Lau­ren Green­field: ​‘Authen­tic cul­ture is being destroyed by capitalism’

Sun­dance and Emmy award-win­ning film­mak­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lau­ren Green­field has spent the last 25 years doc­u­ment­ing the impact of con­sumerism on youth, gen­der, body image and our wider social mores. Expand­ing the themes she first began explor­ing in Thin and The Queen of Ver­sailles, her lat­est fea­ture, Gen­er­a­tion Wealth, exam­ines extremes of afflu­ence and addic­tion through a series of inti­mate por­traits filmed around the world. From dis­graced Wall Street financiers to Chi­nese eti­quette coach­es, Russ­ian tro­phy wives to LA teenagers, the film is a by turns a rig­or­ous his­tor­i­cal essay, enter­tain­ing exposé and deeply per­son­al jour­ney which bears wit­ness to the human cost of capitalism.

With clar­i­ty, humour and self-reflec­tive insight, Green­field holds her sub­jects up as a mir­ror to our own desires, forc­ing view­ers to acknowl­edge our shared par­tic­i­pa­tion in a con­sumer cul­ture that’s always striv­ing for more. Here she speaks about why it’s impor­tant to dis­tin­guish between the trend of con­sumerism and those who par­tic­i­pate in it and where else we can look for val­ue and mean­ing beyond mate­r­i­al gains.

“After study­ing anthro­pol­o­gy and work­ing for Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, I went back to LA to take a kind of soci­o­log­i­cal look at my own cul­ture. I’m real­ly inter­est­ed in why peo­ple do what they do, espe­cial­ly when some­times it’s irra­tional. One of the first inter­views I did was with Adam, the 13-year-old sur­round­ed by go-go dancers at a Bar Mitz­vah in this night­club. He talks about how extrav­a­gant Bar Mitzvah’s are, with peo­ple spend­ing $50,000 and how you have to spend that much or you’re ​‘shit out of luck’. But then, at the same moment he says that mon­ey ruins kids, and he felt like mon­ey had ruined him. I was real­ly blown away by how sub­jects, even when they’re in the eye of the storm, right in the mid­dle of it, can also be the best social crit­ics. Peo­ple can be so per­cep­tive and hon­est about what they’re seeing.

“A big part of my work is about how we’re all com­plic­it in this sys­tem. In past gen­er­a­tions we had more coun­ter­vail­ing val­ues to the val­ues of cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism, and the val­ues of the media and the influ­ence of peers and pop­u­lar cul­ture. Tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tions like reli­gion, shared sec­u­lar moral­i­ty, fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty, these are things that formed us as much as tele­vi­sion. As tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tions have weak­ened oth­er influ­ences have got­ten so much more pow­er­ful. I guess that’s why I end­ed up think­ing of fam­i­ly as the anti­dote – in a way I got there through the insights of the sub­jects who come to that con­clu­sion. They’re chas­ing these things that they think are going to bring them hap­pi­ness – mon­ey, beau­ty, sex, youth, fame – and what they find is that what real­ly mat­ters is fam­i­ly and love and community.

“In my sto­ry, Frank shows the impor­tance of father­hood. He’s able to com­pen­sate for the imbal­ance in my life in a way that has con­se­quences for all of us and some huge pos­i­tives, espe­cial­ly for him and the kids. The sto­ry that I’m telling in my own life is a com­plete non-sto­ry for a man – it’s the way men nor­mal­ly live. The con­se­quences that I expe­ri­ence are also the con­se­quences that many men expe­ri­ence. I hope the moral of the sto­ry is non-gen­dered family.

“This is a film about addic­tion. You think it’s about mon­ey but real­ly it’s about chas­ing some­thing that we think will bring us hap­pi­ness and ful­fil­ment. For me the addic­tion metaphor was so pow­er­ful – you see it with Cathy look­ing for the per­fect body, just as some­body with an eat­ing dis­or­der wants to get to a cer­tain weight, or some­body at a bank wants to make a cer­tain amount of mon­ey before they retire. What­ev­er that num­ber or goal is, once you get there it’s not enough. That’s part of the mech­a­nism of cap­i­tal­ism, if you were sat­is­fied you wouldn’t buy any­thing more. That’s why I’m not crit­i­cal of the sub­jects because I think cap­i­tal­ism is designed to exploit these desires. That’s also why I includ­ed myself, I def­i­nite­ly have had all of those feel­ings myself. When I was in high school, I want­ed design­er clothes and I want­ed to be pop­u­lar and I want­ed to be thinner.

“Art and cul­ture allow us to have empa­thy, and to ques­tion what’s around us. Authen­tic cul­ture is being destroyed by cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism, but it’s authen­tic cul­ture which allows us to under­stand who we are and where we come from. Just because a lot of our media com­pa­nies are owned by Rupert Mur­doch and cor­po­rate, for-prof­it com­pa­nies, do they not ful­fil a func­tion? I would pre­fer that we had a stronger pub­lic-fund­ed media in this coun­try, but on the oth­er hand I wouldn’t take what we have away. I think it plays a real­ly impor­tant role. I start­ed work­ing about 10 years ago in adver­tis­ing because I saw the neg­a­tive pow­er it can have. If you do some­thing pos­i­tive with that medi­um, that’s a huge sphere of influ­ence. A lot my work, even for mag­a­zines, has had a sub­ver­sive qual­i­ty – I might be talk­ing about the pres­sures to be thin with pho­tos I’ve tak­en for the pages of the women’s mag­a­zines or the fash­ion spreads.

“Life is short, make sure you spend time with your fam­i­ly, with friends, because you can’t get that back. It does seem like the biggest cliché in the world but I feel like it was real­ly true for the char­ac­ters and for me. Wake up to what you already have, look around you and see the wealth that’s there.”

Gen­er­a­tion Wealth is in cin­e­mas 20 July. Read the LWLies review.