“Zeitgeist: The Movie” makes fringe fashionable again
Ah, the Internet – a wonderful creation that allows unsound information to be spread to millions of gullible users. “Zeitgeist: The Movie” is the latest piece of flashy drivel to capture the imaginations of stupid people everywhere. Available to watch for free, the film is making its way across the Internet faster than you can say “nonsense on stilts.” In fact, today is apparently “Zeitgeist Day”; the movie is being screened all around the world, including on campus. Here’s part of the Zeitgeist Day manifesto, as lifted from the website:
The greatest fraud of our time is the social conditioning that leads us as individuals to operate out of our own personal self-interest and nothing more. Material, poverty, war, genocide, manipulation, crime and corruption are the results. The removal of the grand illusion known as “separation” is the true ‘activism,’ as everything else is a mere result of the consequential ‘elitism’ inherent in the need for self-perpetuation. [Blah, blah blah. Corporatism, religion.] The revolution is now.
The film is a hodgepodge of various conspiracy theories divided into three parts – Christianity, 9/11 and the international banking system. These parts that are ostensibly connected in an “everything’s connected” kind of way, but since I couldn’t make heads or tails of the “big message,” I’ll address each part separately.
Part one: the greatest story ever told
The first part of the movie is a ham-fisted critique of Christianity. The filmmaker smugly lets us ignorant viewers in on the “big lie” of modern religion; he claims (brace yourself) that it’s nothing but myths exploited for power and money. His “shocking” evidence is that many other cultures had stories similar to Jesus – a god born of a virgin who is killed and resurrected after three day. No, really? You don’t say! Why, it’s almost as if ancient myths share common themes and symbols. If only there were a field of study to properly investigate, or shall we say “compare,” the connections between various mythologies.
The filmmaker couches all of this in astrological nonsense, saying that Jesus and his dopplegangers were actually complex allegories for the astrological calendar. For example, he claims that the cross was a pagan symbol for the astrological calendar, traditionally with the sun at its center. In all of the early icons of Jesus, a halo/cross is shown directly behind his head; Jesus is the son (or “sun”) of God. And on and on and on.
It’s all very impressive until you start to think about the enormous amount of selective thinking that must have gone into it. For example, I could cherry pick Bible verses (Gen. 6:1-4) and other cultural whatnot all day long supporting the theory that the human race was seeded by powerful aliens. See? Now all I need is an air of superiority and some flashy editing, and I’ll be golden!
Oh, and his claims also might be a bit more impressive if, y’know, a bunch of other people hadn’t already said them 200 years earlier.
Part two: all the world’s a stage
Moving on from The Da Vinci Code, I mean “part one,” the film veers into 9/11 conspiracy mongering. Controlled demolition, inside job, yadda yadda yadda. Hey, did you know that if you fold a $20 bill just right it looks like the World Trade Centers on fire? Whoa! Seriously, though, this has been debunked thoroughly enough that I don’t want to waste any more space on it.
Part three: don’t mind the men behind the curtain
When part three of the film begins, a “please fasten tin-foil helmet” light should turn on. It’s all here – New World Order, the Fed, the IRS, international banking. It’s all tied together by electronic banking conspiracy. This is the kind of stuff that goes over well in the backwoods of Idaho.
OC Publisher Guy Simmons and I were talking in the office one day, and we decided that the fundamental problem with conspiracy theories like this is that they give the government too much credit. Conspiracies assume that that the government is not only incredibly smart but incredibly efficient. Call me crazy, but I just can’t accept that a governing body that spends months investigating baseball steroid use has also been organizing a complex, centuries-long plan to take over the world in its spare time.
This all wouldn’t be so egregious, except that the movie relies heavily on unsourced material. TV news clips flash on the screen; from where? Who knows? Audio clips of people talking pop out of nowhere; who are they? Beats me. The film’s website has a list of sources, but it’s skimpy and incomplete. The revolution may be now, but it wouldn’t fly as a Writing 122 paper.
