The movies teach us that 2022 could be a lot worse than it is

Date: 1/17/2022

So far, this year has been pretty miserable, and it’s only a couple of weeks old.

I don’t mean to look at the glass half empty. I would love a half-full glass.
Twenty twenty-two is like a version of the classic routine by The Old Philosopher, Eddie Lawrence (go ahead and look him up).

He had a great “inspirational” bit in which he asked his listeners what was troubling them. He would then ask, “Hiya folks.

“Ya say ya lost your job today?

“Ya say it’s 4 a.m. and your kids ain’t home from school yet?

“Ya say your wife went out for a corned beef sandwich last weekend – the corned beef sandwich came back but she didn’t?

“Ya say your furniture is out all over the sidewalk cause ya can’t pay the rent and ya got chapped lips and paper cuts and your feets all swollen up and blistered from pounding the pavement looking for work?

“Is that what’s troubling ya fellow?”

Well, substitute some of those problems with the following ones. The pandemic continues to cause havoc throughout our world, from messing up the supply chain to employment issues to subsequent inflation to continuing to threaten our collective health. The Russians are playing a game of chicken on the border of Ukraine for what reason? We have experienced terrible weather events across the country and record cold temperatures here. I won’t get into our political scene, but yikes!

And now there is a dog and cat food shortage. I walked through the Big Y this morning and the shelves were literally bare.

Is that what’s troubling ya, fellow?

Well, my cynical nature tells me it could be much, much worse if our world fulfilled the predictions made by a couple of movies that are set in 2022.

As a movie guy, I couldn’t help but notice that the venerable science fiction film “Soylent Green” was set in 2022. This 1973 film starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, in his final role, paints a picture of America in 2022. The nation and the world are suffering from the effects of pollution and climate change. There is great unrest as there is a huge division between the wealthy and the poor.

The food supply is dominated by Soylent Green, a protein wafer made from plankton. The trouble is Soylent Green is not made from plants. As Heston’s police character discovers much to his horror, there isn’t enough plankton anymore, and Soylent Green is actually made from the recently deceased.
At the end of the film, Heston is running through the streets of New York shouting, “Soylent Green is people!”

Well, at least we are not the level of corporations cannibalizing human beings to create a food supply. Score one for the glass-half-full contingent.

The other film set in 2022 is “The Purge.” This 2013 film is set in 2022 when a dictatorship has taken over the United States. Unemployment and crime neither exist any longer and the government has set aside one night known as “The Purge,” when anyone can commit any sort of crime they want with no punishment. It’s designed as a safety valve.

During the course of the film, we follow one family as they try to stay alive and prevent people from breaking into their home and killing them.

While crime today is certainly a serious concern, of course, at least we don’t have a government-sanctioned night of terror.

Score another for the glass-half-full group.

I guess these two movies teach me that while things can always be better, things can also be much worse.

We have the capacity to right the ship if we have the will to do so. We can identify issues and fix them if we can get past political bickering. We can do things that not only address problems we have now, but also set things right for the future.

As the Old Philosopher would say, “Well lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with dignity and stick-to-it-ness and ya show the world, ya show the world where to get off. You’ll never give up, never give up, never give up ... that ship!”