ReGeneration, a 2010 documentary written and directed by Phillip Montgomery, has been making waves on the festival circuit. Not on general release, so unable to infiltrate the small screens it so detests, the film’s aims are instead clearly laid out on its website: ReGeneration promises to take ‘an uncompromising look at the issues facing today’s youth and young adults, and the influences that perpetuate our culture’s apathetic approach to social and political causes.’[1] Focusing on American youth culture and formed through interviews and footage of a group of high school students and leading social activists and media personalities, the documentary presents a world in need of change for the better.

‘Apathetic’ is the key word here. Coming from the legacy of Generation X and Generation Y, this culture’s indifference is marked by its consumerist ideals, its disconnection with nature and a rocky foundation rooted in the comforts of technology. Indulging in some 21^st technology myself, I flicked through the clips available on the website, each proving to be more apocalyptic and gloomy than the last.  One, aptly titled ‘Empathy Deficit’, shows how the amount of survival lessons we once learnt from nature are scaled down to practically zero. We now live in a much colder environment- the electronic era. Cue some savvy editing as the film juxtaposes images of teenagers on their mobile phones, ignoring the people around them, as the voice over of one worried teacher remarks: ‘We are the ADD generation.’ Unable to focus on a piece of poetry for half an hour in class, how are these teenagers supposed to engage in political and social issues?

Now comes the truly frightening stuff, as one commentator links this dependence on electronic devices to the overwhelming sense of a cultural ‘empathy deficit’. Soon, we will be unable to make rich, intense contact with one another; we won’t be able to love someone properly; we won’t be able to feel deep sorrow when someone dies -  seems extreme…but is it? These ideas hark back to those George Orwell outlined in his post-war political fable Ninteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which a Big Brother establishment prevails over a deadened society, controlling the history and memories of the masses. The documentary mourns the loss of natural skills that render us dependent upon a government or system to eat and survive (we now consider ultimate survival programmes in the raw conditions of nature as novel!), but arguments about social systems have been around for centuries. Ever since Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) identified man in his natural state as uncivilised, needing absolute social order to control his primitive urges (a huge glossing of the argument, forgive me) to the writers of the ‘Angry Young Men’ movement in the 1950s, challenging the English establishment and its class relations in post war Britain, the idea of what we need from society is one which prevails, and will always prevail in our cultural consciousness.

As an English Literature student, I know only too well the problems that generations face in articulating their culture; it is never expressed as ideal. However, ReGeneration seems worried that our generation will be defined, not so much by a broken society, but by a society that is marked by its inability to feel, to empathise- or really, just to care. Following on from this, the film asks us: who is to blame? The education system? The media? The parents?

There doesn’t appear to be one specific answer to this, and my inability to even try to formulate an answer perhaps highlights my stance. As much as I hate to admit it, I would class myself amongst the apathetic youth of today, but can I really blame anyone apart from myself? I haven’t had to study history since Year 9, and therefore my grasp on historical events is really pretty poor. Yes, I worry about the state of the environment, but what can I do about it? (Apart from the regular arguments with my father about the need for recycling  - a man who also tends to fuel the idea that the media exaggerates the state the natural world is in.) Furthermore,  in the uproar about student fees, when I  did have the opportunity to join a protest…well, I had an essay due in that day.

ReGeneration’s answer as to why I do not know enough about the issues facing the world today is that I am part of a inactive culture. We are no longer based outside; our perceptions are shaped through the internet and television screens. For the first two years of my university life, international news seemed a strange concept to me, immersed in the bubble ofLeedsand its social life. Now, in an attempt to become more culturallyaware, my news knowledge is based around the online version of the Guardian, updates of which can be accessed from the devil Facebook. I can also do the same for updates about ReGeneration’s progress, which I can’t help but find a bit too bitterly ironic. The makers of the documentary cannot deny that its website is almost as important as the film itself, providing links to information and the works of the social activists and scholars that infiltrate the film. One message hits home though; buy these books from local booksellers and support the local media organisations, don’t just accept whatMSNthrows on your homepage. This is admirable enough, but how do we tempt our culture away from quick fixes like Amazon and a brain fuelling Starbucks?

Kalle Lasn, the main commentator on the ‘empathy deficit’ clip is at the forefront of a movement called ‘culture jamming’; an effort to reclaim the culture that he claims corporations and advertising agencies have taken away from us. In 1989, he created the not-for-profit magazine Adbusters, which offers anti-communist [capitalist?] articles that are of course, very big on the current ‘Occupy’ movements. Upon browsing through Adbuster’s site, I came across an article that emphasised the need for political activism, using a speech by Martin Luther King as its inspiration. How important is looking back these days? Truth of the matter is, there are no longer slaves struggling against the institution of slavery, feminism is no longer a desperate battle for overall equality and we are not in the middle of an African American struggle for civil rights.  However, knowing about these points of social crisis is the motivation to make some change; there is always something wrong with society; there is always a need for us to get riled up and be passionate about a cause. Otherwise, we’re dead, walking round like the brain washed characters of Nineteen Eighty Four. The problem is, we do not have this overarching sense of what is wrong. The film supports this claim when it is suggested that there is not one thing we are all joined together to fight; instead we hear hundreds of things a day which cause us to bemoan our society. We are left lost, indefinable, ultimately without a cause.

For Lasn, the fight is for an individual voice and an alternative perspective to what is readily available. He wants us to actively search for our information, to question what is being presented to us. However, on ReGeneration’s website, it states that Lasn aims to drop ‘mind bombs’ (a concept which sounds immediately terrifying), which are ideas that will drastically change how people view the world, in order to produce a truthful and sustainable society. Surely this is fighting brainwashing with another form of brainwashing. How is society ever going to produce one set of truths?

All I know is that activism is to start in the home, sitting on your seat in front of the internet screen, conscientiously wading your way through the barrage of media and ‘mind bombs’ that confront you.  Essentially, what we are being told to fight against is the weapon with which to fight it – confusing really.  No wonder we don’t know where to start.

Lauren Harding

Image: Farmers’Republic on Flickr