Decadence: Decline of the Western World

'Decadence' is an excellent documentary that deserves a bit more attention. I caught it by accident on the Smithsonian Channel, of all places, and it hooked me right away.

Director and host Pria Viswalingam takes viewers on an tour of the various ways in which Western society has become dysfunctional. This includes the breakdown of the traditional family, the new role of sex, the runaway power of corporations, and, ultimately, our loss of spirituality and corresponding shift to mindless materialism.

The tale is told with lots of excellent location photography, and some really worthwhile interviews with people you haven't seen a million times before. I particularly liked how Viswalingam inserts himself as a silent background presence in some of the 'candid' scenes of everyday life. It's a clever bit of technique.

This is not to say that I agreed with everything Viswalingam has to say. For instance, I totally disagree with his conclusion: that Western civilization is falling, and will inevitably do so catastrophically. Unlike Viswalingam, I see the decline of irrational belief systems as a positive thing; I view today's social disorder as a healthy and probably rather brief phase, presaging the emergence of a far more mature, truly global civilization.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed all of Viswalingam's examples, and I found his philosophical observations to be deep and thought-provoking. Rather than reinforcing my own views, this film forced me to reconsider them, to examine our world in a new light. I therefore recommend 'Decadence' highly to anyone interested in understanding the state of the world today.

There's so much packed into 'Decadence' that I'd gladly watch it several more times, if not for one final complaint. At $30 on the creators' Web site, the DVD is horribly overpriced - and just for good measure, it's only available in Australia! But keep an eye on those obscure specialty channels. This film is well worth tracking down.