not to this level, Though perhaps not to this level,
She is dependent on these novels as a way to escape her own lonely life and like any crazed fan, Annie reacts in devastation when she finds out that a beloved character dies. To her, these are real people and she wants her protagonist back. Though perhaps not to this level, we have seen this before in crazed fans, who believe they know what’s best for their particular franchise.
The Annie-Paul duo takes our breath away in this dynamic relationship of abuser and abused. Bates skillfully portrays a sweet and caring individual who has the capacity to turn into a woman scorned, once she has the proper reason to enact revenge. Paul is a departure from Caan’s previous performances, but he was definitely able to portray the controlled, terrified victim who seemed to have no chance at being saved. The film received mostly positive reviews and was seen as one of King’s best film adaptations to date. Perhaps this is because Misery exceeds generic horror. It isn't about in-your-face scares or supernatural beings- the real horror is within everyday people.
Top 5 Horror Anthology Films of All Time
Top 5 Horror Anthology Films of All Time
by Brandon Engel
If it wasn’t for fifties
horror comics (especially EC titles like Tales From The Crypt and Haunt of Fear) it’s probably
safe to say that horror movies and literature simply wouldn’t exist as we know
them today. Stephen King is himself a huge fan of the comic format, and he has
borrowed liberally from the influence of such works throughout the course of
his career.
There have been many
great horror anthology films over the decades, typically comprised of three to
five short stories with wrap-around segments to stitch the disparate stories
into one self-contained narrative. Many follow in the footsteps of the EC, while
one title from the list below predates such comics, and might have, itself,
influenced the format of the comic books.
Here is a look at the
top five horror anthology films of all time.
5. Trilogy of
Terror (1975)
Originally made for ABC,
the film is comprised of three short stories all written by Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend and frequent
contributor to The Twilight Zone). Actress Karen Black appeared as a
different character in each segment. The most memorable sequence is the film’s
closer, “Amelia,” about an upscale New Yorker who brings home a Zuni warrior
fetish doll (which resembles a piranha with fearsome fangs and stringy black
hair). There’s a golden band across the doll’s waist, and it’s said that if the
band is removed, the dormant spirit which inhabits the doll will be unleashed.
The segment is significant in the annals of movies with killer dolls, and was
even once parodied in a Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror segment.
4. Dead of Night
(1945)
This was one of the only
horror films made by the English Ealing Studios, and it’s often regarded as one of the
most inventive horror films of all time. A group meet for a weekend vacation,
and one member of the group is plagued by a sense of the uncanny. This provides
the narrative container, as each guest then relates a story about an eerie
occurrence or dream they’ve had. The most famous sequence features Michael Redgrave as a psychotic ventriloquist who can’t seem to discern where his
identity ends, and the identity of his doll “Hugo” begins.
3. Tales From The
Darkside: The Movie (1990)
The film was of course a
spin-off of George Romero’s cult TV show, Tales From the Darkside (which is itself enjoying its own resurgence in
popularity now that it can be streamed directly from DTV - see their website)
and the feature film also features a story contribution from King himself, The
Cat From Hell. The most memorable sequence features a woman who plots to
cook her newspaper delivery boy. Even more memorable is the device used for the
wrap arounds: a young man is telling these stories to distract a witch who
intends to eat him. A technically well-executed and enjoyable horror omnibus in
the Romero tradition.
2. Tales From the
Crypt (1972)
Released by the British
film studio Amicus, this take on the classic fifties horror comics offers
wonderful performances from Hammer Horror icon Peter Cushing as an ostracised but nevertheless benevolent
eccentric who is driven to suicide by the taunts of his community (only to come
back as a vengeful zombie on Valentine’s Day) and the great Patrick Magee, who
stars in a segment as blind man who exacts his revenge on a cruel administrator
of an asylum for the blind. The film also features a segment about a monkey’s
paw which gives its owner five wishes, as well as a story about the homicidal Santa
Claus (the very same story which would serve as the basis for the Robert
Zemeckis directed pilot of the HBO Tales From the Crypt
series).
