[Idiom] Soylent Green is People.

[pinki91]

Hi guys,
I want the meaning of "Soylent Green is People", I heard it in a movie, It was the password of a computer :?:
Thanks in advance

 

[emsr2d2]

It means absolutely nothing. Most passwords aren't grammatical sentences.

 

[SoothingDave]

You might want to look up the movie "Soylent Green."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

 

[pinki91]

This is a link about the meaning of that sentence, but I can't understand yet. Please take a look at this address and help me find it out,
Thank you
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=soylent+green

 

[SoothingDave]

Did you read the Wikipedia article?

 

[pinki91]

Did you read the Wikipedia article?

I tried, But couldn't understand , cause english is not my language :-(

 

[SoothingDave]

The movie presented a dark vision of the future:

The 20th century's industrialization has left the world permanently overcrowded, polluted and stagnant by the turn of the 21st century. In 2022, with 40 million people in New York City alone, housing is dilapidated and overcrowded; homeless people fill the streets; about half are unemployed, the few "lucky" ones with jobs are only barely scraping by themselves, and food and working technology is scarce. Most of the population survives on rations produced by the Soylent Corporation, whose newest product is Soylent Green, a green wafer advertised to contain "high-energy plankton" from the world's oceans,

The problem of overcrowding was solved by the systematic extermination of people when they reached a certain age. This was known.

What was unknown and not revealed until the end of the movie is that the solution to the population problem is also the solution to the "what to feed an overcrowding world?" problem.

That is, they made food out of people.

Hence "Soylent Green is people!"

If you saw it referenced in another movie, that's all it is -- an allusion to the original movie. It's a memorable quote.

 

[Jill Dorchester]

As SoothingDave said, "Soylent Green is people!" was the big reveal in the film. The phrase has since become part of colloquial English as an idiom used when referring to a huge cover-up or conspiracy.


(From a grammatical standpoint, "Soylent Green is people" is incorrect. The proper phrasing should have been something like "Soylent Green is made of ground human flesh". But that doesn't make for a catchy tag line. ;-) )

 

[emsr2d2]

It certainly hasn't become part of colloquial BrE. I have never heard of the film or the quote.

 

[Rover_KE]

Neither have I,

 

[Tdol]

I did know the meaning, but I haven't heard it used in BrE- I saw it online, and had to look it up as I hadn't seen the film.

 

[MikeNewYork]

It is a classic.

 

[Jill Dorchester]

It certainly hasn't become part of colloquial BrE. I have never heard of the film or the quote.

Sorry, I should have specified AmE.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I am surprised it didn't make it to Britain.

 

[Tdol]

Many do, but that one did not. I will have to go from Wikipedia to YouTube.

 

[emsr2d2]

My first port of call for film information is IMDB. As you can see HERE, the film was released originally in 1973 in many countries but was never released in the UK so it's no wonder some of us hadn't heard of it.