Futurama, which returns this week on Hulu after a ten-year hiatus and a number of cancellations, has at all times used meals to each illustrate and skewer the perils of late capitalism. Within the present’s bleak model of the longer term, the eating places suck, produce is scarce, and most folk are content material to eat pre-packaged industrial fare. Fry, a former pizza supply man and unabashed fan of quick meals, often eats one thing known as Bachelor Chow, a brown slop that appears a complete lot like present-day pet food and boasts that its new, improved model “now has taste.”
On this actuality, Soylent isn’t a bunch of protein shakes in modern bottles, it’s the actual stuff from Soylent Inexperienced, made out of human our bodies, and so unremarkable as a meals that it’s often referenced in jokes. It even makes an look because the particular ingredient in an Iron Chef-esque present that Bender wins in Season 3. In methods each refined and never, Futurama is at all times prepared to gross us out in pursuit of exploring what consuming sooner or later is likely to be like.
That’s very true in the case of Slurm, the actual heart of Futurama’s culinary universe. A extremely addictive, toxic-green libation that’s wildly fashionable on Earth, the drink is Fry’s favourite beverage. On the finish of Season 1, we be taught the darkish reality to the model’s proprietary recipe when Fry, Leela, and the remainder of the gang journey to planet Wormulon to go to the Slurm manufacturing facility. After driving down a river of Slurm, Fry stumbles upon a creepy underground manufacturing facility rife with labor violations, and discovers the Wormulon Queen’s anal secretions are the much-protected secret ingredient. However Fry is so hooked on the stuff that he retains that to himself, simply so he can hold sipping Slurm.
Slurm has served as a automobile for all kinds of gags in Futurama, together with Slurm Loco, an apparent nod to 4 Loko, which is much more addictive than its predecessor. In Season 11, it will get a revamp as Slurm Zero, and is touted in an commercial by a slug with a loss of life rattle who says that it has “not one of the taste, all the dependancy!” of the unique. An apparent parallel to Weight-reduction plan Coke, it capabilities as each a critique of our cultural obsession with caffeine, and the refusal to acknowledge the issues we eat and drink are sometimes produced within the industrial meals machine.
Slurm takes our enthusiasm for espresso, soda, and fast-food — all industries the place labor violations and environmental considerations loom giant — to its most excessive. Certain, we don’t depend on a bizarre worm queen’s anal secretions for espresso, however we additionally don’t at all times take into consideration the pressured labor and air pollution that’s often concerned in producing our every day cup of joe. And when you think about that espresso beans (and sugar, for that matter) are closely threatened by local weather change, it’s not too ridiculous to suppose that we is likely to be ingesting some synthesized substance like Slurm, one which’s additionally “extremely addictive” for the sake of continued productiveness within the late capitalist hellscape, within the close to future. Primarily, with Slurm, Futurama asks: What’s going to people eat when our vices are extinct?
Quick meals will get the identical deeply nihilist remedy. It’s clear that Futurama’s writers view the present drive-thru panorama as a cautionary story, one which hints on the precise rubbish we’d quickly be consuming sooner or later. Most of the restaurant chains that seem in Futurama are apparent parodies of these we eat at now — there’s Starbabe’s Cocoffee, and T.G.I. Folky’s, for instance — and none of them appear particularly interesting. A thousand years into the longer term, these chains have given up on their sustainability efforts and “more healthy” eats and are simply serving up subsistence fare. Even the universe’s lone fine-dining spot, Elzar’s, which as soon as made broth out of people throughout an financial downturn, appears fairly bleak.
Within the new season, as Futurama tackles Bitcoin and binge-watching, there are additionally nonetheless loads of jokes that preserve its grand custom of utilizing meals to poke enjoyable at capitalism. In an early episode, when Professor Farnsworth heats up a can of Fiber Log for lunch nobody bats an eye fixed at its moist, straw-like look. For Fry and the remainder of the parents within the Futurama orbit, consuming is just about by no means a supply of enjoyment, even when the characters got down to take pleasure in a meal. And contemplating that we could quickly be consuming bugs and algae in actual life ourselves, we could not even have to attend till 2999 for an genuine Futurama eating expertise.