1. Creepshow
(1982)
Written by Stephen King
and directed George A. Romero, Creepshow is a highly-stylized tribute to EC comics,
which even integrates comic book frames. The film opens with a father
reprimanding his son (Joe King, Stephen’s actual son) for reading a gruesome
comic book entitled Creepshow. This provides the container for the five
vignettes, and among the most memorable are: “Father’s Day,” about a
murdered father who returns from the grave to collect his father’s day “cake”, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,”
which features a performance from King himself as an east coast bumpkin whose life is turned
upside down when a meteor crashes in his backyard, and “The Crate”, a
story about a blood-thirsty primate discovered in a crate under the stairs in a
university which evokes Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue.
*******
Brandon Engel is a blogger in Chicago who writes about a
variety of topics - everything from vintage exploitation films to energy
legislation. Brandon has a penchant for horror literature, and his favorite
authors within the genre include: H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clive
Barker, and, of course, Stephen King. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2
Compare and Contrast: Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke
by Brandon Engel
Meet Arthur Charles
Clarke and Stephen Edwin King, Jupiter and Venus of the science fiction solar
system. In 2005, the government of Sri Lanka designated Clarke Sri Lanka Abhimanyu, meaning “The Pride of Sri Lanka,” the highest civil honor in the
country. The year before, the World Fantasy Convention bestowed upon King the Award for Life
Achievement. No satellite explored further than the reaches of blackness that
Clarke and King dived into with science fiction and fantasy literature.
But, the two had
different notions of where the future of humankind led.
Stephen King: Scribe of
Horror
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that the state of nature of man
was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Stephen King took Hobbes at
his word. In King’s 2009 book, Under the Dome, an invisible dome barrier envelopes the small
Maine town of Chester’s Mill. Thus isolated, the townsfolk pull a page from Lord
of the Flies, with the climax of the story ending in asphyxiation and
incineration. “I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological
problems that we face in the world today,” said King. “The fact is we all live
under the dome.”
Like many contemporary
authors, King worried that short-term politics would upset the teeter-totter of
technological equality. He extrapolated that concept in his 1982 work, The Running Man, the story of a desperate man, living in a
state-sanctioned media-saturated dystopia, who wages his life in hopes of a $1
billion grand prize. Yet just as in Orwell’s 1984, the omniscience of
technology thwarts Richards’ plans. What can Richards do against the Hunters,
who draw from endless resources?
Or what if, suggested
King in his 1986 horror film, Maximum Overdrive, machines were themselves malicious? In the movie, King’s only
directorial effort and winner of a 1987 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst
Director, machines come to life and launch a lethal vendetta against homo
sapiens. King described his film as a “moron movie,” but nowhere else does he
so blatantly suggest that one day, for reasons inexplicable, mankind may regret
its first electrical transistor.
Arthur Clarke: Science
Fiction Storyteller
Statistically speaking,
King is in the minority. According to a Pew and Smithsonian research poll, some 59 percent of Americans believe coming
technological changes will improve the future, while 30 percent hold the glass
half empty. Those within the 59 percent are in good company with Arthur Clarke.
A lifelong proponent and enthusiast of space travel, terraforming and computer
networking, Clarke believed in a fundamental goodness of technology that would
improve the human condition. “It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms
of nationalism can long survive,” he believed, “when men have seen the Earth in
its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.”
Clarke was a pop prophet
extraordinaire. He predicted satellite internet coverage that could be accessed from virtually anywhere, cloud computing,
and in his seminal film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, he even predicted the iPad – or “newspad.”
Most famously, Clarke popularized the concept of geostationary satellites for
telecommunication purposes. Some of his more fantastic notions have yet to
manifest, though, such as slave chimpanzees, bioengineered whales, suspended
animation, and an earth-to-moon space elevator.
