#ReGENERATION: The Politics of Apathy & Activism

The 19th-century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison once remarked, “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.” Today, the level of national apathy appears to have reached depths Garrison could never have imagined. Or at least that is the theme of this film essay from Phillip Montgomery, which serves as a broad swipe at everything wrong with contemporary American society. The vanity-titled #ReGENERATION serves up a group of Minnesota high school students, a twentysomething married couple, the music group STS9, and gabby experts from both sides of the political spectrum (Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman on the left, FOX News' Tucker Carlson on the right) in an effort to diagnose why Americans seem so indifferent to sociopolitical concerns. Who is to blame? According to this film, everything started to go wrong when Ronald Reagan ousted Jimmy Carter from the White House, and things careened out of control due to inept parenting, an inadequate education system, a sense of unrepentant narcissism, and distractions from high-tech gadgets and a fractured mass media—with special attention paid to, of all things, reality television programming. Not everyone here is convinced; one wise teenager complains that it's unfair to put such a broad label on everyone. Ryan Gosling, who co-produced, offers grumbling narration that matches the meandering, heavy-handed tone of this sour documentary. [Note: this is also available with public performance rights for $34.95 for public libraries, $95 for community colleges, and $225 for colleges & universities from Media Education Foundation, www.mediaed.org.] An optional purchase, at best. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)