Collections/March 2025

The Decline of Western Civilization

Before achieving pop-culture immortality with the left-field mainstream hit Wayne’s World , Penelope Spheeris established her DIY credentials as the foremost chronicler of West Coast counterculture. In her essential trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization , she captured the evolution of Los Angeles’s alternative underground, from the anarchic energy of the early-1980s punk movement to the excesses of hair metal to the antiestablishment defiance of the gutter-punk scene. Bringing together candid interviews and copious concert footage, these films stand as canonical, warts-and-all records of groundbreaking bands—including Black Flag, X, Germs, and Fear—and the world-shaking youth movements they inspired.

3 films — 0 on the Channel, 3 unavailable