But some of Clarke’s
most important words, which hint at the same fears King discussed, are rarely
quoted. “As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior
science and inferior morals.” In his 1972 essay, for example, “Profiles of the Future,” he was quick to give wasteful transportation
a thorough tongue-lashing. “In one lifetime they [automobiles] have consumed
more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of
mankind. The roads to support them … cost as much as a small war; the analogy
is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”
Perhaps the truth lies
between the two authors. The future is without form and void, and it is humans
who will author its genesis, for where humans lead, technology follows.
"Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger whose favorite Stephen King book is either Hearts in Atlantis or The Shining. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2"
* * * * * * * * * *
"Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger whose favorite Stephen King book is either Hearts in Atlantis or The Shining. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2"
King and Carpenter: A Match Made in Hell?
King and Carpenter: A Match Made in Hell?
by Brandon Engel
The most compelling monsters are the ones who illicit our deepest sympathies. John Carpenter’s The Thing, however, elicits sympathy in a surprisingly pathetic way: he got his ass handed to him by E.T.! The fearsome shape-shifter of Carpenter’s misanthropic visions just couldn’t hold his own in the box-office against Hollywood’s favorite doe-eyed, feeble weakling (no, not Spielberg, but the alien).
And it’s really too bad that the film didn’t enjoy a more dignified theatrical run, because a.) it deserved to and b.) the rumor is that if Carpenter’s film hadn’t tanked, he was going to be brought into direct a big-budget film adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter. And it’s really too bad, in a way, because the Firestarter film that ultimately was released was an enormous let down.
It didn’t prevent Carpenter and King from teaming up, however. Not long after the release of The Thing, Carpenter was recruited to direct a feature length adaptation of King’s Christine (1983), which tells the story of a bloodthirsty 1957 Plymouth Fury. This was perhaps, the most appropriate King story for a collaboration between the two men, and I say this for a couple of reasons. For one, King’s stories can become so involved, with so many characters introduced, that, in many situations, it would be impractical and distracting to compress all of them into a single film. One of the things that distinguishes Carpenter’s work on the whole is that he’s capable of telling captivating stories with very few principal actors (think Halloween, Dark Star, Starman, The Thing). Christine is a story with relatively few characters, and with much of the narrative tension borne out of the intensity of a few key relationships. For another thing, Carpenter is versatile in that he has shown a facility for both visually driven narratives (The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape From New York) and narratives that downplay the importance of intense visuals and make economic use of what is not seen (Halloween especially). King has an extremely colorful imagination, and while there are certain images that he evokes successfully through his writing, attempts to translate these images directly to screen have in some instances, fallen short.
One of the things that becomes clear looking at the work of both men, is that Carpenter and King spoke the same language, and had many of the same cultural reference points. Both men drew liberally from the influences of EC Comics. Both men, in fact have spoken in interviews about the significance of those horror comics, and both men have paid tribute to them: King with Creepshow (1983) and Carpenter most directly with John Carpenter’s Body Bags (1993). Both men were also huge admirers of Ray Bradbury, who might have, in some way,s provided the seedling for the idea that would blossom into Christine. Ray Bradbury was a pre-eminent purveyor of cold-war era technophobia. Themes of rapidly evolving technology (amplified by the arms race between the states and the former U.S.S.R.) are prevalent in his work, and King and Carpenter have integrated elements of this into their work also.
While critical response to Christine was mixed up its initial release, the film has aged pretty well in many ways. After all, we live in an age of cars that can drive themselves, and wireless home security monitoring systems that control everything. One of the things that has perhaps kept it relevant to modern audiences is the fact that technology is still creepy. It’s creepier now than it’s ever been.
With Halloween season upon us here again, let’s toast to two masters of menace! And here’s to hoping that King will manage to pull Carpenter out of semi-retirement and provide him with a decent script to work off of (something that Carpenter, sadly, has been lacking for a few decades now)
................................
Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger with a keen interest in all things horror. Among his favorite Stephen King novels are: Firestarter, Cujo, The Shining, Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis, and Misery. Follow him: @BrandonEngel2
Horror and The Scarcity of Resources
by Brandon Engel
One of the great things
about speculative fiction is that it reflects something pertinent about present
day paranoias. It opens up room for a lot of “what if’s.” What if, in 20 years,
abject poverty has demoralized the general public to such an extent that we
watch televised game shows where people fight to the death? Under his pseudonym
“Richard Bachman,” Stephen King toyed with this in The Running Man (which could maybe even be thought of as the
precursor to the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games books). Or what if there
were a strain of weaponized virus so powerful, amplified beyond the scope of
what immunizations can fortify the human body against that, if released either
by accident or through biowarfare, could take out most of the human race? This
was, of course, the basis for King’s The Stand.
There will always be
evangelicals and paranoiacs (if there’s a distinction to be made) who will take
to the streets to decry that the “End is Nigh.” What’s really screwed up, though,
is that they could be right. What if the misapplication of technology, or the
squandering of natural resources, does effectively bring about “the end of the
world.” That’s the sort of cynical musing which precipitates dystopian
function.
But what’s even more
distressing than the notion of the world ending, is the notion of the world, in
the shittiest imaginable state, going on for too long. What bothers you more?
The idea of a plague wiping humanity of existence, or the thought that you, and
all of your children, and all of their children, would be forced to live under
complete totalitarian control, in a world with sparse resources, forced to eat
some mysterious green compound that’s handed out in rations?
It all calls to mind any
vintage science fiction film where Charlton Heston flips out. Like when he finds out that the Planet of the Apes had actually been Earth the entire time. Or when he finds out the truth about Soylent Green. Thankfully for us, it will probably be a while
before humanity is (literally) enslaved by blood-thirsty primates — unless of
course Ann Coulter makes it into the GOP primaries, then all bets are off. But
if we’re talking about the degree to which “real world” political crises echo
our favorite genre pulp tropes, and you take a minute to think about Soylent Green, and all of the “bad press” that
Monsanto has been getting in recent years...it sort of makes you wonder.
Soylent Green was a film adaptation of the novel Make Room!
Make Room!, written by one of King’s predecessors, pulp novelist and former EC comics illustrator Harry Harrison. The book, penned in 1966,
offers a glimpse of a bleak future (“the year 1999”) and the world is
(surprise!) fraught with problems. Pollution has destroyed commercial
agriculture, and over-population has become a major issue in the major cities
(especially in New York City, which is home to 35 million).
In the film, the story
takes place in the year 2022, but it’s still the same basic setup. The only
available food comes from the rations dispersed by the government subsidized
Soylent corporation. Soylent Green is their latest product, and is said to
consist mainly of plankton. Heston stars as NYPD detective Frank Thorn, who is
put on the case of investigating the death of a local business magnate, who
evidently, knew too much. Spoiler alert: Soylent Green is people.
But clearly, it’s not
all doom and gloom in the world at large today. Even though there are many
issues surrounding agribusiness and the government’s toothlessness when it
comes to regulating agriculture, collective apathy is not quite the issue it
once was, as more and more major companies strive to reduce their carbon
footprint and global consumers become increasingly conscientious about the
environment. In North America, Canadians can find superb alternative energy
through the Alberta Energy website, while companies like Sharp Solar gain traction in the Japanese
markets (impressive, as Japan
is one of the biggest polluters in the world) and solar and wind-turbine power
generators are becoming fashionable in cities with climates that allow for such
things.
But, just as these books
and films always reflect something about the mania of their own time, you can’t
help but wonder to what degree dystopian future forecasts might prevent certain
issues from happening. If droves of filmgoers hadn’t seen Heston bellowing at
the end of Soylent Green in 1973, what sort of mysterious compound food ration
might we be eagerly standing in line for right now? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad
though. I mean, you put enough ketchup on anything…
Brandon Engel is a blogger with who writes about a variety of topics -
everything from vintage exploitation films to energy legislation. Brandon has a
penchant for horror literature, and his favorite authors within the genre
include: H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, and, of course, Stephen
King. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2
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