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  • 3.8
AFFLUENZA is a groundbreaking film that diagnoses a serious social disease caused by consumerism, commercialism and rampant materialism that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities and the environment. We have more stuff, but less time, and our quality of life seems to be deteriorating. By using personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips and "uncommercial" breaks to illuminate the nature and extent of the disease, AFFLUENZA has appealed to widely diverse audiences: from freshmen orientation programs to consumer credit counseling and from religious congregations to marketing classes. With the help of historians and archival film, AFFLUENZA reveals the forces that have dramatically transformed us from a nation that prized thriftiness, with strong beliefs in "plain living and high thinking," into the ultimate consumer society. Made original for public television and definitely a product of its era, the issues are as relevant today as they were then.

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Member Reviews (12)

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top reviewer

15 years has passed and the worldwide march of materialism is still unrelenting, with Buy Nothing Day no more observed now than then and income gaps yawning ever wider. This documentary retains its explanatory and motivational power, and it will continue to do so until we can say "Well, we've solved that problem."

top reviewer

Only approximately 50 minutes in, until the sales pitch. Wonderful, hysterical irony.

I watched this. I liked it a lot.

i enjoy films like this and wish they had more influence

Very dated, but enjoyable.


Great Information and suggestions. Well documented

Materialism did not end as much as these folks thought it would when they made the documentary in the late 1990's. They still offer good points that remain true about how consumerism is not the answer to happiness nor is it sustainable as a way to economic prosperity. What is the answer, truly we are still looking.............


couldntsit through the whole thing!

"We start looking at other people and we say, 'If they don't give us pleasure, then, they are disposable.'"

From Ted Haggard, Minister of New Life Church in Colorado, in AFFLUENZA (1997), before the fall.

Nice movie but Voluntary Simplicity had not experienced 2008. I wonder what those people would say now?