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'Generation Wealth' Is a Sprawling Chronicle of Decadence and Decay

Jul 2018 🇺🇸 The Outline

Published the day before the film's wide theatrical release, this Outline review by Ann-Derrick Gaillot examines Lauren Greenfield's documentary Generation Wealth, which draws on 25 years of her photography to trace how the pursuit of money and physical perfection has reshaped the people she has followed. Gaillot describes the film revisiting earlier subjects to show consumerism's costs — including strained family time and body-image distress — while also turning the lens on Greenfield's own career ambition as a parallel, less-examined form of compulsive pursuit. The review frames the documentary as both cultural critique and self-implicating confession, associating relentless exposure to status-driven, image-obsessed media and marketing with dissatisfaction rather than presenting wealth or fame as an unambiguous good. TechKids Foundation cites this review as a substantive, independent critical assessment of the film's argument about media-driven materialism's toll on subjects across generations.

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CITATION

Gaillot, Ann-Derrick. "'Generation Wealth' Is a Sprawling Chronicle of Decadence and Decay." The Outline, July 19, 2018.

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