Lauren Greenfield is back, once again looking at how the American dream has evolved.

You might recognise the name – Greenfield is the documentarian and photographer behind 2012’s Queen of Versailles, “a cautionary tale about one family’s efforts to build the largest home in America”.

And her latest offering, Generation Wealth, is a natural extension of that theme.

It looks at the consumerism culture – and those values – that has taken the U.S. by storm and, as it widens the scope of the Versailles family, looks back on 25 years’ worth of Greenfield’s work, reports The Daily Beast.

In short, the documentary is a “deep dive into the lives of her subjects, captured over decades, and a meditation on consumerism, Kardashian culture, and the rise and fall of the American empire”:

As a point of access to all of this decadence and decay, Greenfield returns to her early work and her early life: photographs of L.A.’s wealthy and tanned teenagers, inspired by her own private school days.

From prepubescent boys surrounded by hired dancers at bar mitzvahs to a high school-aged Kim Kardashian mingling at a dance, these photos capture both a moment in time and a gathering momentum—a trend towards growing up too fast and too rich to function.

These escalating displays of wealth and excess are tempered by the teens’ visible expressions of insecurity and self-consciousness. At once, Greenfield managed to showcase these normal, angsty teens and their singular environment. Girls preened in bikinis for boys and kids flashed hundred-dollar bills at the camera.

Years later, Greenfield finds almost all of her grown-up subjects traumatised by their lavish childhoods. But the doccie doesn’t try garner support for them, the children of the rich and famous. Rather, it opens up a larger conversation about “our collective greed, and its price”.

Subjects include a “Toddlers & Tiaras cast member, a former porn star who got plastic surgery in an attempt to escape her own fetishised image, and an ex-hedge fund manager who can’t return to the U.S. for fear of prosecution”:

His disgust at his former self—“I was a hamster in a diamond-studded gold wheel”—is parroted by many of Greenfield’s subjects, who overspend or overindulge only to find themselves longing for the life that they had before the surgery or the loan or the seven-day work week; the life that never seemed good enough.

Trailer time:

Clearly money can be a complicated drug, and Greenfield treats it like an addiction. The only problem is, she herself wants more.

The film is set to be released in the U.S. on July 20.

[source:thedailybeast]