Video - Decadence: Decline of the Western World documentary trailer.
SMH | LET'S not exaggerate. This is not the end of days. It is merely the end of civilisation as we know it.
That is the sobering argument made in Decadence: Decline of the Western World. Five years in the making, the Australian documentary proposes that the West peaked in 1969 and is now dying.
''The West as we know it today begins with the Magna Carta in 1215,'' Pria Viswalingam, who wrote, produced and appears in the documentary, says.
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''Then came the Renaissance, the founding of America and the Enlightenment, before the West peaked with the social revolutions of the 1960s.
''And 1969 was the peak. The Russians and the Americans took us beyond our earthly bounds, the My Lai Massacre shattered the image of us as the good guys and then there was all the sheer exuberance and peace, love and rock'n'roll of Woodstock before the Rolling Stones 'end of the '60s' concert at Altamont. Decadence depicts the West's decline ever since.''
Viswalingam is a former SBS TV presenter whose credits include Fork in the Road and Class. Having devoted a career to analysing culture and society, he says the symptoms of decay and decadence are unmistakeable.
Those symptoms include soaring suicide rates and the West's addiction to antidepressants. They include rampant individualism, emptying churches, a faltering sense of community and disintegrating families. And they include the West's obsessive devotion to money as the only true measure of worth.
''Treadmill consumption, growing income disparity, B-grade leadership, they're obvious signs of a culture adrift,'' he says.
That is the sobering argument made in Decadence: Decline of the Western World. Five years in the making, the Australian documentary proposes that the West peaked in 1969 and is now dying.
''The West as we know it today begins with the Magna Carta in 1215,'' Pria Viswalingam, who wrote, produced and appears in the documentary, says.
Advertisement: Story continues below
''Then came the Renaissance, the founding of America and the Enlightenment, before the West peaked with the social revolutions of the 1960s.
''And 1969 was the peak. The Russians and the Americans took us beyond our earthly bounds, the My Lai Massacre shattered the image of us as the good guys and then there was all the sheer exuberance and peace, love and rock'n'roll of Woodstock before the Rolling Stones 'end of the '60s' concert at Altamont. Decadence depicts the West's decline ever since.''
Viswalingam is a former SBS TV presenter whose credits include Fork in the Road and Class. Having devoted a career to analysing culture and society, he says the symptoms of decay and decadence are unmistakeable.
Those symptoms include soaring suicide rates and the West's addiction to antidepressants. They include rampant individualism, emptying churches, a faltering sense of community and disintegrating families. And they include the West's obsessive devotion to money as the only true measure of worth.
''Treadmill consumption, growing income disparity, B-grade leadership, they're obvious signs of a culture adrift,'' he says.
