“Soylent Green is people! We’ve got to stop them…somehow!”

So screams Charlton Heston at the end of Soylent Green, that ponderous 70’s sci-fi classic whose twist has been repeated so often it is now a cliché. If you were somehow unaware that Soylent Green was people, I apologise for spoiling a 45 year old film and will send an apology protein snack to the rock you live under.

Although the ending to Soylent Green is rather abrupt, and the twist really not that surprising, Charlton’s exhausted, entreating cries are worthy of note, at least by today’s standards. You simply don’t see this kind of thing in modern cinema.

The violent outpouring of emotion due to a deeply held belief, or as a response to injustice, seems to have had its swan-song around the 1970s. Take the slow-paced but still excellent ‘Silent Running’ from 1972. In ‘Silent Running’ Bruce Dern plays Freeman Lowell, a member of a small crew on board a spaceship tasked with caring for the last remaining plant life in the world. Back on Earth, many societal problems have been fixed but the natural world has been all but eradicated. As one character puts it: “There’s hardly any more disease. There’s no more poverty. Nobody’s out of a job.”

Freeman, for want of better phrasing, doesn’t take this very well. Wild-eyed, he rails against the homogeneity of the world. He is disgusted by his companions. Nobody cares about what little nature is left. He counters the sneering complacency of his ship-mates with something approaching psychotic fervour. And this is supposed to be our protagonist. Freeman is the one we’re supposed to be rooting for.

Of course, things get a bit morally gray when the order comes in to scrap the forests for reasons of ‘efficiency’ and Freeman, well, murders the crew and steals the ship. But even against the backdrop of this lunacy, we are still supportive of Freeman. We sympathise with his trials because the alternative is unthinkable: the uncaring acceptance of a world in which technological efficiency has made life totally unremarkable.

The outpouring of emotion on display in these films is truly a reflection of the times. If you subscribe to the notion, as I do, that the art of an era is an insight into its culture then the 1970s seem to be the final outburst of the fervent; the last time in which passion and overt displays of emotion were not regarded with suspicion or mistrust. Even 10 years later, the qualities that made a protagonist had changed remarkably. The 1970s gave us Michael Corleone and Rocky Balboa. The 1980s gave us Indiana Jones and Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. A huge change for such a short period.

In these cynical, modern times, characters such as Freeman Lowell would unquestionably be seen as villains or antagonists. At the very most, they might win the part of an eccentric or misguided sidekick. Today, it would be unthinkable for someone to throw food around while raving at a perceived injustice, not least because it might mean the audience wouldn’t (at least in theory) relate to them. This trend exists throughout all of cinema, although sci-fi is able to reflect the state, hopes and fears of modern society back at us better that most other genres.

The concerning thing is that this dismissal of passion in our heroes is mirrored in our ordinary lives. In almost any setting (even spirited debate) vitriolic passion has been put aside. The word itself is still around, and still refers to more or less the same thing as it always has. To be passionate about something is to care deeply about it, to work for it even at personal expense, and acknowledge it as a vital component of your character. However, the manner in which passion can be permissibly expressed has radically changed. No longer can there be the violent outcries, the indignant rage or the outpouring of emotion once seen as the qualities of a hero. Now such things are seen as eccentric and suspicious.

Why has this happened?

Could it be the pervasive cultural fear of extremism? Not a day goes by without some news of political or religious extremists making life for someone much, much worse. There is guilt by association certainly, but this doesn’t explain everything.
Perhaps our mistrust comes from an increasingly interconnected but emotionally distant culture. For people of my generation, the influence of social media is inescapable. As if by Orwell’s Big Brother we are watched and monitored at all times, often purportedly in our own interests. In the cases where we consent to being watched (Facebook, Twitter and so on) the inclination is to paint ourselves in the broadest, least objectionable terms. As a friend once said to me “This is no place for discussion!”

Whether he was right or wrong, the point in an important one. Voicing a strong opinion invites debate – the stronger the opinion, the more likely it is to be challenged. And our modern forms of communication are fundamentally ill-suited to challenge or the exchange of ideas.

Most popular media, social or otherwise, disincentives dissent through its very format. In all likelihood our friends are much like us, with the same problems and views on the world. In such a setting, there is no need to defend views with passion. Who would you defend them against? With a wealth of options for interacting with the world, the typical person can simply go somewhere else if they do not agree with that is being said. The role of passionate denial has become obsolete, and with its obsolescence we have lost our connection to it.

Perhaps passion is mistrusted simply through overuse, having been watered down to the point of meaninglessness. How many times have we seen an advertisement which assures us everyone involved is working passionately? Even if we put aside the sheer gall of trying to trick us into believing that anyone has a deeply held love of, say, selling novelty meat products, we have to wonder who genuinely believes that such an attitude is commendable.

I read a story many years ago to this affect, which I will paraphrase here. The director of an agricultural interests committee (let’s say the Committee for the promotion of California Strawberries) was interviewed by a trade magazine. The interviewer asked what he was passionate about. The response? “I’m passionate about promoting California Strawberries.”

If I am ever asked that question and give a similar answer, I want you to punch me in the stomach. It only seems fair.

Upon further discussion, it turns out that Mr Strawberry (I’m not sure if that was his actual name) was far more interested in recreating the joys of his youth, in which he would gambol through the strawberry fields of California and help his father with harvesting. A much more humane and interesting answer, but a long way from the one he gave at first.

The insidious merging of work and personal life via the concept of passion is worthy of an article in itself, but let us ponder on the significance of this transformation. Overt passion has gone, and in its place a quieter, more subdued expression has become the only acceptable form. A hero murdering his crew for the sake of trees may not come again.

I do not believe the world is any better or worse that it once was, but I do believe that we have lost something that once made life more interesting. A part of our capacity for expression has been locked off, denied, and packaged as a luxury to be consumed in the company of those who would never disagree.

I have no advice to give on this, save an extract from Howard Beale’s speech from another 1970s classic, ‘Network’. As the world closes in around us and we bumble headfirst into a new year, it might be worth remembering:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta’ get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”