Depending on your political orientation, you could watch #ReGeneration as an agitprop documentary that calls on Americans to overturn their unhealthy culture of overwork, stress, shallow distractions, and empty calories. Alternately, you could watch it as a piece of anthropology about the blooming of popular dissent in the past 15 years, from the WTO riots to Occupy, and why those movements tend not to issue lists of reforms, but insist that the current American wayâeconomy, education, health care, campaign finance, all of itâisnât the American way.
Narrated and coproduced by Ryan Gosling, #ReGeneration splices documentary footage (of everything from public schools to war zones) with interviews: Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Talib Kweli, and other public figures, as well as high-school students and a young family.
Among the lively filmâs many points, three stand out: (1) Jimmy Carterâs 1979 speech about the perils of consumerism was the last time a president said something insightful about the relationship between Americaâs economic life and its cultural/spiritual life. From then on, itâs basically been vapid cheerleading, from Reaganâs âmorning in Americaâ to George W. Bush saying the best way to deal with 9/11 was shopping. (2) Most people dismiss activism as silly because our political and economic conditions are perceived as inevitable, like gravity and aging. (3) Those conditions are not inevitableâthey are choices. 
