As a child growing up on Classic Hollywood movies, I inevitably watched Soylent Green (1973). Soylent Green, like Star Trek’s Original Series, was one of the few futuristic programs that was allowed in the house I grew up in, because they both were seen as positive for depicting a future where Black, Asian, Latinx, and other non-white people still existed and had major roles as people — not caricatures — in the imagined future.
I was enraptured with the world of Soylent Green, for many reasons — it accurately predicted that the earth would be in a state of near-ecocide, with skyrocketing temperatures, an exploding human population, and poor stewardship of the planet leading to food and housing shortages. New York City’s elite, in the movie, would be completely cushioned from these realities, enjoying fine clothes, food, and even enjoyment of the last living tree (which is cordoned off in a secret park only accessible to the rich). The only food available to the masses is an artificial substance called ‘soylent green’. What is soylent green? That is the central question of the movie, which leads to one of the most famous cinematic sequences at the finale performed by Charlton Heston (also a draw, for being a huge hottie).
If you’re reading this thinking, isn’t there a real product called Soylent, you are correct — in 2013, much to my own shock and dismay, a “food-replacement” called Soylent began appearing on shelves in gas stations and supermarkets, making the dystopian threat of the film all the more real. Considering that we live in a world where hyper-processed soy-based meat-replacements are also increasingly popular, it seems Soylent Green had its thumb on the pulse of what was to come.
But of course, what drew me the most to Soylent Green were the beautiful, glamorous, wistful, ‘Furniture Girls.’ The Furniture Girls are sex workers in the apocalypse, the dystopian equivalent of 1970s New York’s call girls and hustlers.
To escape the frantic masses starving and sleeping on the streets, the Furniture Girls work as ‘furniture’ — i.e. live-in company for elite men in New York City — in a place called the Chelsea West Tower Apartments. They trade cooking, cleaning, and sexual services for protection from the apocalypse, using the currency of their beauty and their bodies to survive in a world made unlivable. The women at the Chelsea West Tower Apartments are unfortunately controlled in a brothel-like atmosphere by an abusive male manager, and they have no choice in who their clients are: when one client dies or moves out, they have to take up the next one who moves in with no questions asked — the women are ‘furniture’ who come with the apartment, thus the name.
It’s a dynamic which makes me, as a sex worker, think about what our place will be in the apocalypse. The apocalypse is a topic I think of more and more each day. After all, in the words of Zola, “Pussy is worth thousands.” If I have to imagine surviving and working in the apocalypse, I prefer to do it from a place of empowerment, imagining a scenario where sex workers aren’t just subject to the incongruent whims of wealthy men or corrupt managers as in Soylent Green. It’s a reason why I enjoyed author Daemon Demimonde’s first chapter of his dystopian novel Ishtar’s Angel, because it depicted an apocalyptic world where sex workers aren’t just surviving like in Soylent Green, but actually thriving.
For this reason, when I imagined myself as a character in Soylent Green, I always identified — and still do — with Martha (played by Paula Kelly).
Martha’s character is also ‘a furniture girl,’ but informally — she doesn’t work for the Chelsea Towers West Apartments, but seems to have worked out her own arrangement with a low-ranking member of the elite’s enforcement. As a Black sex worker, I appreciated that Martha was spending the apocalypse comfortably relaxing at home, with her feet up, in a silk robe, eating from a $150 jar of strawberry jam. Unfortunately, like Black people everywhere (and particularly in the 1970s), she doesn’t have much power against the police entering her home or being physically violent with her.
However, I can appreciate the apparent camaraderie the Furniture Girls at Chelsea Towers West Apartments have in an effective ‘coworking’ space. They can build community and find support by having clandestine parties – given the scene in which we first encounter them, where the building manager Charles assaults them after finding them mid-party, we can assume they are not supposed to fraternize – where they share information and groom one another.
The world of Soylent Green isn’t too much different from ours today in my view. Depending on who you are, and what kind of work you do, the world you live in can be astronomically different from that of someone you pass in the street. The Furniture Girls appear to exist somewhere in the upper-middle of the film’s dystopian social classes and economy, enjoying privileges — such as soap and water — which police officers like the main character, Thorn (played by Charlton Heston), do not. In an irritating cultural ecosystem of incessant remakes and legacy sequels, Soylent Green is one movie I would like to see a properly realized legacy sequel of.
A second installment could answer the question: What happens to a Furniture Girl when she is considered ‘too old?’ It’s a looming threat for the workers, given that Shirl, the movie’s female lead (played by Leigh Taylor-Young) is seen lying about her age to a new client. Any further play on Soylent Green could also reimagine the role of ‘Furniture’ as more gender-expansive; the topic of gay male and gender-diverse sex workers in 1970s film would have been extremely taboo, but I would like to see a more realistic representation of sex workers than that given in the original Soylent Green.
Soylent Green was imagined in the last days of ‘Fear City’, what New York was known as until the end of the 1970s – although many legacy New Yorkers like myself would still refer to that time, and the early 1980s, with some nostalgia as “the real” New York. Any new installment of the plotline could easily be transferred to the New York of today: an ever-increasing gap between the city’s hyper-wealthy residents and ‘regular’ folk, rents at laughable prices, tech modernization impacting nearly every part of life, the threat of ecocide now a lived reality of the climate crisis, and a quality of life which is completely dependent on one’s occupation and social status. I know many smart and savvy sex workers in New York who are making the best of a situation which we could best describe, perhaps, as ‘pre-apocalyptic.’ I do enjoy — and fear — imagining the future; I’d also like to see more media showing how sex workers are coping with our confusing and at times distressing present, as well as to see greater representation of our survival in futuristic scenarios like Soylent Green.
Bio: miss mirage, also known online as thepasteldomina, is a writer of essays, opinions, poems, and cultural commentary as well as the author of erotic semi-fiction stories such as 'reggaeton strap-on: a latina lesbian adventure' and 'his first escort: f*cking my favorite comedian.' a s*x worker for over a decade, she currently writes and records audioerotica for her devoted worshippers online, while working occasionally as a str!pper. you can take a peek into her beautiful world on fetlife with her username: thepasteldomina. when she isn’t being shadowbanned, you can find her on x: https://x.com/pasteldomina
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